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For the younguns...this is how it started

by KingOfContentMarketing
15 replies
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Before your WWWs and your Googuls we had....Compuserve.

Welcome to Someday Retronaut | Retronaut - See the past like you wouldn't believe.

$5 per hour!

I lived across the street from them in Columbus. No discount for proximity, though.
  • Profile picture of the author jimbo13
    We had Ceefax (See Facts) in the UK which did everything the Internet sort of did back then.

    It was a text type service developed by The BBC

    It was from 1974 and only ceased service last October because of a digital switchover.

    Dan
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  • Profile picture of the author KimW
    Ah,Compuserve.....I remember it well....
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Kim,
      Ah,Compuserve.....I remember it well....
      Well, yeah, but you're, like, really OLD.

      More for the young 'uns... Compuserve, Prodigy, Genie, and AOL were the big online services. At the same time, dial-up BBSs were the geek hobbyist's claim to fame.

      OS wars were all the rage. Amiga users had the upper hand, having all the benefits of the PC and the Apple offerings, and co-processors to boot.

      It's funny to think about how we'd fight over who had the better machine when any decent smartphone has many times the processing power any of our toys had back then.


      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author bizgrower
    I want the Chuck Norris action jeans.
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    $5? I could SWEAR it was more! and there was the source, and a western union network. There was also a backend network to several BBS's. It looks like that MIGHT have been the internet, but the internet, around for a LONG time, was opened up much later.

    HECK! I bought MINIX. If you worked for a hospital, the military, or were in college, you could send EMAIL!!!!!!! LATER, I found CD distributors sold a product called LINUX. GUESS WHERE THEY GOT IT? The INTERNET! LATER, when the internet opened up, I wss able to get updates from the SOURCE in FINLAND!

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      I just went to my AOL account and saw this.


      My Account Overview

      Status: Active
      Member Since: 6/21/97

      Damn it's been a long time.

      I keep AOL because it makes reading all my emails very easy without having to
      wrestle with Outlook. Having about 40 different email accounts, I can have them
      all redirect to my main AOL account and don't have to worry about viruses or
      any of that junk that I battled with when I used Outlook.

      Also, one of my PayPal accounts is tied into my AOL Screen Name from way
      back in the stone ages when I didn't have anything else and was freelancing.

      So losing that would force me to change a ton of DLGuard products to
      another PayPal name.

      So I'm kind of stuck with AOL if I don't want to be bothered with "fixing" a lot
      of stuff, which is kind of sad because I really don't use AOL for anything
      anymore, not even the stupid chat rooms. Oh boy, were those crazy days.

      What were we talking about?

      Oh yeah, right. For the younguns.

      I guess that leaves me out.

      Damn, now I'm feeling nostalgic. It might be time to dig out my Atari 2600
      and Trash 80 from the basement.

      God my wife is gonna kill me.
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      • Profile picture of the author seasoned
        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        I keep AOL because it makes reading all my emails very easy without having to
        wrestle with Outlook.
        REALLY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

        My step mother once got a message on AOL she COULD NOT READ! I had to help out! I went to AOL HELP, and it said to download a program that had to process the message in AOL. I used that and got the message. It might have taken me an HOUR!

        MY POINT? In OUTLOOK, or any STANDARD EMAIL routine, that would have taken *******SECONDS********! People would never even know what was done, because it is TRANSPARENT!

        Steve
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        • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
          Originally Posted by seasoned View Post

          REALLY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

          My step mother once got a message on AOL she COULD NOT READ! I had to help out! I went to AOL HELP, and it said to download a program that had to process the message in AOL. I used that and got the message. It might have taken me an HOUR!

          MY POINT? In OUTLOOK, or any STANDARD EMAIL routine, that would have taken *******SECONDS********! People would never even know what was done, because it is TRANSPARENT!

          Steve
          Fortunately, I've never had a problem with AOL. Of course using it for 17
          years you kind of get all the kinks worked out of it. Honestly, I'd be lost
          without it.
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          • Profile picture of the author seasoned
            Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

            Fortunately, I've never had a problem with AOL. Of course using it for 17
            years you kind of get all the kinks worked out of it. Honestly, I'd be lost
            without it.
            She had used it for many years ALSO. I guess AOL just doesn't support standard email too well, or MIME. Maybe some AOL people simply follow the instructions, as I did, and believe that is how it is SUPPOSED to work. It ISN'T!

            Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author KimW
    Steve,
    I think the magic number was $6 an hour,not $5.
    And I "think" Compuserve and Prodigy charged the same price,but I can't swear to it.

