WEBVTT - The Prodigy Story 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.800 stuff dot com. Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.240 I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren, and today we're gonna 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.239 talk to you about Prodigy. I don't know why we 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:24.200 picked this one. I mean, I love the band, I 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:28.560 don't want to get internet service. Oh do you need 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:30.040 to do you need to go to some more now 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:35.240 hang on one second, alright, I'm back. Okay, So Prodigy 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:38.360 online service provider. Of course, that's what we're talking about now. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.720 Long time listeners to tech stuff know that ages ago, 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:45.879 Chris and I did an episode about online service providers, 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:48.639 but this time we want to specifically look at Prodigy, 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.320 partly because it was one of the earliest, in fact, 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:55.720 depending upon whom you ask, the earliest online service provider. Now, 0:00:55.880 --> 0:01:00.840 online service providers are different from Internet service providers. So 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.880 I'm gonna blow your minds out there, kids. So you 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:08.560 young uns out there, there was a time when we 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.920 did not all have access to the internet. It was 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:16.119 a terrifying time. Dinosaurs roamed the earth. Occasionally you would 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:18.680 go camping and an enormous guy in a hockey mask 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:21.240 would chase you around. The eighties were tough, y'all. I 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:25.399 actually do remember that time dimly. I mean I I was, 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.360 you know, not necessarily eating all solid food yet, and 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:31.480 I could barely read. But I do, in fact for 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:33.920 call a time before the Internet. I grew up in 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.600 that time, and uh, I bear the scars to this day. Also, 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:40.920 I don't read that much currently. But at any rate, 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:45.800 now we're talking about a time where the computer revolution 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.040 had really taken hold of. The personal computers had already 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:54.480 become a rising trend. It still was kind of a 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.160 rarity to find someone who owned a personal computer. It 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.120 wasn't like there were PCs everywhere, certainly not no, but 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:03.840 they were certainly getting very popular in the mid eighties, 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:07.240 and more and more people were adopting them as the 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:11.440 price was becoming more affordable for the average household rather 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:14.920 than for hobbyists only. Right, right, So those those bleeding 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.600 edge technology adopters who somehow have the jobs that allow 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:22.880 them to to indulge their obsession with technology, they had 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:25.080 already gone through the first wave, and now it was 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:27.839 trickling down to everybody else. All right, we're talking about 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:29.920 the kind of the two eight six sort of days. 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:35.680 Is where Prodigy started kicking out. So during those times, 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:39.280 your computers, you know, the early early computers were really 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:43.720 especially for personal computers, were just self contained devices. Right. 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:46.800 It was whatever software you had to run on that machine, 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:49.239 and that was pretty much it, which you would put 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:51.600 on the machine with fancy fancy uh five and a 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.160 quarter inch floppy disks. Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't necessarily even 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.200 have a hard drive. You might just run it directly 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:58.079 from the discs. So in other words, once that disc 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:00.079 was popped out, that was it. You didn't have that 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:03.480 program anymore. You just had your basic operating system, although 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:07.200 you might not even call it that um anyway. Eventually 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:09.400 you started seeing things like modems where you could do 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.480 things like connect to a local bulletin board system or BBS. 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:17.880 This was usually something that was hyper local, as in 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:20.400 something that would might be run in the same city 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:23.440 that you live in, because in order to connect to 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.040 most bbs is, you had to dial a specific number, 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:29.280 and usually it was a it was a er a 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.679 local number, yeah, because you could dial into a BBS 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:35.840 that's run in a state, you know, twenty states away. 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:38.200 But long distance charges at the time were also such 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:41.840 that that that it would have been incredibly cost prohibited. Yeah, anyone, 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:46.320 any kid who experimented with connecting to bbs IS might 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:50.040 find out rapidly from his parents or her parents that, uh, 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:52.160 it was not the best idea to do that without 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:56.960 parental agreement beforehand, because you could rack up huge bills. 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:59.720 I mean, this is the era where long distance charges 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:01.480 were a real thing. I know that a lot of 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.720 people today aren't even they that's not something they even 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.640 think about because in most cases you don't have a 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.360 long distance charge anymore. About once a month, I marvel 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:12.760 at the incredible present and the fact that I can 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.560 call people all over the country without having any without 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.159 worrying about, oh, you know, we've taught for five minutes, 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:21.200 this is gonna cost me twenty bucks or whatever. Uh 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:24.600 and and they have not said anything of value, so so, 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.880 at any rate, at this time, that was pretty much it. 