WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The Prodigy Story 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to text Tuff, a production from my Heart Radio. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.720 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.760 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:21.480 and I love all things tech. It is time, once again, 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:25.920 my friends, for a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:31.360 published October seventh, two thousand thirteen. I call it the 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:36.240 Prodigy Story. Yeah, we're gonna talk about online service providers, y'all. 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:40.000 So let's sit back and listen to this classic episode. 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:44.120 Ages ago, Chris and I did an episode about online 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:47.120 service providers, but this time we want to specifically look 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:50.120 at Prodigy, partly because it was one of the earliest, 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.199 in fact, depending upon whom you ask, the earliest online 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:57.800 service provider. Now, online service providers are different from Internet 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:04.080 service providers. So I'm gonna blow your minds out there, kids. 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:06.759 So you young uns out there, there was a time 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:09.920 when we did not all have access to the internet. 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.920 It was a terrifying time. Dinosaurs roamed the earth. Occasionally 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:17.240 you would go camping and an enormous guy in a 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:20.200 hockey mask would chase you around. The eighties were tough, y'all. 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:24.200 I actually do remember that time, dimly. I mean I 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:28.320 I was, you know, not necessarily eating all solid food yet, 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:30.480 and I could barely read. But I do, in fact 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.000 for call a time before the internet. I grew up 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:35.800 in that time, and uh, I bear the scars to 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:39.360 this day. Also, I don't read that much currently. But 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:42.080 at any rate, now we're talking about a time where 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:46.959 the computer revolution had really taken hold of. The personal 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:52.360 computers had already become a rising trend. It still was 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:55.480 kind of a rarity to find someone who owned a 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.800 personal computer. It wasn't like there were PCs everywhere, certainly not, 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.960 but they were certainly getting very popular in the mid eighties, 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:06.360 and more and more people were adopting them as the 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:10.560 price was becoming more affordable for the average household rather 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:14.079 than for hobbyists only. Right, right, So those those bleeding 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:17.760 edge technology adopters who somehow have the jobs that allow 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:22.000 them to to indulge their obsession with technology, they had 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:24.200 already gone through the first wave, and now it was 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.000 trickling down to everybody else. All right, we're talking about 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.040 the kind of the two eight six sort of days 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:34.800 is where Prodigy started kicking out. So during those times, 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:38.440 your computers, you know, the early early computers were really, 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:42.840 especially for personal computers, were just self contained devices. Right. 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.919 It was whatever software you had to run on that machine, 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:48.320 and that was pretty much it, which you would put 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:50.720 on the machine with fancy fancy uh five and a 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.280 quarter inch floppy disk. Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't necessarily even 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:55.320 have a hard drive. You might just run it directly 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:57.239 from the discs. So, in other words, once that disc 0:02:57.320 --> 0:02:59.800 was popped out, that was it. You didn't have program, 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:02.960 You just had your basic operating system, although you might 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.799 not even call it that um anyway. Eventually you started 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:08.960 seeing things like modems where you could do things like 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:13.400 connect to a local bulletin board system or bbs. This 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:17.680 was usually something that was hyper local, as in something 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:19.800 that would might be running the same city that you 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.880 live in, because in order to connect to most bbs is, 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.640 you had to dial a specific number, and usually it 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.400 was a it was a local number, yeah, because you 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:33.000 could dial into a BBS that's run in a state, 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:36.240 you know, twenty states away. But long distance charges at 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:38.400 the time were also such that that that it would 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:42.680 have been incredibly cost prohibited. Yeah, anyone, any kid who 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:46.320 experimented with connecting to bbs is might find out rapidly 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:49.600 from his parents or her parents that uh, it was 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:54.320 not the best idea to do that without parental agreement beforehand, 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:56.480 because you could rack up huge bills. I mean, this 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.760 is the era where long distance charges were a real thing. 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:02.800 I know that a lot of people today aren't even 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.840 that's not something they even think about because in most 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.560 cases you don't have a long distance charge anymore. About 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:11.040 once a month, I marvel at the incredible present and 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:13.080 the fact that I can call people all over the 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:15.960 country without having any without worrying about, oh, you know, 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:18.240 we've taught for five minutes, this is gonna cost me 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.159 twenty bucks or whatever. Uh and and they have not 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:24.920 said anything of value, so so at any rate, at 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.880 this time, that was pretty much it. And then there 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:32.320 became this idea of the online service provider away for 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:36.280 companies to create services that would open up brand new 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:41.280 opportunities for consumers. And it was before the