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The First Online Purchase Was a Sting CD (Or Possibly Weed) (fastcompany.com)
tedlistens writes: On August 11, 1994, 21-year-old Dan Kohn, founder of a pioneering, online commerce site, made his first web sale. His customer, a friend of his in Philadelphia, spent $12.48, plus shipping costs on Sting's CD "Ten Summoner's Tales," in a transaction protected by PGP encryption. "Even if the N.S.A. was listening in, they couldn't get his credit card number," Kohn told a New York Times reporter in an article about NetMarket the following day. According to a new short video about the history of online shopping, there were a few precedents, including a weed deal between grad students on the ARPANET and a 74-year-old British grandmother who in 1984 used a Videotex—essentially a TV connected to telephone lines—to order margarine, eggs, and cornflakes.
Oh ye of ignoramus stance, the Minitel network was popular already in the mid 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
[...] grandmother who [...] used [...] Videosex [...]
Say wut?
...was online for years and years with "For Sale" groups, and some stores already had set up there. Before that, you'd see occasional "for sale" postings in a lot of groups.
I bought a book advertised in a post in 1989.
1982.
Enough said.
In early 1994 or late 1993 (I remember this, because it was before I moved from NJ to SC), I used to buy CDs on the Internet from a company called cdconnection.com. I think they were based in California. They didn't have a web presence then: you used ftp to download their catalog, then you used telnet to log in and place your order. (They didn't use encryption, but the Internet was a safer place back then.) I think I placed a total of 3 orders with them about a half dozen CDs in each order. They were shipped by UPS and all arrived promptly and complete.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I bought jeans and books and coffee on Compuserve and later in 1990 or earlier, on the first mosaic, books from books.com.
I worked for a San Diego Company called MediaShare (later changed to Elemental Software) that created a site with shopping cart for Tesco in 1994 or 1995. Not sure if it actually went live, but was not for Minitel, it was for the web.
I wrote the shopping-cart part. The server side was in C, either CGI or NSAPI for Netscape Server.
The company had software for creating catalogs on both print and CDROM. I convinced my boss that publishing to HTML as well might be a useful thing.
This article isn't about "Internet" purchases. It's about "online" purchases and you can be damn well sure we were doing that in the early 80's on BBS's but the first online sales happened way before then.
I mean for fuck's sake, CompuServe had online sales in the 60's.
I personally purchased things in the mid-1980's online using Quantum Link, but CompuServe dates back to 1969 so people were obviously making online purchases throughout the 1970's. BBSes were active and often linked together in massive networks from the 1970's through the 1990's. Whether that counts is up for debate.
If you're speaking strictly about the Internet, the Usenet forsale groups have been around for a long time. My first use of the Internet was in 1992 to sell some old computer junk, but Usenet dates back to the 1980's.
It's amazing how ignorant people are of the online world before 1995.
Exactly. I bought a swingset for my kid on CompuServe well before this date.
Plus I remember BB for sale sections.... I guess you could say the first WWW/Internet transaction but not the first online one.
Nope. That was not the first. Lots of purchases were made online before 1994. Online sales were already strong then. I had a company that was selling stuff over the internet back in 1988. Previous to that I had bought stuff over the internet.
I thought it was about eCommerce. It might be subtle difference but perhaps not. Posting a "for sale" note on usenet or a BBS and then paying for/picking up the item in person doesn't necessary qualify as ecommerce. Commerce yes, but not ecommerce. I think the transaction needs to take place electronically -- not just the "promise" to buy/sell.
We also had services like compuserve which allowed placing at least airline reservations (can't remember if they allowed outright purchases). Even that may not really qualify as payment was fixed to your account. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong -- I'm pushing the limits of my memory of a service I had ~30 years ago.
I believe the article is spot on with the CD sale being the first (or at least the first verifiable) "on line" purchase and the start of e-commerce. The payment type was selected (random credit card) -- the transaction was secure -- it was transmitted electronically -- received and funds transferred -- and the purchased item was delivered to the purchaser.
To argue earlier instances of "commerce" taking place using usenet or BBSs as a means to arrange the deal as being the first "ecommerce" is akin to saying the fact that light bulbs existed before Edison so what he did wasn't that important (other than take a wire that would glow for a few mins to a few hours and extend that to months and build it cheaply enough to sell to everyone and are now ubiquitous).
I think I just lost my faith in you.
I bought a Panasonic microwave oven from CompuServe for my parents in 1984. This microwave is still working. Used pretty much every day for the last 30 years.
-USR1
I bought stuff over the web earlier than that in 1994. Probably as much as a year earlier. And more than a year if you count non-web transactions.
the first retail transaction on the Internet using a readily available version of powerful data encryption software designed to guarantee privacy.
The /. summary leaves out that significant caveat.
I would love to know the first cryptographically secure e-commerce transaction outside of a testbed environment. If something similar to the August 11, 1994 https: transaction occurred prior to that date, that would be worth contacting the author about. By similar, I mean a transaction in which the buyer used a cryptographically secure method to provide payment information directly to the seller, vs. using a non-secure method like email to provide payment information, using an intermediary like CompuServe or the Post Office ("cash on delivery") to manage the payment, or providing direct payment through some other means such as via telephone-voice-call/dialup-modem-direct-to-the-vendor/dedicated-data-line-direct-to-the-vendor/fax/mail/in-person/etc.
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The article includes some important disclaimers not found in the summary:
* The 1971 ARPANET transaction "technically didn't count because money wasn't exchanged online: they only used the network to arrange a meeting place."
* The 1984 Videotext transation didn't count because the customer "paid for them in cash [at the time of delivery]. That's not exactly e-commerce."
Thanks to those who have already pointed out that you could buy things using Compu$erve (sorry, old habit$ die hard), Quantum Link, etc. and even via a telnet server before 1994.
Those mentioning buying things over BBSs (well, most BBSs anyways) and USENET are probably talking about using the network to arrange a purchase, not to actually conduct the purchase.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
about the sting CD, people had been buying things on "on-line" services for over a decade by that point
Prodigy was a joint venture between IBM and Sears, in 1984. One of the things you could do with it was online shopping. In 1988 it hosted what is considered the first eCommerce company in the US, PC Flowers.
Others have mentioned it already - because it's so obvious - but allow me to chime in: MiniTel was spread nationwide in France from the early eighties. That includes official public MiniTel booths, free home-terminals including both a keyboard and a screen, billboard add-campaing for MiniTel services and ecommerce and even a large widespread market for cybersex
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I bought software (on 5.5 inch floppies) over dial up internet with baud 2400 for statistics and other programs fro BBC Micro in 1983.
Regards Eion MacDonald
What is this shit? Minitel? Private selling on Usenet? The summary even has an earlier example...
The Diaspar Virtual Reality Network started selling "Fallen Angels" by permission of Baen Books in June 1, 1992. The price was $1.00 a copy and the first copy sold was to someone in New Zealand - making it an international sale!
I posit that the individual smoked a whole load of weed and in a moment of either poor judgement or stoned humor purchased a Sting CD.
I reckon he intended it to be sent to an enemy and that it was the precursor of Rickrolling.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it