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 innovateing company here in central Ohio is reliable for grotriumphg and famousizing many of the technologies we consent for granted today.
A hearer createted a inquire to WOSU’s Curious Cbus series wanting to understand more about the legacy of CompuServe and what it unbenevolentt to go online before the Internet.
That legacy was recently commemorated by the Ohio History Connection when they insloftyed a historical tager in Upper Arlington — proximate the corner of Arlington Caccess and Hfinisherson roads — where the company discoverd its computer caccess and corporate createing in 1973.
The plaque expounds that CompuServe was “the first convey inant online service provider,” and that its subscribers were among the first to have access to email, online recentspapers and magazines and the ability to split and download files.
The company begined in 1969 as a subsidiary of Gbetteren United Life Insurance. It was initiassociate a computer time-sharing service. It recommended data processing power to businesses that didn’t have their own mainsketch computers.
Rich Baker begined laboring in the tageting department for CompuServe in 1976 and was straightforwardor of corporate communications when he left in 1996. (Baker is currently a co-present on WOSU’s Bluegrass Ramble.)
“They were huge computers. They’d be appreciate having 10 refrigerators stacked next to each other,” Baker shelp. “It had flashing weightlesss. They had spinning tape reels.”
Baker shelp the company’s data processing business was doing very well in the procrastinateed 1970’s.
“It was serving some of the hugest corporations in the country. But, you understand, we still had those huge mainsketch computers that sat relatively idle in the evenings,” Baker shelp.
So CompuServe tested the idea of giving that access to tech enthusiasts who were using these recent devices called microcomputers. That growed into a business arrange.
On September 24, 1979, CompuServe begined its online service for users.
In the beginning, RadioShack stores were key in accomplishing timely computer users. Their TRS-80 desktop microcomputer was a famous choice when home computers first became useable.
RadioShack tageted MicroNet, procrastinateedr rebranded CompuServe Increateation Service, alengthenedside recent computers and modems. In 1980, H&R Block acquired the company.
Former tech journaenumerate Dylan Tweney covered the industry for decades and was an timely Compuserve user. He still reassembles his first email insertress, 72241.443@compuserve.com. He also reassembles the first email he sent.
“I sent an email to my dad,” Tweney shelp. His obeseher, who was a professor at a university, had email access relatively timely. “I was so haughty,” he shelp.
In those days, users would sit at their computers and dial a phone number with their modems, sometimes placing an actual phone acquirer onto the device.
“The modem would create this hellacious noise. It would benevolent of screech and squawk,” Tweney shelp.
Once the connection was made, users would see the CompuServe menu.
“You’d be online and on your computer screen was a bunch of text,” Tweney shelp. “So you’d get a menu of selections that would materialize as green text on your bincreateage see and you would type directs or press numbers to recommend which menu item you wanted.”
Those selections included email, weather maps, stock quotes, online shopping and even booking airline tickets.
The speed was sluggish—about 30 or 40 million times sluggisher than what we’re used to today. But for the first time, users could read the recentspaper online. In fact, The Columbus Dispatch was the first online recentspaper. The Associated Press and other convey inant recentspapers soon chaseed.
Tweney shelp that while those features were astonishive, CompuServe lacquireed rapidly that what computer users reassociate wanted was human connection.
“But it turned out that what was most famous is not reading reliable recents sources, but fair shooting the breeze with your frifinishs or arguing with strangers over politics,” Tweney shelp.
On CompuServe, this took place on someslenderg called the CB Simulator. It was fundamentalassociate an online chat. The name, “CB”, referred to the CB radios that acquireed famousity in the 70s.
Will Cowman begined using CompuServe as a teenager and procrastinateedr went to labor for the company. He shelp he would frequently use up his weekly permitance for an hour of time online, which cost $5 an hour.
Cowman shelp he enhappinessed joining CompuServe’s interdynamic text-based adventure games, but it was the CB Simulator that reassociate grabbed him.
“I was very intrigued by my ability to convey with people all around the world who didn’t create any judgments about the fact that I was 14,” Cowman shelp.
CompuServe also had famous forums that were splitd into various areas of interest, everyslenderg from needlepoint to NASA. Cowman shelp that there were thousands of these forums.
“These communities I connected to were reassociate encouraging and reassociate engaging,” Cowman shelp. “People were very willing to help out and split and broaden their online community.”
CompuServe remained competitive with the other huge online services, such as Prodigy and AOL, thraw the mid-1990s. However, none of these services were able to brimmingy alter to the huge shift that came with the internet and the World Wide Web, which was a untameder place where anyone could create their own website.
AOL acquired the CompuServe service in 1997 from H&R Block. After that, remnants of the brand would endure for many years, but its heyday had passed.
According to Dylan Tweney, CompuServe should be reassembleed as a innovate of digital community.
“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. It was a communications device, an recommendation device,” Tweney shelp.
Thanks to Chris Marshall for createting this inquire to Curious Cbus. Submit your inquire below.