    I don't remember what version of AOL when I joined,but I do remember I was running Windows For Workgroups 3.11

    I also remember the most time I spent on A BBS was with The Coleco Adam. ( yes I am a true Geek and I did own one).
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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by KimW View Post

      Steve,
      I think the magic number was $6 an hour,not $5.
      And I "think" Compuserve and Prodigy charged the same price,but I can't swear to it.

      I don't remember what version of AOL when I joined,but I do remember I was running Windows For Workgroups 3.11

      I also remember the most time I spent on A BBS was with The Coleco Adam. ( yes I am a true Geek and I did own one).
      Well, they DID charge more earlier. AOL was a johnny come lately!

      3.11? GEE, most only had 3.10. 3.11 was if you had a network. The first windows version to support it.

      The first version I used was 3.0, as I recall. I switched to 3.1 because it handled some fonts I had better. I stuck with that until win95, as I recall, which I got ONLY because customers were using it. 8-( I ended up getting STUCK with it, and am now on WIN 7. 8-(

      Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author KingOfContentMarketing
    AOL was the first one that did a good job of making things user-friendly for newbies. I knew people that never ventured outside of AOL, even when the Internet was growing like a weed. Seemed like everyone had an AOL email address.

    And let's not forget they relentlessly sent AOL "Trial" CDs to millions of people for years. They were everywhere. I think I received 15 of them even after I signed up.
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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by joe golfer View Post

      AOL was the first one that did a good job of making things user-friendly for newbies. I knew people that never ventured outside of AOL, even when the Internet was growing like a weed. Seemed like everyone had an AOL email address.

      And let's not forget they relentlessly sent AOL "Trial" CDs to millions of people for years. They were everywhere. I think I received 15 of them even after I signed up.
      ACTUALLY, as I recall, AOL was NO EARLIER THAN #2!!!!!!!!!! AOL 1991 as America ONLINE!

      PRODIGY 1984! Beat it by SEVEN YEARS!!!!!!!

      The source 1979.
      Wikipedia says compuserve took off in the 1980s. It CLAIMS it started in 1969, but there is SOME sort of confusion there.

      So there you have it....Source(about 1979)...Compuserve(ABOUT 1981 or so),,,Prodigy(First real popular GUI interface. about 1984)...AOL(SECOND popular GUI interface. About 1991)....HTTP(1993-1994). HTTP is what we have TODAY. Wikipedia implies it came out 1999, but I got on it late and was STILL there before 1999! HECK, I USED mosaic, and it was in the news! Mosaic's reign was, according to wikipedia, 1993-1997!

      BTW I used the source, compuserve, prodigy, AOL, earthlink, and several others. I even used western unions offering, since I had a customer that used it AND, for a time, most businesses seemed to have telex numbers.

      And YEAH, AOL sent out ALL those AOL disks, they were at kinkos, in byte, etc.... WHY? They had to compete with prodigy, and they saw the wrtting on the wall, etc... when earthlink popped up. BTW wikipedia says earthlink popped up 1994.

      AOL was obviously DESPERATE! Kinkos was getting to be THE place for term papers, computer time, high quality printing, and copying. Their market was ALL colleges and businesses! HECK, FEDEX bought them out, because they ALSO helped ship, and augmented FEDEX perfectly. BYTE was THE magazine for the average "computer hobbyist". Their market was like 60% of computer users. Just those TWO places were formidable, but THAT wasn't enough for AOL! BYTE was even poking fun at what to use spare AOL disks for, since the average person probably got over a half dozen without trying.

      Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author thunderbird
    Here's who started it:
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    Project HERE.

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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by thunderbird View Post

      Here's who started it:
      YEAH! He used a very VAGUE way of saying it, so as to get some to think that the internet is new, and HE created it. The fact is that the internet was created in like the 60s or early 70s. It was kept kind of out of reach of most of the public until around the 1990s. SUPPOSEDLY congress had some kind of vote to make it, or allow it to go, public to the masses. Gore supposedly had a hand in THAT. But all the technology was there and the WWW was soon built on top of it.

      From wikipedia:

      The origins of the Internet reach back to research commissioned by the United States government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks. While this work together with work in the United Kingdom and France lead to important precursor networks, they were not the Internet. There is no consensus on the exact date when the modern Internet came into being, but sometime in the early to mid-1980s is considered reasonable.
      The funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial backbones, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks. Though the Internet has been widely used by academia since the 1980s, the commercialization of what was by the 1990s an international network resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life.
      All gore started his congressional &* in 1977, and had a very minor voice(about 0.1%) until about 1985(about 1%+).

      Steve
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