UUCP was first developed by Bell Laboratories in 1977 for communication
between their Unix-development sites. In mid-1978, this network already
connected over 80-sites. It was running email as an application, as
well as remote printing. However, the system's central use was in
distributing new software and bugfixes.
Today, UUCP is not confined to the environment anymore. There
are both free and commercial ports available for a variety of platforms,
including AmigaOS, DOS, Atari's TOS, etc.
One of the main disadvantages of UUCP networks is their low bandwidth. On one hand, telephone equipment places a tight limit on the maximum transfer rate. On the other hand, UUCP links are rarely permanent connections; instead, hosts rather dial up each other at regular intervals. Hence, most of the time it takes a mail message to travel a UUCP network it sits idly on some host's disk, awaiting the next time a connection is established.
Despite these limitations, there are still many UUCP networks operating all over the world, run mainly by hobbyists, which offer private users network access at reasonable prices. The main reason for the popularity of UUCP is that it is dirt cheap compared to having your computer connected to The Big Internet Cable. To make your computer a UUCP node, all you need is a modem, a working UUCP implementation, and another UUCP node that is willing to feed you mail and news.