CompuServe Requiem

The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, was shut down by its current owner, AOL this past week. The service, which provided its users addresses such as 73402,3893, was the first major online service although the number of users has dwindled in recent years. At its height, the service boasted about having over half a million users simultaneously on line. Many innovations we now take for granted, from online shopping, online stock quotations, and global weather forecasts just to name a few, were standard fare on CompuServe in the 1980s.

How did I miss this? Anyway, I had thought that this service had died long since.