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I graduated from high school in 1995 and my brother graduated from college in 1993. At my high school, by the beginning of my senior year (1994) the faculty were "online"... they used some sort of text-based system (Usenet, Lynx, whatever, not sure of the terminology... I know they tapped into a local college's network.) They weren't using a Windows-based browser... it was all arrow-keys, etc.. It wasn't the internet as we know it now, although that was just beginning to come into being. (For reference, my college, a top college, had a website with text and some graphics in 1995 which explicitly stated it was "experimental.") I suspect that "schools online" doesn't mean that they were fully-wired with access for all students. Even if it was possible, it would have been considered unnecessary and expensive for even a high school, so to have over 1/3 of all American schools online in that way doesn't seem likely.
By college in fall 1995, we did have whole computer labs with Window-based browsers, but our e-mail was Unix-based. And obviously there weren't a whole lot of what we'd now consider "real" websites in existence, compared to now. "Internet" connection in dorms and college apartments was via a "data phone" and even in 1998 we were typically only accessing text-based Lynx, despite "the internet" being available in labs. And this is a private college with a desire/need to impress prospective students and parents with how cutting edge they are...
My brother was a Computer Science major and he used some form of networking (early "internet") in the early '90s at the same college. This access was only available to the CS crowd.
Last edited by cowbell76; 12-23-2013 at 09:24 AM..
What kind of Internet was it? Was it the Web or more like newsgroups or USENET?
I remember USENET and going to certain BBS's (I used BBS's and AOL at home at the time). However, I also remember using WWW Worm and visiting the CERN site with the WWW Virtual Library and using NCSA Mosaic.
In general though I would have to think that the 35% number in the OP, assuming it referred only to high schools or something like that; would have to refer to simply connecting computers to a remote network of some kind, not the "internet" per se.
I heard that over a third of US schools were online by 1994. This seems awfully early being that the Internet was only just starting to be open to the public right around that year.
Do you think they used NSFNET or perhaps are including online bulletin boards that aren't part of what we know as "The Internet" proper today?
My school got the internet in 1995, and our school district wasn't affluent or near tech companies. We got a grant from an office supply store either for my school or the district. Back in 1994, it was a lot more closed and there weren't so many web pages, but it was the "internet" nonetheless.
I went to college in 1996 and all the computer labs had the real internet. Dorms got high speed internet the following year. We all had pop email that was accessible via the web or on your own computer. But not so many students had computers in 1996 on campus, mostly desktops. I ended up getting a very expensive laptop in 1995. And only about 10-15% of students had them. By the time I finished that number inched up to about 25%.
Here's a good tidbit to add to my comment above, which provides some prospective... I went to an expensive college (around $30K a year then, almost $60K now) and less than 50% of students needed any form of financial aid to pay for that. Over 50% came from private secondary schools, almost all of which were expensive top boarding schools. So, you can imagine that if any kids would have been exposed to "the internet" at home or in school, these kids would have. But we had to have training sessions when we arrived, and in my group of maybe 20 kids being taught how to use e-mail, not a SINGLE ONE had ever sent an e-mail before. Most had never even used the internet, although some had AOL at home.
So, I stand by my guess that "online" means some form of networking for faculty members and in fewer cases limited access for students. I really doubt widespread access for students existed, even in high schools.
Page 14 of the document has a table breaking down the statistics in different ways. In the world of sources this is a pretty good source. Now, they don't explicitly say whether it is student access or something else, but they do claim that it is "internet" access.
Total for all schools: 35%
Total for elementary: 30%
Total for secondary: 49% (so nearly half of high schools had it)
Do you mean elementary and high schools or colleges and universities?
I'd be surprised if that many high schools were on line by then, but my impression is that by 1994 just about every college (and certainly every university) was connected. My family got Internet access that year (via AOL) and I remember just about everyone I chatted with on USENET having an *.edu address.
By 94 there were various options on net access.
After unsuccessful tries with compuserve and a propritary company which did web service, we found the net run by the local newspaper. You could pay by month or by year and they supported up to whatever was the fastest baud speed available. We continued to use them up until we split and moved. As print wasn't bringing in the money as well, they were smart and added net readers by full digital access to the paper with your service. This was in the early ninties.
I remember going from 600 to 1200 baud and thinking how fast it was. Then we upgraded to 2400 and that worked until streaming video and music came along. Now cable modems are saving cable tv companies.
I wish usenet wasn't just mostly full of spam today. alt.startrek.creative was a wonderful way to post and get feedback and suggestions. I met a very good friend there who now lives only a state away after she did a review of my first story. Places like fanfiction.net where I post now are nice, but you'd never have that happen there, and nobody bothers to comment on content or make suggestions.
I like the bbs style sites like this one where you actually get conversation. Won't do facebook and its ilk since they have no clear and permenant policy on privacy. Don't trust them.
I remember USENET and going to certain BBS's (I used BBS's and AOL at home at the time). However, I also remember using WWW Worm and visiting the CERN site with the WWW Virtual Library and using NCSA Mosaic.
In general though I would have to think that the 35% number in the OP, assuming it referred only to high schools or something like that; would have to refer to simply connecting computers to a remote network of some kind, not the "internet" per se.
We had an internet business using a website in 96. This was before Windows, using arrow keys. There were a lot of websites available by then. There were much less in graphics since it loaded very slow, and not so much in music or video since most people didn't have the speed to handle it.
Usenet was very popular and busy then too. I've noticed a few former local/regtional bbs's I used to visit have net based ones and it was after that time that Usenet was being clobbered by spammers and other bbs setups went on net sites like this one.
The internet started in the 50's, but www and html really came into being about 93, 94. AOL, Prodigy, and dial bulletin boards were around way before even in DOS platforms.
It doesn't surprise me; the Internet was "catching on" with some people I worked with at Amtrak in New York in the spring of '95, and I can recall at least one ad for some other product (snack food or the like) that mentioned "surfing the net" on radio the previous winter.
Going back a few years more, I used to "borrow" Bucknell University's well-appointed student computer lab as early as 1991 -- the need for user ID's and passwords hadn't yet sunk in -- and they had adopted the U of Minnesota's "turbo Gopher" search engine by that time.
And I can recall an early TV commercial for Bell Atlantic (Verizon had not yet been envisioned) making references to students accessing complicated data "when libraries and labs were closed" sometime back in the Eighties. (This was, of course, a long time before the "entertainment" value of the net was recognized; you just got a ton of data in text form)
And going back even further, one of the courses that led to my undoing as a graduate student was in a field called "automatic indexing" -- identifying the key words in the titles of a list of documents, and arranging a logical means to find the most relevant stuff; That was in the spring of 1972; does it sound familiar, Mssrs. Page and Brin?
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