Internet had 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.440 rolled out to being something that the general public could access, 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:47.240 so be sure, but but you know, people were looking 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:50.680 for a way to provide service to you know, to 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:54.799 a consumers who wanted to communicate and be two companies 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.720 who wanted to sell more stuff, give give companies an 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:01.039 outlet to sell more stuff. Right, So so this was 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.280 this was the idea, like instead of instead of the Internet, 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:06.960 think of the Internet, it's it's the network of networks, right, 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.960 It's all these different computers. They're connected together, and lots 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.200 of different types of communication goes across the Internet, from 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:17.600 email to file transfers to web traffic. All of that 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:20.919 stuff is going on across the Internet. An online service 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:24.000 provider is more like a very small network. It's not 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:26.479 a network of networks. It is a network in which 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:30.280 you use your computer to dial into a host computer, 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:33.760 and the host computer serves up all the information on 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:36.159 it that it has. So, in other words, instead of 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:38.680 having access to everything in the world, you just have 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.240 access to whatever the host computer has on it. Uh 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.599 and online service providers did this in different ways. So 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:49.360 let's talk specifically about Prodigy. To talk about how it 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.760 came to be, you have to look back at nine four. 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:58.200 That's when a couple of tiny companies IBM was one 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:02.200 of them, uh Sears was another, and CBS was a third, 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:06.640 formed a joint venture they called trend texs Now, this 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.560 trend Text venture was specifically meant to provide something called 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:15.400 video text services, And you might all wonder what the 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:19.320 heck video text is because it's not a term that 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:23.160 you see today really, But this was a technology that 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:26.760 would allow you to connect a terminal. So it could 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:28.320 be a computer, or it could just be a very 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.160 specific terminal made for this purpose, or even a television 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:34.920 with special yea. Yeah, so you have one of these 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.200 things that connect to a phone line and then can 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:44.440 call into a centralized computer to get content that way. Now, 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:48.360 the this is sort of a predecessor to the kind 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:51.880 of modems that we would see uh later on, although 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.080 at this time in the in the early eighties, a 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.279 modem was something that very few people had. It was 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:00.760 certainly something that was used in commerce shell purposes. You 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.280 had companies using it like IBM certainly had plenty of modems, 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.000 but your average computer owner did not have a modem 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.360 at this time. They certainly they also were not part 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.440 of a standard computer like there was a time where 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.119 you would get an internal modem like a dial up modem, 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:19.800 and you would just plug a phone cord into the 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:22.840 back of your computer and from that to the outlet 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.680 in your wall. Before that, you had external modems that 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.240 would connect to a port in your computer and then 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:33.160 you would connect your telephone connection to the external modem. 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:36.520 That's the kind I had, of course, yeah, I I 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:38.160 do also want to mention this is the same year 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:42.200 that um IBM introduced the portable PC weighing a mirror 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:45.920 thirty pounds or what's that like fourteen kilos, Yeah, something 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:49.520 like that. So you're talking about portable depending upon your 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:53.240 upper body string. Uh So, so that was that was 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.920 kind of the life of the times. UM the entire 0:07:57.000 --> 0:07:59.560 video text thing was doing a little bit better in Europe. 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.120 There were a bunch of countries that already had something 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.800 like this, but it was really the first time this 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:08.960 whole trend text thing was really the first time that 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:12.280 had been rolled out for commercial use for customer use 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:14.559 for the United States and the US. Yeah. In fact, 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:20.040 the the concentration in Europe would mean that uh, companies 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.480 like Prodigy in America Online would end up sort of 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:27.760 foregoing any kind of penetration attempts in Europe because it 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:33.280 was already substated. UM and CBS had did a did 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.160 a trial of video texts in a three with a 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:38.480 T and T in about two households somewhere in New 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:40.559 Jersey just to see how much interest there would be, 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.160 and there was a lot. So that is why CBS 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:46.960 was involved. Sears was you know, if you're saying why 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.840 was Sears and Roebuck involved in this internet a venture, 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:53.559 it's because Sears had the complex billing system and the 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.000 customer base like the mail order customer base. Sure. Yeah, 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:01.080 the Sears catalog is like a legacy right to retail. 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:03.200 Not only that, but Sears itself has had a long 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.600 history in being involved in electronics. In fact, for a while, 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.240 if you wanted to buy a computer that you would 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:11.760 either go to a very specialized computer store or you 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.640 would go to a Sears would buy your computer there. Yeah. 