Dialogos
The first chat system for public venues, born in Italy in 1991, before the internet reached people's homes. You chatted in real time from terminals installed in bars and arcades, over the X.25 Itapac packet network. A project by Dialogicom's founder, Salvo De Luca (hardware and software), with Delfo Toscano (design and marketing).
A public chat, twenty years before WhatsApp.
Dialogos let people in different venues talk in real time, each from their own terminal. It was officially presented at the ENADA 1991 trade fair, one of Italy's leading entertainment-machine exhibitions, and rolled out to venues across the country, quickly becoming a meeting point for young people and tech enthusiasts.
The terminal design was unmistakable: a metallic-blue resin shell with the monitor hidden inside a circular porthole built for conversation privacy. A futuristic shape that still turns heads today.
Rechargeable card, time-based credit, graphics in the porthole.
To chat you bought a rechargeable card at the venue's counter. Inserted into the terminal's smart-card reader, it drew down credit based on usage time, shown live on an LED display. In 1991, that was brand new.
X.25, X.28 and a trick for the graphics.
At the core were servers connected to the X.25 Itapac network (the CCITT packet-switching standard, run in Italy by SIP). Each terminal connected asynchronously via the X.28 standard and a PAD (Packet Assembler/Disassembler), which turned characters into packets and back.
- NetworkX.25 Itapac (packet switching, virtual circuits per session, automatic error retransmission).
- TerminalAsynchronous X.28 connection to X.25 through a PAD.
- Speed1200 baud, about 120 characters per second.
- GraphicsPredefined graphic blocks stored in the terminal: the network sent only text, a block code and coordinates. Minimal traffic, fluid rendering despite the slow line.
- PrivacyMonitor inside a circular porthole, for a private, immersive experience.
It is the same way of thinking we still bring to software today: understand the real constraints and design around them, not against them.
Instant communication between people in different physical places, years before internet chat. For all intents and purposes, the grandfather of WhatsApp.
Digital socialising, in person.
You connected, started private chats or group conversations: a chat room inside a bar or an arcade. A wholly new kind of interaction for the time.
The fathers of Dialogos.
A reunion nineteen years after the launch, around the original terminal.
It all started here.
Thirty years on, the same expertise that designed Dialogos builds SaaS, AI integrations and embedded systems. If you have an idea that doesn't exist yet, let's talk.