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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 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.
He. Even in TFA itself it says that "Organizations wanting to use PGP for commercial purposes must obtain it on the Internet", so the software used to make that CD sale was puchasable "Online" before the CD in question.
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