45 Years Ago CompuServe Connected the World Before the World Wide Web (wosu.org)
- Reference: 0175127349
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/25/0442254/45-years-ago-compuserve-connected-the-world-before-the-world-wide-web
- Source link: https://www.wosu.org/2024-09-24/45-years-ago-compuserve-connected-the-world-before-the-world-wide-web
> Silicon Valley has the reputation of being the birthplace of our hyper-connected Internet age, the hub of companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook. However, a pioneering company here in central Ohio is responsible for developing and popularizing many of the technologies we take for granted today. A listener submitted a question to WOSU's Curious Cbus series wanting to know more about the legacy of [2]CompuServe and what it meant to go online before the Internet. That legacy was recently commemorated by the Ohio History Connection when they installed a historical marker in Upper Arlington -- near the corner of Arlington Center and Henderson roads -- where the company located its computer center and corporate building in 1973. The plaque explains that CompuServe was " [3]the first major online information service provider ," and that its subscribers were among the first to have access to email, online newspapers and magazines and the ability to share and download files.
CompuServe, founded in 1969 in Ohio as a subsidiary of Golden United Life Insurance, began as a computer time-sharing service for businesses. In 1979, it launched an online service for consumers, partnering with RadioShack since they "were key in reaching early computer users."
Acquired by H&R Block in 1980, CompuServe became a leader in digital innovations like email, online newspapers, and chat forums, with The Columbus Dispatch becoming the first online newspaper. "... it turned out that what was most popular is not reading reliable news sources, but just shooting the breeze with your friends or arguing with strangers over politics," said former tech journalist and early Compuserve user Dylan Tweney.
Despite competing with Prodigy and AOL through the 1990s, CompuServe struggled with the rise of the internet. AOL acquired the company in 1997, but CompuServe remains a digital pioneer for fostering online communities. "For a lot of people, CompuServe was a connection to the world and their first introduction to the idea that their computer could be more than a computer," said Tweney. "It was a communications device, an information device."
[1] https://slashdot.org/~Tony+Isaac
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe
[3] https://www.wosu.org/2024-09-24/45-years-ago-compuserve-connected-the-world-before-the-world-wide-web
Umm, actually the internet connected the world... (Score:5, Informative)
... before the WWW. This is a tech site, stop conflating the web and the internet. Before browsers we had (as well as IP compuserve) MUDs, IRCs, miscellanious talk servers (eg NUTS systems, Cheeseplants House), gopher, archie, FTP etc.
I'd expect Average Joe to not understand that there was life on the internet before the web, but I'd expect better on /.
Re: Umm, actually the internet connected the world (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, don't get your panties in a bunch. Sure, the things you mentioned existed, but they were only available to you if you were on a university campus or worked in a limited number of positions in the military or at a very small number of companies. Compuserve provided their version of online access for the general public for nearly a decade and a half before even dialup access to the internet of any sort became available to them. Also, Slashdot is not, and has never been a "tech site." It's a "news for nerds" site which includes a lot of tech news, but has never been tech-exclusive. So enough already with that tired canard whenever you come across an article that offends your delicate sensibilities.
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CompuServe was available in 1980. I doubt you had dial-up internet in the UK then.
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No, but no one outside the US had compuserve either then so whats your point? Hardly "connected the world", but then americans tend to think their country IS the world with the rest of us just some funny speaking vassal states.
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CompuServe was available internationally by the mid 80s.
> americans tend to think their country IS the world with the rest of us just some funny speaking vassal states.
You're from the UK. You have absolutely 0 room to talk considering most of the world's ongoing conflicts came about due to your country's meddling (Palestine, Hong Kong, India/Pakistan).
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"You have absolutely 0 room to talk considering most of the world's ongoing conflicts came about due to your country's meddling"
If you're going to go on some self righteous rant I'd suggest you check out the genocide of the native americans the US carried out long after you have your independence not to mention continuing with slavery and apartheid long after most civilised coutries had banned it (1807 for us). Oh , and lets not forget you stole about a 1/3rd of your nation from the mexicans.
And then there'
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"We were at war with the natives , they lost"
You weren't at war, it was genocide.
"we could say about the UK from the 50s on"
And the US from 2030 on. China is eating your industry for lunch. Enjoy.
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> CompuServe was available in 1980. I doubt you had dial-up internet in the UK then.
The UK didn't even have dentistry in those days.
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[1]The world is bigger than you think [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
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> ...but I'd expect better on /.
This isn't a Slashdot-written story, but just a link to a story written by someone else. While your basic premise is true, your vitriol is misplaced.
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So you're telling me the submission title wasn't written by a slashdot user then?
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> So you're telling me the submission title wasn't written by a slashdot user then?
