Digital Chicken was among the earliest implementations of an Internet email to fax gateway, active for several months during the mid-1990s.
The Toronto-based gateway was created by Dr. Robert Riley through Internet service provider Planet Communications. [1] When email was sent to one of the designated addresses, the text was transmitted as fax to a designated party such as a Canadian government agency. For example, an email sent to ontatg@chicken.planet.org was converted to a fax transmission to the Attorney General of Ontario. [2] The service initially lacked a formal domain name, therefore email routing of the form "utgpu!plan9!chyk!" was required until late 1993. [3]
Many of these "@chicken.planet.org" addresses were included in Seth Godin's book, E-mail Addresses of the Rich and Famous ( ISBN 0-201-40893-7, Addison-Wesley, 1994), although these addresses were not maintained by the recipients. [2]
Digital Chicken's hosting was changed from Planet Communications to UUNET in November 1993. The arrangements with Planet were terminated because of what Riley indicated were "complaints from certain government agencies". [4] Digital Chicken was discontinued entirely in May 1994. [2] By that time, The Phone Company (tpc.int) had established email-fax gateway coverage for Toronto. [5]