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:32.080 And then there became this idea of the online service 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:36.359 provider away for companies to create services that would open 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:40.600 up brand new opportunities for consumers. And it was before 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:43.960 the Internet had rolled out to being something that the 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:46.479 general public could access, so be sure, but but you know, 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:50.520 people were looking for a way to provide service to 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:54.400 you know, to a consumers who wanted to communicate and 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.600 be two companies who wanted to sell more stuff. Give 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:01.680 give companies an outlet to sell more right, So this 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.680 was this was the idea. Like instead of instead of 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.000 the Internet, think of the Internet. It's it's the network 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.800 of networks, right, It's all these different computers. They're connected together, 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.839 and lots of different types of communication goes across the Internet, 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:18.279 from email to file transfers to web traffic. All of 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:21.479 that stuff is going on across the Internet. An online 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.760 service provider is more like a very small network. It's 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.039 not a network of networks. It is a network in 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:31.120 which you use your computer to dial into a host computer, 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.640 and the host computer serves up all the information on 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.039 it that it has. So, in other words, instead of 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:39.560 having access to everything in the world, you just have 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:43.120 access to whatever the host computer has on it. Uh 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.479 and online service providers did this in different ways. So 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:50.200 let's talk specifically about Prodigy. To talk about how it 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.599 came to be, you have to look back at nine four. 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.080 That's when a couple of tiny companies IBM was one 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:03.040 of them, uh Sears was another, and CBS was a third, 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:07.520 formed a joint venture they called trend texts. Now, this 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:12.440 trend text venture was specifically meant to provide something called 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:16.280 video text services. And you might all wonder what the 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.200 heck video text is, because it's not a term that 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:24.039 you see today really, but this was a technology that 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.599 would allow you to connect a terminal. So it could 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:29.200 be a computer, or it could just be a very 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:32.040 specific terminal made for this purpose, or even a television 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:35.800 with special yep. Yeah, so you have one of these 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.760 things that connect to a phone line and then can 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:45.320 can call into a centralized computer to get content that way. Now, 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.200 the this is sort of a predecessor to the kind 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.760 of modems that we would see uh later on, although 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.920 at this time in the in the early eighties, a 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.160 modem was something that very few people had. It was 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:01.640 certainly something thing that was used in commercial purposes. You 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:05.120 had companies using it like IBM certainly had plenty of modems, 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.880 but your average computer owner did not have a modem 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.239 at this time. They certain they also were not part 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.280 of a standard computer. Like there was a time where 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:18.000 you would get an internal modem like a dial up modem, 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:20.720 and you would just plug a phone cord into the 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.680 back of your computer. And from that to the outlet 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:27.520 in your wall. Before that, you had external modems that 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.080 would connect to a port in your computer and then 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:34.000 you would connect your telephone connection to the external modem. 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.880 That's the kind I had, so sure, of course. Yeah. 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:38.720 I do also want to mention this is the same 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.680 year that UM IBM introduced the portable PC weighing a 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:46.480 mirror thirty pounds or what's that like fourteen kilos, Yeah, 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.160 something like that. So you're talking about portable depending upon 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.840 your upper body stream. Uh uh. So so that was 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.280 that was kind of the life of the times. UM 0:07:57.360 --> 0:07:59.360 the entire video text thing was doing a little bit 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.440 better in Europe. There were a bunch of countries that 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.400 that already had something like this, but it was really 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.280 the first time this whole trend text thing was really 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:11.000 the first time that it had been rolled out for 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:14.200 commercial use, for customer use for the United States and 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.240 the US. Yeah. In fact, the the concentration in Europe 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:22.440 would mean that uh, companies like Prodigy in America Online 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:27.440 would end up sort of foregoing any kind of penetration 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.560 attempts in Europe because it was already stated UM and 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.560 CBS had did a did a trial of video texts 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:37.880 in a three with a T and T in about 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:40.320 two households somewhere in New Jersey, just to see how 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:42.360 much interest there would be. And there was a lot. 