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Old 02-11-2013, 01:56 PM
 
Location: North West Northern Ireland.
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I think my house has had internet access all my life or at least from 3 or 4 years old.
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Old 02-11-2013, 03:21 PM
 
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I think about '93 / '94 thru AOL (some liked to call it - internet with training wheels). I might have logged on a bit earlier somewhere else, but it was more of the basic DOS type stuff that was way more boring than AOL was then.
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Old 02-11-2013, 09:52 PM
 
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When was the WWW, even first available to the general public? I understand that the WWW was up by 1991. By the time I first saw the internet in 1996, it was available to the general public in the home. What I am trying to figure out is when exactly did the ISPs first become available to the general public? The internet connections, as I understand it, first can to the general public in the home through the phone companies, no? But when could the average Joe call up their phone company and ask for internet access?
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Old 02-11-2013, 09:57 PM
 
Location: San Marcos, TX
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1990 through a guy I was dating who worked as a systems analyst. No one else I knew back then had their own computer at home, much less access to a BBS (CompuServe if I remember right?). Thing is, I didn't know it charged him per hour and I was exploring the whole BBS thing all day while he was at work and I was hanging out at his apartment. Oops! He forgave me, thankfully... young and blonde and ditzy worked wonders back then.

I later moved on to AOL using the "free trial memberships" and changing my username constantly. That was in 1993 or 94 though.
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Old 02-11-2013, 09:59 PM
 
Location: Poway
1,446 posts, read 2,737,132 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lentzr View Post
When was the WWW, even first available to the general public? I understand that the WWW was up by 1991. By the time I first saw the internet in 1996, it was available to the general public in the home. What I am trying to figure out is when exactly did the ISPs first become available to the general public? The internet connections, as I understand it, first can to the general public in the home through the phone companies, no? But when could the average Joe call up their phone company and ask for internet access?
The Internet is more than WWW.

I discovered it in college around late 1992 or so. Telnet, FTP, NNTP, IRC, Gopher, Archie, among other protocols were popular. So, you didn't typically visit web sites back then, just went to news servers or telneted into servers.

Some Swiss guy at CERN came up with an idea of using HTML to markup content and present this over sockets using HTTP. World has never been the same.

Most of those other protocols have been implemented with HTTP, so they are more or less obsolete (except some).
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Old 02-12-2013, 07:34 PM
 
1,446 posts, read 4,589,652 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by futbol View Post
The Internet is more than WWW.

I discovered it in college around late 1992 or so. Telnet, FTP, NNTP, IRC, Gopher, Archie, among other protocols were popular. So, you didn't typically visit web sites back then, just went to news servers or telneted into servers.

Some Swiss guy at CERN came up with an idea of using HTML to markup content and present this over sockets using HTTP. World has never been the same.

Most of those other protocols have been implemented with HTTP, so they are more or less obsolete (except some).
Correct! The internet and WWW are NOT the same. I should have articulated my question better. What I am trying to figure out is when was the internet first available to the general user. Yes, there were internets available before 1991, ARPANET (I believe created in 1969) being the earliest. What I am trying to figure out is when could the general public access the WWW. However, only scientists and computer techs really used it or accessed it. The general public did not. You see, I remember back in around 1993, my father talking about how "computers communicating with each other" was going to change everything. He told me the general idea about how I will be able to look up any topic and get a ton of hits. Now, I was 14 at the time, so my memory is a bit vague about what he was actually saying. I could tell that the internet was going to be big, but do you really understand that at 14?! Anyway, sometime in the early 1990s we got the first family computer, a Compaq Presario. When we got it...my memory is a bit fuzzy about the exact date...he told me that the internet would soon be accessible through the phone company. By 1995, it was definitely available...I remember asking him about that but by then he was very ill with cancer to be concerned about computers. He died that year and our plans for a family internet connection were put off. I did not actually use the internet until seeing it at a friends house in 1996. So what I am trying to ask is when was the general public first going online? I understand that the Mosiac browser coming out in 1993, helped begin the internet revolution. However, people had to access the www through their telephone companies first! When did these ISPs first offer this service to the general public in their homes? If I were to take a wild guess, I would say 1993-1995. No? What I want to know is when could the average person call up their phone company (provided they already had a PC) and say "hook me up to the WWW!"
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Old 02-12-2013, 08:55 PM
 
