A brief history of indoor rowing communication.1864 – Sir Stamford Raffles sends his manservant out to challenge Baron Tufton of Bufton to a 2,000 metre rowing race using Charles Babbage's newly invented Difference Engine.1940 – Archaeologists discover a series of cave paintings in Lascaux, France. Amongst the various bison and oxen can clearly be seen some primitive figures on rowing machines, including one figure blowing up with 300 metres to go. Thought to be earliest ever description of an indoor rowing race. 1999 – Launch of Concept 2 E-Newsletter. Several thousand words of indoor rowing goodness dropped into your inbox every Friday fortnight. Nation yawns and wonders whether to watch the repeat of Friends or Have I Got News For You.January 26th, 2001 – Launch of the Indoor Rowing Message Board. Nation turns cartwheels, lets off fireworks and a public holiday is declared. Yup. Today saw the launch of the latest step in our ongoing plan to connect every indoor rower in the world up via the web; soon we'll be able to organise them into a revolutionary cadre and march on Washington. At the moment, however, you'll have to be content with this. All you've got to do is drop on http://www.therowingcompany.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi. Although anybody can read messages there, you've got to be registered to actually post. To do that, all you've gotta do is click on register, fill in a few quick details and then boom, you can start tapping out your messages to the rest of the indoor rowing world. At the moment of course, the message board has only just been launched so it looks a bit lonely out there. If you get five minutes free, make sure you nip over there and scribble your name and comments all over it.http://www.therowingcompany.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi - be there or be really, really, square.