Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 14 years and 9 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

I read via Ars Technica (and then heard in episode #1012 of Buzz Out Loud) that yesterday AOL shut down CompuServe.

A little piece of Internet history has now been laid to rest, as CompuServe was shut down for good just before this Fourth of July weekend. After some 30 years of service, CompuServe’s new owner has finally pulled the plug, leaving us to reminisce about the days when the Internet was young and we were still using modems whose speed was measured in baud.

Back in the mid-to-late 80s, if you got tired of calling local BBSes with your 2400 baud modem, or you were a traveling businessman of some sort who needed something called electronic mail, you might have subscribed to one of the big three online services: CompuServe, Prodigy, or GEnie.

I have fond memories of CompuServe, particularly the CB Simulator, a precursor to IRC. It was basically a series of big chat rooms (called bands) where you could talk to other CompuServe subscribers from around the country.

During the summers of the late 80s I was a member of the All-Ohio State Fair Band and lived on the Ohio state fairgrounds for three weeks in August with the other band members. When we weren’t performing or rehearsing, I would roam about the fairgrounds with friends enjoying what the fair had to offer. In the ODOT Building at that time there were technology and science exhibits from COSI, the Columbus-area science museum. They had lasers, a text-to-speech computer (we had all sorts of fun typing phrases into that thing, or having it sing “Beautiful Ohio“), and other interactive exhibits (mostly computer-driven). One of them was a Commodore 64 computer that was connected to CompuServe! Once we discovered the CB Simulator, we were hooked. We would spend hours there, chatting away in air conditioned comfort, monopolizing the exhibit. Once the word got out, it was harder and harder to find a time when someone from the band or choir wasn’t using the exhibit for the CB Simulator (or a few text-based interactive games) … it turned into a sort of fierce competition to see who could get over there the fastest when free time was available.

CompuServe provided a welcome link to the broader outside world, beyond the microcosm of the fairgrounds, for those three weeks when we didn’t have access to television, didn’t have money to call home on the payphone, and didn’t want to buy a newspaper. I was saddened when one year the COSI exhibits were no longer present … I guess we probably ran up too big a bill. 🙂

Fare thee well, CompuServe.