Re: Even in the 1980's
Yes. UUCP, UUencode, xmodem and kermit all came about over a couple of years, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Not surprisingly, this was about the time that AT&T was forced to allow direct-connect modems on their lines, leading to modems becoming much smaller and cheaper than the old acoustically coupled versions.
This lead directly to Community Memory[0], Fidonet, BBSes and the like ... followed almost immediately by Delphi, TheWELL, BIX, and Compuserve (and Q-Link (AOL), yadda yadda yadda) ... and a little known thing known as dial-up Internet access.
The rest, as they say ...
[0] Edit: Community Memory was earlier. I'm concatinating time again.