Electric Shed

It is a little known fact that the internet was invented in 1973 for the sole reason that Mrs Briggs was sick of walking to the shed at the bottom of her garden to tell her husband that his tea was ready.
Of course, it is written in the Magna Carta, that it is every Englishman's birthright to have shed, and Norman Briggs was particularly fond of his. When not arranging screws in jam jars, or taking toasters apart, he would spend most of his time there watching old black and white movies.
His wife did not mind that he spent so much time in the shed, but resented having to take her curlers out before she walked down the garden in case Mrs Fredrice next door saw her.
She confronted her husband about this one night, and the next day Norman set about creating a system of communication that would become known as the world wide web. Within 2 days he had achieved his task, by nailing together an electric typewriter, a fax machine and a TV screen. Fortunately, all his nails and screws were in the right jars, otherwise it would have taken him much longer.

From her work station next to the washing machine in the house, Mrs Briggs could now pass information to her husband in the shed, without having to remove her curlers. The very first e-mail sent that would change the world was:
Your dinner is ready, and if you are not here in 5 minutes, I am going to give it to the dog.
When the message flashed up on Norman's TV screen halfway through his viewing of The 39 steps, he immediately returned to the house and went to the dinner table.
Pavlov would have been proud.

News of the Brigg's new communication system soon spread to other people. Carol Drinkwater, the heavily made up woman who lived 3 doors away, suggested that if she had a machine similar to that of Mrs Briggs, the two women could gossip about Mrs Fredrice without being overheard. As a result, a new cable was passed to Norman's shed. Norman could now receive a message from one of the women, and pass it on to the other. Thus it was that messaging via the internet was established. For the record the first message sent via the web was:
Did you see the dress that she was wearing yesterday. It made her look like an elephant.
As time went on, more and more people became connected to Norman's shed, or the internet as it had become called. After a while, there were so many cables running into the shed, that it became difficult to squeeze through the door. Norman also found that he was so busy receiving and sending messages that he hardly had time left to organise his jars of screws, and bits of broken toaster.
"Honestly" He said to Mr Ebay, who ran the second hand shop near the gasworks. "It's getting too much. Sometimes when I come back from the toilet, there can be more than 20 messages there waiting for me to pass on"
Still it was Norman's proud boast, that he had only ever lost one message. He had copied it down on the back of his wife's shopping list, and when she went to the shops with it and had finished her shopping, she had given the list to some-one who had accidentally left their own list at home.

Norman decided that he had to try and sell the internet. So he placed a card in the local newsagent's window. It read:
FOR SALE. WORLD-WIDE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM. ONE CAREFUL OWNER. MAINTAINED REGARDLESS OF COST. SERIOUS OFFERS INVITED.
He wasn't sure what sort of response he would get, so he paid an extra 50 pence to run the advert for 2 weeks.
After 10 days the only response he had, was from evil Mr Chamberlain, who owned the local meat canning factory, and who had invented Spam. Norman did not really want to sell to him, but the task of running the internet was becoming a strain, and he also wanted to take his wife away for a short holiday. Fortunately, he had a stroke of luck. Mr Stratton from the cricket club had heard about Norman's problem, and offered to look after the internet while Norman took his wife to Birmingham for the week-end.
When they returned, Mr Stratton offered to stay on and help out. With 2 people receiving and passing on e-mails, the system became twice as quick. Thus was born High Speed Internet.

They are still there to this day. Running the internet from the shed at the bottom of the garden. So each time you send an e-mail. Don't forget that its powered by Briggs and Stratton.