WEBVTT - The Birth of AOL 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.560 Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:06.520 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and I Heeart Radio 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:12.520 and I love all things tech. And there was a 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.040 company that was so closely tied to the idea of 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.200 connecting to the Internet that for some people it was 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:22.320 synonymous with the Internet. It show. I'm talking about America 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:26.000 Online or A O L, which is still around, but 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:28.400 we're talking about the early days, and A O L 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.960 grew into a giant force of a company. It was 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.040 part of a merger that many people have described in 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:37.680 the wake of that merger as being the worst deal 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:40.559 in the history of tech mergers. So we're gonna look 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:43.720 at the history of this company and where things are today. 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:47.080 So in this episode will look specifically at how that 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.279 company came to be and how it grew in the 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:56.480 early years. Our story concerns several co founders. Frequently, if 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:58.680 you look at stories about A O L, they'll talk 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:01.560 about one of these co found unders over all the others. 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:05.200 But they are very important, each and every one of them. 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:10.000 So first we have William F. Von Meister, who founded 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.440 a startup that would give birth to A O L. 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:14.480 He would not be part of a o L itself, 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:18.000 but a o L would grow out of a company 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:23.800 that Maister had built, and the co founders would include 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:28.280 three men who worked for this startup. UH. The startup 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:32.440 was called Control Video Corporation. Those three men were Steve case, 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:38.160 Mark Seraf and Jim Kimsey. William F. Von Meister was 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:42.280 born in New York City. He his father had worked 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:46.520 for the Zeppelin Company, infamous for being the company that 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:51.400 would build the Hindenburg airship, the one that burst into 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.200 flame and gave birth to the OH the Humanity Line. 0:01:55.920 --> 0:02:00.200 Von Meister was born on February twenty, nineteen two. He 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.160 attended private schools and he went to Georgetown University, but 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:08.360 he never graduated. Despite that, he was able to enroll 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.639 in the master's degree program for business over at American University, 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.480 and upon graduating, he founded many startups, and one of 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:20.200 those was a tech company called Control Video Corporation, which 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.160 I'll get to in just a moment, but first let's 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:26.200 talk about some of these other founders. James Verlin Kimsey 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:30.360 was born on September nineteen thirty nine. That would make 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:33.320 him the oldest of the co founders who would create 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.800 a o l He also attended, but did not graduate 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.760 from Georgetown University, so he and Meister had that in common. 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.440 He completed his education at West Point Academy. However, he 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.080 became an airborne ranger, in fact a decorated one. He 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.960 served three combat tours, two of which were in Vietnam, 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:57.320 and after the war he began purchasing or opening bars 0:02:57.320 --> 0:02:59.920 and restaurants in the Washington, d c. Area. Became a 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.800 very successful businessman, and he was brought over to Control 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:09.000 Video Corporation to serve as a manufacturing consultant during some 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:14.120 troubled times. Control Video Corporation did not have a long history, 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.560 but it's certainly had a colorful one. Mark Saraf who 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:19.880 was one of the other co founders. He was born 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:24.040 on May five, ninety eight in Austin, Texas. He attended 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:27.360 the University of Texas. At Austin, he earned degrees in 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.960 computer science and mathematics, and then he would go on 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:34.000 to enroll in graduate studies at m I T and 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.360 he earned a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science. 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:40.920 In nineteen seventy four, he took a job at Telenet 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.720 Communications Corporation, which in nineteen seventy five would become the 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.760 first packet switched network available to the general public. You 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:50.920 can think of it as one of the early backbones 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:54.720 of the Internet. So he was in early, early on 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:57.680 on the days of the Internet, before most people even 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.680 knew what such a thing was, decades before they knew 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.120 about it, in fact, and this was in the era 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:08.000 when the protocols for data transmission across the Internet we're 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:11.000 still being hammered out. Sarah would work for several tech 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.040 companies over the next few years, eventually moving over to 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:19.799 Control Video Corporation. Steve Case was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:23.479 in nineteen fifty eight. Steve and his brother Dan were 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:28.080 entrepreneurial lee minded even at a young age. There's stories 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.359 about him and his brother operating a little juice stand 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:35.280 in Hawaii or selling greeting cards or seeds door to 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:39.000 door as children. Steve would attend Williams College in the 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.760 late seventies and early eighties. He would graduate in nineteen 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.520 eighty one with a degree in political science. After graduation, 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.679 Steve worked in the marketing department of Procter and Gamble, 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:52.919 and he later went and worked for Pepsi Coo, specifically 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:56.520 working as a head of marketing over at Pizza Hut, 0:04:56.720 --> 0:04:59.400 or at least an executive of marketing over at Pizza Hut. 