On September 24, 1979, CompuServe launched MicroNET, opening its computer network to ordinary consumers for the first time. CompuServe had existed since 1969 as a timesharing service, renting out idle mainframe capacity to businesses during off-hours. MicroNET flipped that model: for a subscription fee, anyone with a home computer and a modem could dial in and get access to email, online chat, and a growing stack of digital services, at a time when almost nobody outside a university or a corporation had ever sent an electronic message.
The service didn’t take off immediately. It was reportedly viewed as a distraction inside a company built around business clients, and RadioShack, one of the few retailers selling home computers at the time, helped push it into the mainstream by bundling MicroNET access with its TRS-80 machines and modems. By July 1980 it had been rebranded as CompuServe Information Service (CIS), and within a few years consumer subscriptions were generating half the company’s revenue, making CompuServe the largest consumer online service in the world well before most people had heard the word “internet.”
CompuServe’s dominance didn’t last forever. It connected its email system to the wider internet in 1989, but through the 1990s it lost ground to America Online and a wave of independent ISPs riding the web’s popularity. Still, MicroNET’s 1979 debut marks one of the real starting points for the idea of a mass-market online service, years before browsers, and it’s worth remembering as the ancestor of the always-connected internet habits we now take for granted.
Source: WOSU Public Media, This Day in Tech History
Daily Tech History is a running series looking back at notable moments in technology on this date.
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