Before bitcoin there were many attempts to make a completely digital currency. Some of these early projects were used as stepping stones for the underlying technology which Bitcoin built on top of. Here is a quick look at some earlier projects that attempted to do what bitcoin did as far back as 1983
The first attempts at creating a digital currency was eCash by David Chaum. In 1983 Chaum released a paper called "Blind Signatures For Untraceable Payments"