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.800 But I've to that his brother Dan introduced him to 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:07.960 the founders of Control Video Corporation. Over at C E. S. 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:11.520 Steve landed a gig with Control Video Corporation, which was 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.080 doing something really interesting, a really interesting business model that 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:20.240 would actually set the stage for America Online many years later. Now, 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:23.039 another element I need to mention before I get into 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.080 what Control Video Corporation was doing was a book that 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:28.800 Steve Case had read when he was a college student. 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.800 He thinks it was sometime around nineteen seventy nine. Is 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.520 a book that was written by a guy named Alvin Toffler, 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:39.120 and it's called The Third Wave. In that book, Toffler 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.880 describes a world in which computers would form a new 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:47.440 communication platform, a new revolution, a technological revolution akin to 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:51.799 the Industrial revolution, and it would allow for new digitally 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:56.279 oriented communities. Essentially, he was talking about the sort of 0:05:56.320 --> 0:05:59.600 thing we would see in various Internet communities like forums 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:03.560 and things. That Case did not have an engineering background 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:07.080 or a programming background, but he thought this idea was 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.960 really compelling and it would become an important part of 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:14.760 his vision once he joined this company. So we now 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.240 know our major players, which really comes down to Steve Case, 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:21.840 Jim Kimsey, and Mark. Seraf von Meister is important, but 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:24.880 he was not part of the trio that would go 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:26.840 on to found the company that becomes a O L. 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:32.640 So what the heck did this Control Video Corporation do? Well? 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:36.080 I didn't know very much about this when I started 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.039 my research for this, which is funny to me because 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:41.920 I've talked about Atari a lot, and their their business 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:46.120 was deeply tied to Atari. And yet somehow I had 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.400 never come across this, or if I had, I had 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:52.960 forgotten about it. Control Video Corporation had created a product 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:57.000 called game Line for the AD, and again I had 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:01.760 never heard of this thing. Game Line was a cartridge, 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:06.560 a very large, misshapen cartridge. It didn't look like the 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.040 video game cartridges you would typically get if you wanted 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:12.480 to play a game of Pac Man or Pitfall. But 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:16.120 you would plug this cartridge into a t and it 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.840 would extend far out of it because it was so big, 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.560 and it had a port in it in which you 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:26.520 could plug a phone line, an old hard lined phone 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:30.400 connection to so This cartridge was part modem and part 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:34.360 storage device. Uh so you would plug it through the 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:38.160 normal cartridge port. It also had a battery that you 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:39.800 had to plug in. They had to put a nine 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:44.880 volt battery into this game line cartridge itself and then 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:47.920 plug it into your phone line and at that point, 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:52.640 your ATAR twenty could dial into the game Line service. 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:56.320 Game Line customers would get an account. You would have 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.040 a little form that would come or a card that 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:01.760 would come with your game line cartridge that would include 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:06.280 your personal identification number for that cartridge. If you logged 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:10.880 into the service, you would get access to games that 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:14.320 were available on that service, and then you could actually 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:18.520 use the game line to download games to your cartridge 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.480 to play on your AT twenty SID. So this was 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:24.920 incredibly forward thinking. This was a service all the way 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:30.720 back in three where you could download games to a console. Now, 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:33.520 it took me a bit to get my mind wrapped 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:37.280 around this because I'm familiar with the Atari twenty s. 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:42.120 The cartridges for the atwy dred are ROMs. That means 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.640 they're read only memory. You can't change them, at least 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.280 not without physically changing the cartridge. The games themselves are 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:54.480 hard coded in circuitry on the cartridges themselves. So the 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.080 physical layout of the components on the cartridge are what 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:02.360 make the game. It's not digital information stored in a 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:07.480 volatile medium that you can erase and and right over. Instead, 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:12.480 it's stuff that's physically etched in this cartridge. But the 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:14.720 game line was a little different. It's still had a 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.079 cartridge part that would plug into the console, but the 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.560 information was stored on microchips. They could store these small 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:25.560 amounts of information, not really big files. UH technology just 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:29.240 wasn't there to hold a lot of information, But games 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.200 were super small back in the early nine so this 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:34.080 was not a problem. Also, you needed it to be 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:37.280 small anyway, because these are games that are going to 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:41.680 be transmitted over phone lines and the speed of a 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:46.000 modem back in three was pretty slow. So the cartridge 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:48.359 part of the game line would act as this interface 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:53.000 between the game line and the UH. But the contents 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.400 of the cartridge could be changed by wiping and overwriting 0:09:56.400 --> 0:10:01.319 the memory on those microchips. Pretty darn cool. Now, you 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:04.240 would have a limited number of plays per title that 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:08.280 you would essentially rent from game line, so you would 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.240 have a membership fee, and there was a per download fee. 