Dunno if anyone here actually used Compuserve abroad.
http://www.fanboy.com/2009/07/compuserve.htmlFounded in 1969 CompuServe was an early powerhouse of connecting people online before the era of the web. And at the end of June AOL killed off CompuServe Classic which was the last surviving bit of that service, the only thing now left is a tombstone “web portal” and a low rent ISP service. It’s a sad ending, but once upon a time in the 80s and early 90s CompuServe was THE online service.
The company started life a subsidiary division of a life insurance company that sold time sharing on mainframe computers (because the cost was so high for the hardware companies would rent time when the machine weren’t in use). By 1975 they were spun off to being a public listed company only to be acquired by H&R Block in 1980. But the real breakthrough occurred in the 80s when they started offering their services to home based PC users. This was the dawn of consumers getting online, granted they were geeky consumers — but a start is a start!