Location: Poway
1,446 posts, read 2,737,132 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lentzr View Post
Correct! The internet and WWW are NOT the same. I should have articulated my question better. What I am trying to figure out is when was the internet first available to the general user. Yes, there were internets available before 1991, ARPANET (I believe created in 1969) being the earliest. What I am trying to figure out is when could the general public access the WWW. However, only scientists and computer techs really used it or accessed it. The general public did not. You see, I remember back in around 1993, my father talking about how "computers communicating with each other" was going to change everything. He told me the general idea about how I will be able to look up any topic and get a ton of hits. Now, I was 14 at the time, so my memory is a bit vague about what he was actually saying. I could tell that the internet was going to be big, but do you really understand that at 14?! Anyway, sometime in the early 1990s we got the first family computer, a Compaq Presario. When we got it...my memory is a bit fuzzy about the exact date...he told me that the internet would soon be accessible through the phone company. By 1995, it was definitely available...I remember asking him about that but by then he was very ill with cancer to be concerned about computers. He died that year and our plans for a family internet connection were put off. I did not actually use the internet until seeing it at a friends house in 1996. So what I am trying to ask is when was the general public first going online? I understand that the Mosiac browser coming out in 1993, helped begin the internet revolution. However, people had to access the www through their telephone companies first! When did these ISPs first offer this service to the general public in their homes? If I were to take a wild guess, I would say 1993-1995. No? What I want to know is when could the average person call up their phone company (provided they already had a PC) and say "hook me up to the WWW!"
I think the first general public users of the internet were students. As you mentioned, most universities and government research organizations had access back in the late '80's/early '90's.

AT&T had a service, as did AOL and some others. You could get a .com email, but these were not commonplace as the internet was not crucial at that time. Many people who got accounts were those who also did the BBS thing previously (dial-up to various servers and leave messages, etc.).

Back in the very early '90's if you had a .com account some people might harass you as a person not worthy of using the net (not having a .org or .edu account). Kind of silly, but I've seen that. However, most people were very civil on the net back then.

Yes, the Mosaic browser allowed you to see pictures on the web -- a real breakthrough at the time. People left NCSA and started Netscape, where they created Mozilla (Godzilla + Mosaic). Microsoft later licensed Mosaic and it became IE. There were other browsers back then, too.
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Old 02-12-2013, 09:08 PM
 
Location: Wyoming
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At least where I lived, you didn't call the phone company and say, "hook me up."

I made my first connections in the early 80s to CompuServe. I plugged in my modem to the phone line and made a long distance call. I think my first modem was one of the fast ones -- 300 baud. It replaced 75 baud modems. Or maybe mine was 75 baud. Can't recall for sure. (Dial-up is now 56,000 baud.) I didn't really have any use for it at that point; I just did it for stuffs and giggles. The long distance call made it too darned expensive for much "browsing".

Then in 1990 I needed it for business, to send files to an out-of-town printer for a corporate magazine I was publishing. I got a new, fast modem, 2400 baud. (Still long distance rates.) Since I had the new modem I also looked around at other ways to use it. I found a "website", called GEnie -- General Electric Network for Information Exchange. It had a toll-free number you could call, and I think there was a $5 flat fee that would give you an hour or two of connection time per month, and extra time cost more. There were "roundtables" for different forums, and it worked much like C-D does -- bulletin boards. There were "rooms" where you could have live chat, but due the relatively high connection costs, I never went to one.

GEnie turned out to change my life. I had been hired to write some video scripts but had no experience at it so went to a writers board on GEnie to seek some advice. There I met my second wife, who was also a writer. We exchanged "emails" and started adding personal information and questions with them and just sort of "fell in like" with each other. (She lived 2000 miles from me, so neither of us expected to ever meet, but then I had to make a trip to NYC and asked if she'd like to meet. She did! We had a great weekend. She came out to visit me a few months later and never left. We were married a year after that.)

AOL was the next big thing. I was a member, but they became so popular that it was difficult to make a connection with them. I finally gave up.

And then, I think it was around 1994 or '95, I was invited to invest in a new internet provider for our rural community. The goal was to get 5 or 6 people to each invest $10K for start-up costs. I'd have done it but was a little short of cash at the time. But I did sign up the first week it was available. That company is now one of the largest ISPs in the northern Rockies with ISP offices in 5 states and countless communities! And I had invested hundred$ of thousand$ in real estate that didn't make me a dime!

That was the real beginning of the WWW. My first browser was Netscape 1.0, as I recall.
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Old 02-12-2013, 10:13 PM
 
Location: Poway
1,446 posts, read 2,737,132 times
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A friend of mine also met his wife online similar to that. It was via an online adventure role playing game, similar to Dungeons and Dragons, only online and all text based. They also had a distance challenge -- living in different parts of the US/Canada.

Yes, they are both nerds.
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Old 02-12-2013, 10:37 PM
dgz
 
806 posts, read 3,386,951 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by futbol View Post
The Internet is more than WWW.

I discovered it in college around late 1992 or so. Telnet, FTP, NNTP, IRC, Gopher, Archie, among other protocols were popular. So, you didn't typically visit web sites back then, just went to news servers or telneted into servers.

Some Swiss guy at CERN came up with an idea of using HTML to markup content and present this over sockets using HTTP. World has never been the same.

Most of those other protocols have been implemented with HTTP, so they are more or less obsolete (except some).
Yes, same here. My first experience with it was in 1990 when I went to work at a company where everyone could access the Internet. I remember when one of my colleagues said, "Let me show you this thing called 'newsgroups'..." And then I was hooked. (Even though back then you had to use trn or rn or some other type of command-line based newsreader to read them.) :-)
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