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:13.640 It was just a dollar per game. So in a 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:15.199 way you'd think, oh, well, that's not bad. I've just 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:16.880 been a dollar and I get I get a copy 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.360 of this game. But again, that copy wouldn't last forever. 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:22.760 It would actually expire, and then if you wanted to 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:24.920 play the game again, you would have to rent it again, 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:27.520 and you would have to do that over and over 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:31.040 until you lost interest in playing that particular game. I 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:34.560 guess the company had plans to create similar services that 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:38.320 would be operated over the phone, including banking services and 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.680 news feed services, so you would get cartridges for those 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.160 specific applications. You wouldn't use your game line to access 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:48.480 it necessarily. You would have a news line cartridge that 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:50.599 you would plug into your atari and then you'll be 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:53.280 able to read the news. So sort of a proto 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:58.720 internet service. Well, the idea was incredibly prescient. It was 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:01.640 all the sort of services that we would associate with 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:05.640 online service providers and later internet service and there were 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:10.440 only a couple of online service provider like businesses in 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:14.040 operation in the early eighties. Compu Serve, which we'll talk 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.200 about as well in these episodes was one of them, 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:21.480 but there weren't a lot, so this was pretty new stuff. 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.920 Game Line didn't take off in a huge way, probably 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.240 for quite a few reasons. One of the big ones 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:30.920 was that the service was not able to secure licensing 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.880 deals with the largest game publishers for the Atari twenty 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.720 six hundred, so they weren't able to land deals with 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:41.720 Atari or Activision, and that meant some of the biggest titles, 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:45.280 the most popular titles for those game consoles or for 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:50.480 the hundred specifically, just weren't available for game Line, so 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:53.839 that made it difficult. There were more than seventy games 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:58.920 available on game Line, but these were mostly you know, 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:01.920 third or four tier games. Some of them were only 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.440 available on game Line, but again, they weren't the big names. 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:08.719 It wasn't the Pitfalls or the River Raids. Then the 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.400 video game crash of nineteen eight three happened. This was 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:13.880 the other reason game Line wasn't able to take off, 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:18.240 because the entire industry crumbled. It imploded. It pretty much 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:22.360 wiped out the Atar as a console. You didn't have 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.800 anyone who could sell the darned things. Not to mention 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.920 other competing video game consoles and companies, they all started 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:32.280 to suffer. Anyone who was making a home video game 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:37.960 console ine was in serious trouble. Or whose business depended 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:41.440 upon making games for those consoles, they were in trouble too, 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.959 So in nine four and eight five, the Control Video 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:51.559 Corporation sort of fizzled. It disbanded, but then it coalesced 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.240 into a new company. Now at this point, von Meister 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.760 quietly bowed out. Once the Control Video Corporation was really 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:03.280 starting to fall apart because of the video game industry 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:09.000 going to pieces, he extracted himself. But the new business 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:12.719 that formed out of the ashes of Control Video Corporation 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:18.199 was called Quantum Computer Services. Only ten of the employees 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.560 from Control Video Corporation would still have a job with 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:25.840 this new company, So the CEO of Quantum Computer Services 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:29.600 was Jim Kimsey. Mark Saraph would serve as the chief 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:32.960 technology officer, and Steve kay still had a job too 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:37.199 as the head of marketing. But Kimsey also recognized case 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:39.600 while he wasn't a tech guy, he wasn't the guy 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:44.280 to engineer a system or program something. He really had 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:47.160 a good handle on the business side and the marketing 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:50.120 side of things, and so Kimsey thought, this is a 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:53.320 guy I need to groom to become the head of 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:57.400 the company once I'm ready to hand over control, and 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:00.120 that would be the case. I've got a lot were 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.599 to say about the early days of a o L, 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:05.360 but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:16.760 This new company, Quantum Computer Services, took a lot of 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:21.000 inspiration from the strategy they used with the Atari twenty hundred, 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:23.320 but obviously they weren't going to be able to cater 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:27.480 to that audience that had imploded. So instead they started 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:31.480 to look at the burgeoning personal computer industry and they 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.960 targeted the Commodore sixty four community. Personal computers were succeeding 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:40.680 where video game consoles had failed. On May one, Quantum 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:45.440 Computer Services launched q link are sometimes called Quantum Link, 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:49.000 which was essentially an online bulletin board service. And I've 