Yes, that is what I'm telling you. You will see that it's true if you click on the link and read the story's headline. Unless, of course, Michael De Bonis at WOSU 89.7 NPR News is also a Slashdot user.
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Which part of "submission title" confused you sonny?
ie:
"45 Years Ago CompuServe Connected the World Before the World Wide Web "
And look, just below!
" Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday September 25, 2024 @06:00AM from the digital-pioneers dept"
It even tells you the slashdot submitters name. Isn't that crazy!
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[checks parent poster's UID] You clearly aren't new here, are you just forgetful? BeauHD isn't a submitter but an, "editor," (yes, we use that term quite loosely here) and TFS flat out states, "Tony Isaac shares a report from WOSU Public Media:" which would imply to anyone who has a reasonable grasp of the English language (not even the King's English, even just bastardized American English) that Tony Isaac submitted the story link and the, "editor," took a relevant segment of it for TFS along with the hea
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The title was written by someone at slashdot, NOT the fucking author of the linked piece.
Get a friend for that lonely braincell of yours.
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> It even tells you the slashdot submitters name. Isn't that crazy!
I understand that it's not easy to admit you made a mistake. We all do it to some extent. But there has to come a time when you acknowledge the mistake and move on.
The title came directly from the linked article. Slashdot very commonly uses titles from the original articles, as is the case here. Read the linked article to confirm. It's at the very top.
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I used Prodigy, you insensitive clod!
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Which reminds me that TCP/IP came out in 1973 so it is now 51 years old. It only had about 40 computers connected at the time.
The first non-American computer to connect was Norwegian and did so in 1973. The connection was via satellite. The UK joined a month later.
I saw a demo of "ping" in 1980 to an American server from Europe, and everyone said this was the future. :)
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> Which reminds me that TCP/IP came out in 1973 so it is now 51 years old. It only had about 40 computers connected at the time.
> The first non-American computer to connect was Norwegian and did so in 1973. The connection was via satellite. The UK joined a month later.
> I saw a demo of "ping" in 1980 to an American server from Europe, and everyone said this was the future. :)
TCP/IP may have been experimentally used in the 1970s, however it was only in 1983 that it was officially used.
ARPANET used NCP (network con
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Sure. They man running "ping" took about 20 minutes for his demo. :)
The fourth version called IPv4 was published in 1981 and in use a few years later.
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> I'd expect Average Joe to not understand that there was life on the internet before the web, but I'd expect better on /.
Leave it to a noisy slashdot nerd to brilliantly demonstrate they don't understand the nuance of ubiquity.
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"the nuance of ubiquity."
LOL! Looks like ChatGPT is logging on again :)
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Uh huh. Nerds often disregard popularity of tech to the point of not understanding why its ubiquity matters. Thanks for supporting my point.
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And before that we had a whole world of BBS that you dialed into. Essentially a phone number instead of an IP address. We had globe-spanning mesaging networks like FIDOnet. There's a quite a bit of history before the Internet.
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The only thing they spanned was from their computers to the modems. The phone system did the rest and that was built LONG before.
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> If by "world" you mean "the USA" then you might have a case
Wait. Are you suggesting there's somewhere out there that ISN'T the USA?
Unpossible!
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There were versions of Compuserve in other countries but they weren't exactly the only offerings available. Lots of dial up services were springing up about the same time, and most were glorified BBS services. Compuserve did become briefly popular in the UK, as did AOL but WAY too late to be that significant because dialup ISPs like Demon turned up and ate their lunch.
not so early (Score:2)
> was an early Compuserve user. He still remembers his first email address, 72241.443@compuserve.com.
Then he wasn't all that early a user, because that form of email address didn't come into use until Compuserve connected to the Internet in the early 1990s alongside everybody else.
Compuserve became available to home computer users in 1979. That was, in fact, very early. AOL's first service, for example, didn't come about until 1985.
Many other providers (Score:4, Informative)
There were other huge online provides, although not quite so early (very, very few people had home computers as early as 1979) around that time, each its own walled garden that may or may not eventually become a more generalized ISP. Examples:
[1]GEnie [wikipedia.org] which was run by General Electric of all companies. It never was able to morph into an actual ISP.
[2]Prodigy [wikipedia.org] which did eventually become an ISP.
Plus there were many regional online services (IE BBS), like PC Ohio which grew to be a pretty large service in the Cleveland area.
Then THOUSANDS of smaller entities, often with a single phone line. At one point I and two other friends started our own online service that had 10 phone lines ( [3]West Branch Connection [evolution-host.com]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEnie
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)
[3] https://mirror2.evolution-host.com/textfiles/bbs/ADS/wbc
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Ah, GEnie, where K.BULGRIEN was on-line and preferred it cost-wise. When it went under, he made the move to CompuServe as 72707,435. Memories.
