Barry Shein Founded the First Dialup ISP (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on Monday August 4, 2014 @10:14AM from the not-everybody-loved-the-idea-of-putting-the-masses-online dept.

Back in the dawn of prehistory, only universities, government agencies, and a few big corporations could get on the Internet. The rest of us either had computers connected to nothing (except maybe an electric outlet), Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL or another service or possibly to an online bulletin board service (BBS). And then, one day in 1989, Barry Shein hooked a server and some modems to an Internet node he managed for a corporate/academic wholesale Internet provider -- and started selling dialup accounts for $20 per month to individuals, small companies, and just about anyone else who came along. Barry called his ISP The World, which is still out there with a retro home page ("Page last modified April 27, 2006"), still selling shell accounts. We may run a second interview with Barry next week, so please stay tuned. (Alternate Video Link)

2 of 116 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

First? by shameless · 2014-08-04 10:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

I want to say "First", but I also want to say that I knew Barry back when he started this whole thing. Congrats on your staying power!
Re:Uh...try again by Maxwell · 2014-08-04 10:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

Think again. AOL, prodigy, compuserve were all proprietary, isolated systems. They did not provide internet access. It wasn't until 89/90 that there email services could even talk to each other (via the internet).
Source: old enough to have listed compuserve "forums" and AOL "keywords" on my business cards...