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.640 So that is why CBS was involved. Sears was you know, 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.800 if you're saying why was Sears in Roebuck involved in 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:53.319 this internet venture, it's because Sears had the complex billing 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:57.880 system and the customer base like the mail order customer base. Sure. Yeah, 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.720 the Sears catalog is like a legacy, see when it 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:03.559 comes to retail. Not only that, but Sears itself has 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.400 had a long history in being involved in electronics. In fact, 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:09.079 for a while, if you wanted to buy a computer 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:12.000 that you would either go to a very specialized computer 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:14.440 store or you would go to a Sears buy your 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:19.120 computer there. Yeah. And IBM actually, in contemporary literature, people 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:23.480 were talking about IBM being the most surprising company of 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:25.679 the three, which doesn't make any sense to me. But 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:28.360 but their reasoning behind calling it that was that they 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:32.160 had been really only hardware with a tiny bit of 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.880 software involved up until then, and so now they're trying 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.439 to create an infrastructure that would essentially be a lot 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:43.640 of software. So this partnership is founded, but it wasn't 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.040 all smooth sailing. They did some you know, some pilot 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.560 testing and and in general it just looked like it 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:52.480 wasn't really catch on. It might have been ahead of 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:54.480 its time in the United States, or may have just 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.680 been the execution that didn't match people's expectations. At any rate, 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:01.199 it didn't get adopted as quickly as all three parties 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:05.120 were hoping. And one of those three parties, CBS, decided 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.600 to say see you later, alligators and drop out of 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.960 the partnership. Yeah, that was in that was did you say? Yeah? 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.120 And so then an eight um series and IBM decided 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.720 to stick with it. They doubled down. Yeah, they invested 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:22.520 four and fifty million in startup. Yeah, so that was 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:24.560 an eight eight. So if we are just for inflation, 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:28.080 that's what eight hundred and sixty million, that's a lot 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:32.080 of money. That's so many dollars. Yeah, so huge, huge 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:36.199 investment here. And uh, that's when they actually created the 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.280 company that's called Prodigy Services Company. Now, don't get too 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:42.920 used to that name, because one of the things we 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:45.040 can talk about with Prodigy, and we will talk about, 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:49.479 is the fact that their name changes every few years. Yeah, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:53.720 it usually retains the term Prodigy. That's about it, but 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:58.920 that's it. Yeah, So Prodigy Services Company is formed to 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:03.920 oversee the in text uh technology, and by June of 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:07.240 the entire project changed its name to Prodigy. So that 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:09.760 means they no longer talked about trin techs. Trent text 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:11.400 was a thing of the past. It was now rolled 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:16.120 into Prodigy and that launched in eight and it became 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:21.199 the world's first consumer based online service provider. Now at 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.760 the time, IBM had made an estimate. They looked at 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:27.959 all the households in the United States and they estimated 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:31.520 how many households out there would have computers that would 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.840 actually be sophisticated enough to run the Prodigy software. And 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:38.080 when I say sophisticated enough, it's not that the project 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:44.640 software was this mind bending, amazing looking uh software, you 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.600 it was. It was a visual interface, which was which 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:50.880 was it was a huge improvement over local bbs is 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:53.360 that we're all text based, right, So there were there 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.400 were graphics involved, but they were very simple graphics. And uh, 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.480 we'll try to infect. Lauren found a great commercial just 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:02.640 before the podcast that she shared with us, So we'll 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:04.880 we'll try and put that up on the Facebook page 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:06.880 and link it to Twitter as well, so that you 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.320 guys can see what Prodigy looked like when it launched, 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.679 because the commercial actually comes from this era. Yeah, but 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.880 you know, six machines were just coming out. They had 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:21.280 several megs of RAM, which was big and new and 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:25.480 and three point five inch floppies were blowing people's minds, right. Yeah. 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:28.920 And so IBM looks at all these households, says five 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.680 million homes and the entire United States are probably capable 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:35.800 of running Prodigy software. They probably have computers that can 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.800 do this. So five million, that's our target audience. We 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:44.240 want to hit those five million folks. Um yeah, that 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.640 was that turned out to be an ambitious target. In fact, 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:51.880 five million ends up being ambitious spoiler alert through the 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:55.880 entire life of Prodigy. Um yeah, but we'll we'll get 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.680 into that as we go further. So, the first cities 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:03.080 that received the service were San Francisco, There was Hartford, Connecticut, 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:08.840 and there was some other city, Atlantaza for once Atlanta 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:13.920 gets something first. Um yeah, it ended along with technological 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:18.240 innovator Hartford, Connecticut. I Well, you know, I don't make 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:23.080 fun of heart for Connecticut. Those people will scold you 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.120 at any rate. Yeah, So Atlanta, San Francisco, and Hartford 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:28.640 are the three cities that get it first. And I 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:32.880 honestly don't know why those three cities were the ones chosen. 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:38.520 Perhaps that the telecommunications infrastructure was just uh the best 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:41.400 in those three for the for the services of Prodigy. 