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> There were other huge online provides, although not quite so early (very, very few people had home computers as early as 1979) around that time, each its own walled garden that may or may not eventually become a more generalized ISP. Examples:
> [1]GEnie [wikipedia.org] which was run by General Electric of all companies. It never was able to morph into an actual ISP. [2]Prodigy [wikipedia.org] which did eventually become an ISP. Plus there were many regional online services (IE BBS), like PC Ohio which grew to be a pretty large service in the Cleveland area. Then THOUSANDS of smaller entities, often with a single phone line. At one point I and two other friends started our own online service that had 10 phone lines ( [3]West Branch Connection [evolution-host.com]).
Apple also had AppleLink, original hosted by GE, and later by Quantum Computing and some guy named Stave Case; eWorld was the final version of Apple's attempt at an online service.
As for CompuServe, one of my fraternity brothers was an employee. Interesting early pioneering service before eternal September.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEnie
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)
[3] https://mirror2.evolution-host.com/textfiles/bbs/ADS/wbc
Prodigy (Score:1)
Coincidentally, I got an email from a guy at a small California company...with a Prodigy email address!
Yes...it's a *very* small company (they repair and sell old surveying equipment)
Since nobody has posted it yet (Score:2)
"Welcome to WinCIM"
...and very little happened (Score:2)
Yes, CompuServe was a pioneer, but their charges were prohibitive, even to tech obsessed nerds. As I recall it was what $20 AN HOUR? At the time, bbs's were generally free.
The internet didn't take off really until services came out much later that offered connections per month fees, so you weren't penalized for heavy use.
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From what I remember it was $6/hour for 300 baud and $12/hour for 1200 baud. This post about their old game Island of Kesmai seems to confirm. Still very expensive for the time.
[1]https://www.apl2bits.net/2019/... [apl2bits.net]
[1] https://www.apl2bits.net/2019/12/09/compuserve-price/
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I suppose Compuserve's ambitions at the outset were different than the course things took, since it started out as a mainframe timesharing service, and that was reflected in their pricing. Consider the Bloomberg Terminal was launched in 1982 and now (still, 40+ years later) costs about $30K per year per seat. There must have been a lot of people with a dream of success very much along those lines.
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In addition to the higher cost, the UI required much more bandwidth than some other services (GEnie comes to mind). I recall preferring GEnie partly because they "wasted" less of my time with UI overburden.
Compuserve/aks micronet (Score:1)
I sometimes forget my wife's birthday, but I still remember by CompuServe ID number. There forums and "CB" where you could chat around the US. Ended up working as a contractor for CIS right before AOL bought them out. They did pretty good using those old 36 bit DEC system 20s.
yawn (Score:2)
1966: Development of ARPANET began 1968: ARPA contracted BBN Technologies to build the first routers 1969: ARPANET became operational 1971: ARPANET was announced to be fully operational 1973: ARPANET expanded to include over 30 institutions, and satellite linkages were established with the UK and Norway 1983: The TCP/IP network protocol was used for ARPANET, making it part of the internet 1989: ARPANET was decommissioned 1990: ARPANET was replaced by the NSFNet
Additional services (Score:2)
CIS also offered services beyond news sources and 'community'. For example, for an additional monthly fee, they would provide you with detailed demographic data based on zip code. Type in the zip and it broke down all kinds of info about the people who lived within that zip.
And lets not forget those sexy CIS email addresses! 72214,7226@compuserve.com Yowzah!
Still remember my assigned password (Score:2)
They assigned passwords using an format and my account was employer-provided. The same employer also expected us to buy the tech books we wanted on the company credit card and paid for our tech magazine subscriptions.
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Stupid angle brackets erased ... ADVERB SPECIALCHAR VERB format.
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> Stupid angle brackets erased ... ADVERB SPECIALCHAR VERB format.
I worked for CompuServe, many moons ago. As you said, there was a set format for passwords, and they were automatically generated. Was a bit awkward when I was on the phone to a customer doing a password reset, and the generator set it to Stupid_Dunce...
Ah, the old days of DIAL-UP! (Score:2)
I remember some of that. First at 300 baud acoustic-coupled, then 1200, then 2400. Finally was given a SYSOP account. Then gave it up when AOL took over.
It hurt the wallet when that happened, but I didn't care that much. I'd lived through the era when forums were new, and how quickly things rolled over, even when we got all the way to 1024 messages in the database... almost 3 days!
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actually, 75 baud and 150 baud dialup came first...
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Yes, they came earlier, but... That wasn't something I used on line. Over the air, yes, but not to a commercial service.
Sears used a slower service for their TELEX machine when I worked there. Wait, does that make ME old, too?