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:52.440 talked about bulletin board services or bbs is in the past, 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:56.240 but here's a super quick refresher. With the BBS, you 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.640 have somebody who is acting as host. They have a 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.040 computer eader, and they install software on that computer to 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:07.200 let it be a host for other machines. This computer 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:11.240 holds all the files that visitors to the BBS will 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.080 be able to interact with, whether they're just reading things, 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.280 or they can download stuff or upload stuff. This computer 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.960 is the home for all of that. Users can direct 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:25.400 their own personal computers to visit this BBS. They run 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.560 user interface software, a special program that allows them to 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.200 do this, and that also involves dialing a phone number 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:36.480 connected to the BBS using a dial up modem. So 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:40.040 the BBS is essentially answering a phone call from another computer, 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:43.080 and then those two computers have a conversation, just like 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:47.200 two humans would acceptance data instead of voice or sound. 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:50.600 This is on a very small scale, similar to what 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:55.200 happens on the Internet, but this represents a direct connection 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:59.640 between one computer and another, a client computer and the 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:03.040 sir for a computer, there's no network there, so the 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:05.840 connections only passing through the circuits of the phone system 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.160 and otherwise it's a direct connect from computer A to 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.280 computer b so q Link was a service in which 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:16.480 Commodore sixty four users could subscribe and access various features, 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:20.720 which included stuff like an electronic mail system that other 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:26.240 users could participate in, chat features, some file sharing capabilities, 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:31.880 and some networked games. You were restricted to other Commodore 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:34.520 sixty four owners who were also using the service. You 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.640 could not use q link to connect with people who 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.440 are using competing services. There was no inner connectivity. It 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.680 cost about ten dollars a month to subscribe to this service, 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:47.280 and if you wanted to use most of the features, 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:50.520 there was an additional charge of several cents per minute, 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:53.520 like six to eight cents per minute after the first 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.680 hour of use each month. So if you subscribed, you 0:16:56.720 --> 0:17:01.520 would typically get sixty minutes of uh plus service is 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.840 what they called it, wrapped up in that and beyond 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:07.320 sixty minutes he would have to start paying per minute 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:10.679 of use. Steve Case would work super hard in his 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.919 division to promote que link and get more Commodore sixty 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.440 four users on board. Eventually the company would have about 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:23.159 a hundred thousand subscribers using Commonore sixty four accounts. Now, 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.000 for the next few bits of information, the next few 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.919 dates I'm going to talk about, there's somewhat muddled. I 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.720 went through a lot of different sources while researching these episodes, 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:35.199 and the problem is that there are a lot of 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:39.440 sources that have slightly different dates for when things happened. 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:45.560 So rather than say definitively that X happened on Y date, 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:47.880 I'm going to do my best but keep in mind 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:50.360 some of these could be off by a year one 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.160 way or another, because no one seems to agree on 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:59.560 when everything actually happened. So circa n Quantum Services, Quantum 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:05.639 Computers Services expanded by creating similar products called PC link 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.840 and apple Link. They had essentially the same sort of 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.119 features as q link did for a Commodore sixty fours, 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:16.520 but these were for Apple and IBM compatible computers. They 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:20.880 also created a service for Tandy computer owners to take 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.240 advantage of the same sort of stuff that q link 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:27.439 customers had been using. However, these were not interoperable. You 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:31.199 couldn't use the computer on Apple Link and communicate with 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:36.119 someone on pc link, so these were all independent services. 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.000 You could communicate with anyone else who was on that service, 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:43.159 just not with on one of the other services. So 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:46.800 this again was not the Internet, but rather centralized servers 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:51.600 that customers were dialing into in order to access these features. 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:56.560 Sometime around the company launched its first instant messaging service, 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.960 a precursor to what would become a O L Instant 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.720 Messenger or AIM. I'll talk about AIM more later on 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.840 in this series of episodes. One other super important moment 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.520 happened around nine nine. According to the official A O. 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:17.280 L History, that's when the You've got mail alert debuted. 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:19.560 So if you've ever heard that phrase, it comes from 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:23.199 A O L. And specifically it comes from nine. The 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.560 phrase would become iconic in the early days of the Internet. 