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:18.920 And IBM actually in contemporary literature people were talking about 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:23.640 IBM being the most surprising company of the three, which 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:25.559 doesn't make any sense to me. But but but their reasoning 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:28.600 behind calling it that was that they had been really 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:32.920 only hardware with a tiny bit of software involved up 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:35.559 until then, and so now they're trying to create an 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:38.559 infrastructure that would essentially be a lot of software. So 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:43.000 nine four, this partnership is founded. But it wasn't all 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:47.000 smooth sailing. They did some you know, some pilot testing 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.080 and and in general, it just looked like it wasn't 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:51.760 really catch gun. It might have been ahead of its 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:53.839 time in the United States, or may have just been 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:56.800 the execution that didn't match people's expectations. At any rate, 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.360 it didn't get adopted as quickly as all three parties 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:04.240 were hoping. And one of those three parties, CBS, decided 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:07.720 to say see you later, alligators and drop out of 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.319 the partnership. Yeah, that was in That was a six, 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.040 did you say, Yeah? And so then a eight um 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:16.880 series and IBM decided to stick with it. They doubled down. Yeah, 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:20.760 they invested four and fifty million in startup. Yeah, so 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:22.880 which is that was an eight? So if we are 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.480 just for inflation, that's what eight hundred and sixty million. 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.480 That's a lot of money. That's so many dollars. Yeah, 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:34.040 so huge, huge investment here. And that's when they actually 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:39.000 created the company that's called Prodigy Services Company. Now, don't 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:41.720 get too used to that name, because one of the 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:43.680 things we can talk about with Prodigy, and we will 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:46.959 talk about is the fact that their name changes every 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:52.160 few years. Yeah, it usually retains the term Prodigy. That's 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:57.319 about it. But that's it. Yeah. So Prodigy Services Company 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:02.440 is formed to oversee the trend texts uh technology, and 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:06.160 by June of the entire project changed its name to Prodigy, 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:08.280 So I mean they no longer talked about Trient Tech. 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:09.880 Trent text was a thing of the past. It was 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:14.800 now rolled into Prodigy and that launched in eight and 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:20.079 it became the world's first consumer based online service provider. Now, 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:23.600 at the time, IBM had made an estimate. They looked 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:26.520 at all the households in the United States and they 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:30.400 estimated how many households out there would have computers that 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.880 would actually be sophisticated enough to run the Prodigy software. 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:36.839 And when I say sophisticated enough, it's not that the 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:43.160 project software was this mind bending, amazing looking uh software. 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.840 You it was a visual interface, which was which was 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:49.840 a new thing. It was a huge improvement over local bbs. 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.280 Is that we're all text based, right, so there were 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:55.040 there were graphics involved, but they were very simple graphics. 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.400 And uh, we'll try to effect. Lauren found a great 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.480 commercial just before the podcast that she shared with us, 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:03.200 so we'll we'll try and put that up on the 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:05.760 Facebook page and link it to Twitter as well, so 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.880 that you guys can see what Prodigy look like when 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:12.600 it launched, because the commercial actually comes from this era. Yeah, 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:16.800 but you know, six machines were just coming out. They 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.160 had several megs of RAM, which was big and new 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:24.560 and and three point five inch floppies were blowing people's minds, right. Yeah. 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:28.040 And so IBM looks at all these households, says, five 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:31.800 million homes and the entire United States are probably capable 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:34.959 of running Prodigy software. They probably have computers that can 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:37.960 do this. So five million, that's our target audience. We 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:43.360 want to hit those five million folks. Um. Yeah, that 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.760 was that turned out to be an ambitious target. In fact, 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.040 five million ends up being ambitious spoiler alert through the 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:55.000 entire life of Prodigy. Um yeah, but we'll we'll get 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:57.800 into that as we go further. So, the first cities 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:02.280 that received the service were San Francisco, There was Hartford, Connecticut, 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:07.960 and there was some other city, Atlantaza. For once Atlanta 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:13.080 gets something first. Um yeah, it ended along with technological 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:17.360 innovator Hartford, Connecticut. I well, you know, I don't make 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:22.200 fun of heart for Connecticut. Those people will scold you 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.200 at any rate. Yeah. So Atlanta, San Francisco, and Hartford 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.760 are the three cities that get it first, And I 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:32.040 honestly don't know why those three cities were the ones chosen. 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:37.680 Perhaps that the telecommunications infrastructure was just uh the best 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.600 in those three for for the services of Prodigy. But 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:45.800 so the startup package for getting this service was a 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:48.640 little bit complex because, like Jonathan was saying earlier, people 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.320 didn't have modems. They certainly didn't come in computers at 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:53.960 the time. Um, it was an add on sort of thing. 