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:46.599 But so the startup package for getting this service was 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.040 a little bit complex because, like Jonathan was saying earlier, 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.040 people didn't have modems. They certainly didn't come in computers 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:54.480 at the time. Um, it was an add on sort 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:57.000 of thing. So the original kit cost a hundred and 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:00.920 forty nine dollars and cents to include that that modem, 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:03.880 the software, and three months of initial service. Three months 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:07.040 of service yeah. Um, you could also hypothetically if you 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:11.200 happened to have a modem by just software for right, 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.640 and then how much was service per month with with 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:18.560 a yearly subscription? It was a month and a month 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:22.480 to month it was, so there you go nine dollars 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:23.960 per month if you if you sign up for a 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:26.320 full year, or twelve per month if you were going 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.480 month to month basis. Uh and uh. And so they 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.640 figured that with that pricing with that subscription model, if 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:35.800 they got enough people to subscribe, that would be an 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:38.800 ongoing source of revenue. Right. It's the same sort of 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:41.920 model that we see with things like pay to play 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.800 um M M O RPGs you know, which you know 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:47.840 when now we're seeing more and more of those move 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.040 away from that model and go to free to play 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:54.880 and then pay to access certain types of content. So nonetheless, 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:57.600 the month to month subscription fee was a change up 0:14:57.600 --> 0:14:59.760 at the time I think that any anyone else who 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:02.840 was in the business, and maybe because maybe a O 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.040 L was starting at this it was starting around the 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.640 same time. Yet and of most other services that that 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:11.760 would be beginning around that time, we're using um pay 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:15.000 per usage like per per the minute or per per 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.320 hour the data. Right. You you didn't have you didn't 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:20.560 have that many people offering or that many companies I 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:25.280 should say, offering a a monthly fee for their service. 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:28.200 It was almost always uh you know, maybe you get 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:32.400 the first half hour of content at one amount, and 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:35.800 then above that it would be more because another limitation 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.880 on some of these early online service providers was that 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.320 they only had so many UH connections that they can 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:45.280 make at a single time. Within a particular region. So 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:47.520 if you if you have a phone number that you're 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.160 supposed to call with your computer, it may be that 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.400 the computer can handle say one connections, and beyond that 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:55.920 it can't handle more than that. And so so allowing 0:15:55.960 --> 0:16:00.280 people continual access was potentially dangerous to your customer base 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:03.120 because because everyone say like, well I got your software, 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.400 but I can never connect. So it's just busy signals 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:10.240 for years, right right, So but now bigger companies, the 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.080 next generation is never going to have those yeah, sorry, 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:17.080 okay anyway, but yeah, so the larger companies at this 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.400 time could actually handle lots of phone calls your local 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:23.040 BBS is. I mean, I remember this era where I 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.360 would call into a local BBS and there would be 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:29.680 maybe five lines, and if you called when those five 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:31.560 lines were in operation, you just had to wait and 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:33.840 try and call again, like in the half hour or 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.160 an hour, or every ten seconds if you were someone 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:39.160 like me. But at any rate, that's you know, this 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.480 was this was a step up above those local bbs 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:44.960 is a big step up, not just a tiny little 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:49.280 incremental step. But but Prodigy was in fact still regionally operated. 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:54.200 It's I mean, they were advertising in lots of other 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:57.040 cities that they were planning on expanding out to. Yeah. 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:00.120 In fact, there was a pretty extensive advertising campaign, including 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.640 that fantastic commercial you showed me before the episode, Lawrence. 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:06.680 Well that one is from all the way in Wow, 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:11.800 so we're talking a story is so different. But yeah, no, 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:16.639 it's they were really trying to drive adoption of this 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:18.399 because it was a brand new thing. You know. This 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.000 is like I said, this is before people for the 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.720 most part, had any knowledge whatsoever of the Internet. You know, 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.119 anyone who knew about the Internet was working on the Internet, 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:31.120 like building the Internet, and so yeah, talking to people 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:33.760 about you know, posting to bbs is or doing online 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.280 shopping or anything like that, or you know, looking at 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:39.160 stocks or weather online. People were like say, why yeah, yeah, 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.640 this is on my computer, the thing that I used 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.359 to play a game on and occasionally try and and 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:49.520 create a little program that says hello world. Um. Yeah, 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.960 it's It was a big change, a huge change as 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:55.239 far as computer use goes. It was really opening up 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.560 the gates to the potential for computers. And then on 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:01.199 top of that we then saw by the end of 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:03.560 eight so all of this is happening in eight eight, 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.160 This is a huge year for Prodigy, right, it's their 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:08.080 