The Binary Café

The Binary Café
The Binary Café circa 1994[1]
Restaurant information
Owner(s)	Steve Bernhardson
Country	Canada
Website	io.org/~bincaf/^[dead link‍]

The Binary Café was an internet cafe which was located upstairs at 502 Yonge Street^[2] in Toronto, Ontario from June 1994^[3] to December 1994.^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]} It is significant in that it was Canada's first internet cafe.^[3][4][5] Three years after the first café installed internet access, it opened the same year as the first internet cafés in London and America.^[5] Ivan Pope had been the first to fully lay out the concept of a "cybercafé" in a London art event two months earlier the same year.^[5][6] It was run by Steve Bernhardson^[7] and staffed by a handful of employees/volunteers.^{[citation needed]} According to a columnist, Bernhardson tried to "meld art, Internet, intellect, and 'cafe culture'" and strip computers of their associations with asocial geeks and "office culture".^[7]

The full name of the establishment was "The Binary Café and Hexadecimal Emporium",^[7] selling food (prepared sandwiches, holographic chocolates), drinks (coffee, soda, no alcohol) and cigarettes as well as a variety of magazines.^[7] It was located in a converted residential flat up a staircase from a door on Yonge Street, under a sign covered in binary digits.^[7] A small display case contained art related to technology or cyberspace, solicited from local artists.^[7]

Internet access was available through two x86 computers, which shared a single telephone line for their PPP connection.^{[citation needed]} The café had three computers as of September 1994.^[7]

References

1. "Ode to The Binary Cafe and Hexadecimal Emporium". scribble.com. January 1997. Retrieved 2024-10-19.
2. "#037 Jan 1995". ISEA Newsletter. ISEA International. Archived from the original on 8 November 2013. Retrieved March 4, 2020.
3. Adomi, Esharenana E. (2017). Security and Software for Cybercafes. Information Science Reference. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-59904-905-2.
4. Warf, Barney, ed. (2018). The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet. SAGE. p. 347. ISBN 9781526450432.
5. Romanska, Magda (23 March 2012). "Café Culture History, Part 5: The History of the Cybercafé". ArtsEmerson. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
6. The Weird, Sketchy History of Internet Cafes Gizmodo. (20 November 2015). Bryan Lufkin
7. Campbell, K. K. (15 September 1994). "THE "ALTERNATIVE" COMPUTER SCENE: Upstairs at Binary Cafe's Computer Underground". Eye, Toronto's Arts Newspaper (online edition). Archived from the original on December 2, 2008. Retrieved 19 October 2024.

External links

• Ode to The Binary Cafe... -- a web memorial