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possibly the first acoustic coupler - from 1937... [1]https://archive.org/details/Sp... [archive.org]
[1] https://archive.org/details/SpotNews1937
still recall (Score:2)
when compuserve was broken up and aol got part, psinet got part, and what became mci worldcom got the rest
Some key moments in history (Score:2)
It's important to put things in context.
1969 Compuserve starts as a time-sharing service
1976 Queen Elizabeth gets email
1978 Europe and the US had International Packet Switch Stream
1979 Compuserve added email
1979 Britain had email via Prestel
1979 USENET appears
1980 Britain had Packet Switch Stream
1982 Compuserve added wide area networks
1983 FIDO BBS appears
1986 USENET switches to NNTP
1986 Compuserve went International
1989 HTTP prototyped
1990 WAIS appears
1991 Gopher appears
1991 HTTP appears
Ah, the simpler days (Score:1)
I remember being on Compuserve in the mid 90's. It was definitely an early lesson on internet-ish patterns: discussion groups, live chat groups, shared files and pictures...and TROLZ
It had what one might call a "GUI browser" that hinted at what could have been if Compuserve or competitors open-sourced such. Their primitive GUI browser had statefulness, unlike HTML (IIRC). If they made a nice standard around that which intended to stay GUI friendly, we wouldn't have the webShit we do now where we have to fak
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The brought us GIF images
10 FREE hours a month (Score:1)
Early on in my PC experience my parents let me try Prodigy and CompuServe. I didn't find them to be very user friendly and some of the features were extra on top of the monthly fee. I was much more involved with the local BBSes we had in the area. I really miss the intimacy of the BBS community. Chatting with friends, meeting up locally. Playing Legends of the Red Dragon. AOL was fun. We used to use the free trials and a credit card generator (AOHell I think) to make a accounts. From there, the game was t
CIS to WWW gateway (Score:3)
I recall when Compuserve added a backdoor gateway to the Web. I also recall that there wasn't much you could do there. It was sort of like when someone who has only used a GUI finds themselves at a command prompt. It got you access, but no information on what to do next.
Fee-based (Score:2)
Imagine if someone had told CompuServe that tech companies could get billion dollar valuations whilst basically giving their core functionality away for free!
Cost? (Score:2)
I seem to remember it being extraordinarily costly to use back in the day. Can anyone remember how much it cost?
Silicon Valley started the Internet? (Score:2)
> Silicon Valley has the reputation of being the birthplace of our hyper-connected Internet age
Huh? I could have sworn that the ARPANET project designed the Internet Protocols, then CSNet and various other consortia of research organizations brought businesses and campuses into the Internet, then there were FTP, MUDs, RCs, talk servers, Gopher, Archie, Veronica (none of them coming from Silicon Valley), then the World Wide Web from CERN.
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silicon valley was created by arpanet/internet that demanded faster chips and software, and to some extent by los alamos needing tech too
No, nothing like that (Score:1)
Compuserve was a johnny-come-lately. The Arpanet and usenet predated it. What compuserve offered was dialup access, and not very good dialup access either.
TELENET (yes with the extra E) predated Compuserve. It used X.29 on PSTN and it was "good".
I get that it's nostalgic to suck up to CIS. But CIS sucked, so stop.
Back in my day (Score:2)
You kids. Back in my day arpanet and bitnet were good enough for me!
The Source! (Score:2)
I remember in the late 1970s that I was wishing I had the budget to subscribe to The Source. I think it was from Readers Digest? It may not have predated CompuServe but it was the first such service I heard of.
Well it was one of the commercial online services (Score:2)
They were severely hindered by their technology stack some of which ran on PDP-10s... even long after those were considered obsolete.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Another problem was that they essentially only had one data center. Everything you did had to go though that center. For example if you accessed some data in Germany, you would dial into a "local" access point which would then send your request and data over a leased line of Compuserve, which was slow and expensive, particularly in the later ye
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10#Use_by_CompuServe
My first networking (Score:4, Interesting)
CIS was my introduction to networking, and later they were my ISP for a bit. I would likely not be working as a developer today without the access to comp.sci.c and related groups way back then.
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If memory serves correct they were more expensive, per minute, than those 1-900 paychic or phone sex hotlines.
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I do seem to recall it wasn't cheap being online, but I would use a reader, Agent or something, to pull the groups I was interested in as fast as it could and then I could study offline. It was all text so even at 2400 (!) baud it wasn't terrible.
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> ...they were more expensive, per minute....
You are correct. Compuserve rightfully earned the nickname "Compu$pend."
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We debated such things as whether NAPLPS was teh wave of thr future.
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I was a moderator on one of the CIS discussion forums. Then my tribe was driven from its ancestral hunting grounds by the advancing glaciation of that era.