launch year. By the end of eighty eight, they have 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.359 extended their service to three more cities. Particularly actually I 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:14.639 think it's for cities. I just wrote down three, but 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:19.040 their cities in California, and those included Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:21.080 and I think Santa Barbara was also one. I just 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.280 didn't write it in my notes. Uh. And so you 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:29.040 had this this this cool system arguably cool. I guess 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.600 for me it was cool. I was an early Prodigy 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:35.200 user because I live in Atlanta. Uh. And they did 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:39.600 have their rivals, not just what would become American America 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:43.520 Online on American but America Online, but also compu Serve, 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:48.320 mind Spring, earth Link. These are all they came on 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:52.199 the scene at different times, but they would all become rivals. Now. 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.880 The way this would work, generally speaking, is that when 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:59.240 you would use your computer to call into whatever computer 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:02.600 was in charge of your region, that computer could then 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.479 serve up all the information that was available on it. 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:08.720 And we'll talk more about the kind of services that 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:11.119 Prodigy offered towards the end of the podcast, but this 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:15.159 also includes you know, pretty basic stuff like news items, 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:20.200 financial stuff, bulletin boards where you can actually leave messages 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.240 and retrieve messages. There was even an email, although originally 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:25.600 that email would only allow you to send messages to 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.520 other people on the Prodigy service um and you could 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:33.800 get all that information. But although early ads talked about 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.560 it being updated throughout the day, originally the way these 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:40.600 services worked is that the the regional computer would connect 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:43.720 back to headquarters to a master computer once a day, 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:45.800 once a day, now once every twenty four hours, they 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.480 would get new content. So then that way, when you 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:51.560 log on the next day, you would get new news articles, 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:54.520 new financial reports, that kind of thing. But it would 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:56.920 stay like that all day long. It wouldn't get updated 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:01.600 throughout the day because again, these were all regional computers 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:04.800 that were only intermittently connecting with a master computer. It 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:08.320 wasn't like a truly integrated network at this point. So 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.080 this was definitely a different kind of approach than what 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:15.440 we see today. By eighty nine, the estimate that IBM 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:18.480 had made had increased. No longer did they think that 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:20.800 there were five million homes out there that could run 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.960 Prodigy software. Now they believed there were nine million homes. 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.119 So that shows that the adoption of the personal computer, 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:32.320 and not just personal computers, but more sophisticated personal computers 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:36.360 was on the rise. Uh. This still is before the 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:39.399 true explosion in personal computers. I mean there was a 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:41.240 time I think we even mentioned it in one of 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:44.080 our podcast where Bill Gates had kind of projected out 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:46.240 how many computers he thought were going to be adopted, 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:49.320 and it turned out it was like a seventy fewer 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.800 than what actually happened, and now no one could predict it. Um. 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.360 The actual number of Prodigy of customers at the time 0:20:55.480 --> 0:21:00.119 was Yeah. So they remember, they're aiming for a and 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.280 customer base that they have estimated to be nine million people, 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:08.480 and there they land sixty thousand. That is brutal. I mean, 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:12.440 that's such a tiny percentage um. And then Prodigy launched 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:15.639 in New York City, but it only had partial coverage 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:18.560 in in the city. They had the thirteen markets in 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:21.560 New York City, but that meant that they had left 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:26.240 out about the population of New York City who had 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:28.960 the who had the technology to connect? Right, They had 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:31.959 the ability, but they didn't have the actual support, so 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.399 they could not be members of Prodigy at that time, 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:39.119 so they weren't able to capitalize on that very at 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:44.840 least not efficiently. However, by Prodigy did become available across 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:48.480 the United States, I believe when I got Prodigy up 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:52.880 near Cleveland, Dish. Yeah, see, I was already living not 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:55.320 in Atlanta, but close enough to Atlanta where I got 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:59.040 the support, And by the end of that year, their 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:04.360 numbers had spluted almost tenfold. Really, we're talking from six 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:08.360 thousand to six hundred thirty five thousand. So but now 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:11.320 granted they managed to go nationwide. Now, so now you're 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:15.160 talking about the entire US, not just these little regions 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:21.199 that they had been hitting previously, but still only six thousand, 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:25.600 and that put them in second place. The first place 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:29.159 provider was compu serve Um, which we could also do 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:31.439 an episode about copy serve at some point. But compu 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.640 Serve would eventually be acquired from H and R Block, 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:37.440 which they were they were the owners at the time. 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:42.240 The new owners would be America Online, and of course 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:46.840