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:58.200 So the original kit cost at nine dollars and cents 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:01.880 to include that that motive, the software, and three months 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.400 of initial service. Three months of service yeah. Um, you 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:07.560 could also hypothetically if you happened to have a modem 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.720 by just software for right, and then how much was 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.160 service per month with with a yearly subscription it was 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:18.720 a month and a month to month it was twelve. 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.200 So there you go nine dollars per month if you 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:24.000 if you sign up for a full year, or twelve 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:25.800 ninety five per month if you were going month to 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:29.120 month basis uh and uh. And so they figured that 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:32.160 with that pricing, with that subscription model, if they got 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.720 enough people to subscribe, that would be an ongoing source 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.000 of revenue. Right, it's the same sort of model that 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.160 we see with things like pay to play um M 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.520 M O RPGs you know which now when now we're 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:47.600 seeing more and more of those move away from that 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:49.960 model and go to free to play and then pay 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:54.320 to access certain types of content. So nonetheless, the month 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:56.960 to month subscription fee was a change up at the 0:14:56.960 --> 0:14:59.160 time I think that any anyone else who was in 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:02.320 the business, and maybe because maybe a O L was 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:04.600 starting at the same it was starting around the same time. 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:08.080 Yet and most other services that would be beginning around 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:12.400 that time, we're using UM pay per usage like per 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:16.080 per the minute or per per hour the data set. Right, 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.680 You didn't have you didn't have that many people offering 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:22.680 or that many companies I should say, offering a monthly 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:26.480 fee for their service. It was almost always uh you know, 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:30.440 maybe you get the first half hour of content at 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.080 one amount, and then above that it would be more 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:36.840 because another limitation on some of these early online service 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:41.080 providers was that they only had so many UH connections 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:43.160 that they can make at a single time within a 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.080 particular region. So if you if you have a phone 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.600 number that you're supposed to call with your computer, it 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:51.880 may be that the computer can handle, say one connections, 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.120 and beyond that, it can't handle more than that. And 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:58.680 so so allowing people continual access was potentially dangerous to 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.080 your customer base because you know, because everyone say like, 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:03.240 well I got your software, but I can never connect. 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:06.800 So it's just busy signals for years, right right, So 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:10.520 but now bigger companies, the next generation is never going 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.720 to have those Yeah, sorry, okay anyway, but yeah, so 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.320 the larger companies at this time could actually handle lots 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.560 of phone calls your local BBS is. I mean, I 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.320 remember this era where I would call into a local 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.400 BBS and there would be maybe five lines, and if 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:29.920 you called when those five lines were in operation, you 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.000 just had to wait and try and call again, like 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:35.240 in the half hour or an hour, or every ten 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:37.400 seconds if you were someone like me. But at any rate, 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:39.760 that's you know, this was this was a step up 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.200 above those local bbs is a big step up, not 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.680 just a tiny little incremental step. But but Prodigy was 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:51.240 in fact still regionally operated. It's I mean, they were 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:54.520 advertising in lots of other cities that they were planning 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:56.920 on expanding out to. Yeah, in fact, there was a 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:01.440 pretty extensive advertising campaign, including that fantastic commercial you showed 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:03.400 me before the episode, Lawrence, Well that one is from 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:09.120 all the way in clearly. Wow, so we're talking Prodigy 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:12.320 story is so different. But yeah, no, it's they were 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:16.240 really trying to drive adoption of this because it was 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:18.160 a brand new thing. You know. This is like I said, 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:21.200 this is before people for the most part, had ending 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:24.680 knowledge whatsoever of the Internet. You know, anyone who knew 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:27.960 about the Internet was working on the Internet, like building 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.520 the Internet. And so yeah, so talking to people about 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:33.360 you know, posting to bbs is or doing online shopping 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:35.760 or anything like that, or you know, looking at stocks 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:38.239 or weather online, people were like say, one, yeah, yea, 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.919 this is my computer, the thing that I used to 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:46.119 play a game on and occasionally try and create a 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.159 little program that says hello world. Um yeah, it's it 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.399 was a big change, a huge change as far as 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:54.919 computer use goes. It was really opening up the gates 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.080 to the potential for computers. And then on top of 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.240 that we then saw by the end of eight so 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:02.920 all of this is happening at eight eight, this is 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:05.840 a huge year for Prodigy, right, it's their launch year. 