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:29.680 It became a bit of a cultural meme. Folks would 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.480 mimic the notification or they would use it as a 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:37.000 punchline to a joke. Later on, when people had smartphones 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.960 that can actually play sound bites, that would become some 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:44.840 people's message alert system, you've got mail. The man whose 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:48.439 voice says You've got mail for A O L is 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:53.160 Lwood Edwards. Now Edwards. His wife, who was a customer 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:58.480 service representative for Quantum Computer Services, had overheard Steve Case 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.720 say he really will that they could have a voice 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.280 component to the online service interfaces, that the company had 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:10.600 something to differentiate their service from other products. So she 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:13.960 came home and she told her husband, Elwood about this. 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:19.040 And Elwood was a voiceover performer as well as a broadcaster. 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:24.679 He had a history in this kind of thing. So he, 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.040 according to the story, went into his living room and 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:30.800 he got a cassette player, which was a thing back 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:34.240 in those days. And a cassette tape and he recorded 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:37.600 himself saying several phrases including welcome and you've got mail, 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:39.880 and lots of others, and then they sent it off 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:43.360 to Steve Case and he got the gig. He's obviously 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:45.680 done lots of other work. Like I said, he's had 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:49.679 a long history in broadcasting. But Steve Case liked it. 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.320 He said, this is the tone and the technique we want, 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:55.399 and they went with it. So the phrase would become 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.520 intrinsically linked with A O L Services In those days. 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:02.040 It was famous enough to become the title of a 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:06.720 romantic comedy film in n starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:09.600 A O L got a lot of mileage out of 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:13.320 those phrases. As for Elwood, in two thousand and sixteen, 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.520 he popped up in online culture after a woman named 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:21.280 Brandy Barker uploaded a video of Elwood cheerfully reprising his 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:25.119 famous line he was driving her around because Elwood had 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:28.560 sort of retired from broadcasting but was working part time 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:32.159 as an uber driver in Ohio. It's actually a sweet 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:34.879 little video if you look it up, and that's pretty 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:40.960 much everywhere online. By the leadership of Quantum Computer Services, 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:44.400 felt that the company needed a rebranding to better reflect 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:48.440 what it did what its products were. So Steve Case 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:52.960 held a contest internally to rename the company, and employees 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:55.800 got to vote on the various nominees, and the name 0:21:55.880 --> 0:21:59.320 that went out over all the others was America Online, 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:03.560 and so Quantum Services Quantum Computer Services ditched its name 0:22:03.640 --> 0:22:07.439 for a o L. That happened in nineteen Now a 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:10.920 o L was not the first online service provider, as 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:13.639 I said, the first of those came out more or 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:17.040 less in nineteen seventy nine. These dates are also kind 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:20.560 of fuzzy because it really depends upon when you would 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:24.160 consider the beginning of the service. There was some limited 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:27.679 services in nineteen seventy eight when you could call into 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:31.480 computers after a certain time because the computers during the 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:33.399 day would be used for one purpose, but in the 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:36.679 evening they could, when they would otherwise be idle, they 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:38.800 could be put to use for this kind of stuff. 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:42.159 Seventy nine was really when things were starting to take effect, 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:45.520 and one of those early services was compu Serve. One 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:47.280 of these days, I'm gonna have to do a full 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:52.640 episode just about compu Serve. Another one was called the source. Now, 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:55.960 those services may have been what convinced William von Meister 0:22:56.160 --> 0:22:58.879 to launch Control Video Corporation in the first place in 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:01.600 ninety three. Might have thought, I want to do the 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.240 same thing that they're doing with computers, but I'm going 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:07.119 to do it for home video game consoles because that 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:10.640 market is red hot. So copy serving the source. We're 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:14.520 pretty simple dial up services. Users could connect using a 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:17.720 dial up modem to a computer. Sometimes they might even 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:21.159 have to lift a telephone off of its cradle and 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:24.679 put it into a special other cradle that's connected to 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:28.600 the computer they're using. People who have used old modems 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:31.919 know what I'm talking about. The interfaces were text based. 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:35.960 They were not graphic user interfaces, both because computers weren't 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:40.159 really capable of displaying complex images, and also because it 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:43.640 cut down on how much data needed to go across 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:46.560 those phone lines and those modems. Because, like I said, 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:50.960 early modems had really limited data transfer capacities. You didn't 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:53.240 want to try and send a big file it would 0:23:53.240 --> 0:23:56.880 take forever. Since the early days, the basic services were 0:23:56.880 --> 0:23:58.959 pretty much what you would find if you had been 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:01.560 a que link user. Typically you'd have some sort of 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:06.720 electronic mail service bulletin boards or forums for discussion, news feeds, 0:24:06.720 --> 0:24:09.600 that kind of thing. You were limited to communicating again 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:11.960 with the people who used the same service you did. 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:15.159 With some minor exceptions, there were some third parties that 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:18.680 offered up some cross service communication tools that would work 0:24:19.359 --> 0:24:23.040 on services that had similar architectures. But for the most part, 0:24:23.160 --> 0:24:25.800 you were limited to just your own community. You couldn't 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:28.800 chat with people who used other ones. The online service 0:24:28.800 --> 0:24:33.040