Digital Chicken was among the earliest implementations of an Internet email to fax gateway, active for several months during the mid-1990s. The Toronto-based gateway was created by Dr. Robert Riley through Internet service provider Planet Communications. When email was sent to one of the designated addresses, the text was transmitted as fax to a designated party such as a Canadian government agency. For example, an email sent to ontatg@chicken.planet.org was converted to a fax transmission to the Attorney General of Ontario. The service initially lacked a formal domain name, therefore email routing of the form "utgpu!plan9!chyk!" was required until late 1993.