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:08.879 By the end of eighty eight, they have extended their 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:11.800 service to three more cities particularly Actually, I think it's 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.600 for cities. I just wrote down three, but their cities 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:18.159 in California, and those included Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:20.199 and I think Santa Barbara was also one. I just 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.399 didn't write it in my notes. Uh. And so you 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:28.159 had this, this this cool system, arguably cool. I guess 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:30.720 for me it was cool. I was an early Prodigy 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:34.360 user because I live in Atlanta. Uh. And they did 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:39.199 have their rivals, not just what would become American America Online, 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:43.480 not American but America Online, but also compu Serve, mind Spring, 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.960 earth Link. These are all they came on the scene 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.320 at different times, but they would all become rivals. Now. 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.040 The way this would work, generally speaking, is that when 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:58.360 you would use your computer to call into whatever computer 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.720 was in charge of your region, that computer could then 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:05.600 serve up all the information that was available on it. 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:07.840 And we'll talk more about the kind of services that 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:10.280 Prodigy offered towards the end of the podcast, but this 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:14.280 also includes you know, pretty basic stuff like news items, 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:19.320 financial stuff, bulletin boards where you can actually leave messages 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:22.359 and retrieve messages. There was even an email, although originally 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:24.720 that email would only allow you to send messages to 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.680 other people on the Prodigy service um and you could 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:32.920 get all that information. But although early ads talked about 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:35.680 it being updated throughout the day, originally the way these 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.720 services worked is that the the regional computer would connect 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:42.840 back to headquarters to a master computer once a day, 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:44.959 once a day, now once every twenty four hours, they 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:47.600 would get new content. So then that way, when you 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:50.680 log on the next day, you would get new news articles, 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.680 new financial reports, that kind of thing. But it would 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:56.040 stay like that all day long. It wouldn't get updated 0:19:56.080 --> 0:20:00.760 throughout the day because again, these were all general computers 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.960 that were only intermittently connecting with a master computer. It 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.479 wasn't like a truly integrated network at this point. So 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.199 this was definitely a different kind of approach than what 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:14.600 we see today. By eighty nine, the estimate that IBM 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:17.600 had made had increased. No longer did they think that 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:19.960 there were five million homes out there that could run 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:24.080 Prodigy software. Now they believed there were nine million homes. 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:27.280 So that shows that the adoption of the personal computer, 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:31.480 and not just personal computers but more sophisticated personal computers 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:35.480 was on the rise. Uh. This still is before the 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.520 true explosion in personal computers. I mean there was a 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:40.399 time I think we even mentioned it in one of 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:43.240 our podcasts where Bill Gates had kind of projected out 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:45.360 how many computers he thought were going to be adopted, 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.440 and it turned out it was like a seventy fewer 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:51.960 than what actually happened, and now no one could predict it. Um. 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:56.440 The actual number of Prodigy customers at the time was Yeah. 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:00.199 So they remember, they're aiming for a customer bay that 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:03.040 they have estimated to be nine million people, and they 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:07.880 they land sixty thousand. That is brutal. I mean, that's 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.679 such a tiny percentage um. And then Prodigy launched in 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:15.280 New York City, but it only had partial coverage in 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:17.880 in the city. They had the thirteen markets in New 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:20.920 York City, but that meant that they had left out 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:25.480 about the population of New York City who had the 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.840 who had the technology to connect right, They had the ability, 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:31.600 but they didn't have the actual support, so they could 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:34.879 not be members of Prodigy at that time, so they 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:40.920 weren't able to capitalize on that very at least not efficiently. However, 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:44.800 by Prodigy did become available across the United States, I 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:50.040 believe when I got Prodigy up near Cleveland, Dish. Yeah, see, 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:53.520 I was already living not in Atlanta, but close enough 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:57.080 to Atlanta where I got the support, and by the 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:01.840 end of that year, their numbers had exploded almost tenfold. Really, 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:06.000 we're talking from six thd to six hundred thirty five thousand. 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:09.760 So but now granted they managed to go nationwide. Now, 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:12.800 so now you're talking about the entire US, not just 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:18.119 these little regions that they had been hitting previously, but 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:22.840 still only six thousand, and that put them in second place. 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:27.720 The first place provider was compu serve Um, which we 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:30.080 could also do an episode about copy serve at some point. 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:33.320 But compu Serve would eventually be acquired from H and 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:35.720 R Block, which at the time they were there the 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:40.040 owners at the time. The new owners would be America Online, 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:44.919 and of course America Online UH ends up being the 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.840 big daddy of the online service providers and probably made 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:51.040 I would say, I would argue that it made the 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:55.880