"IRC stands for 'Internet Relay Chat'.
It was originally written by Jarkko Oikarinen in 1988.
Since starting in Finland, it has been
used in over 60 (probably more by now) countries around
the world. It was designed as a replacement for the "talk"
program but has become much, much more than that.
IRC is a multi-user chat system, where
people meet on Channels (rooms, virtual places, usually
with a certain topic of conversation) to talk in groups,
or privately. There is no restriction to the number of
people that can participate in a given discussion, or
the number of channels that can be formed on IRC."