please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . june 2009 learn how and when to remove this template message compuserve type subsidiary of aol industry internet & communications founded 1969 ; 47 years ago 1969 as compu serv network inc. headquarters columbus ohio united states products online services isp website compuserve.com compuserve compuserve information service also known by its acronym cis was the first major commercial online service in the united states . it dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid 1990s . at its peak in the early 1990s cis was known for its online chat system message forums covering a variety of topics extensive software libraries for most computer platforms and a series of popular online games notably megawars iii and island of kesmai . they are also known for their introduction of the gif format for pictures and cis was a very popular gif exchange mechanism . aol s launch into the pc market in 1991 marked the beginning of the end for cis . aol used a monthly subscription instead of hourly rates so for active users it was much less expensive . aol also used a gui based client and while such systems existed for cis they only supported a subset of the system s functionality and were purchased separately . in response cis lowered their hourly rates on several occasions . the number of users grew peaking at 3 million in april 1995 . by this point aol had over 20 million users in the us alone but this was off their peak of 27 million due to customers leaving for lower cost offerings . cis finally introduced monthly pricing in late 1997 but by that time the number of users leaving all online services for dialup internet service providers was reaching a crescendo . in 1997 cis s parent company h & r block announced its desire to sell the company . a complex deal was worked out with worldcom acting as a broker resulting in cis being sold to aol . while continuing the original service renamed compuserve classic aol also used the compuserve brand for several low cost offerings ; compuserve 2000 was a rebranded aol client with separate services while compuserve dialler was a low cost dialup isp . compuserve classic shut down in 2009 compuserve 2000 followed suit in 2011 . compuserve dialer continues to operate as an internet portal . contents 1 history 1.1 founding 1.2 technology 1.3 cis 1.4 newspapers 1.5 selling connectivity 1.6 file transfers 1.7 internet 2 compuserve uk 3 user ids and e mail addresses 4 custom portals 5 market share 6 technology and law 7 wow 8 worldcom acquisition and deal with aol 9 post aol acquisition 10 current versions 11 see also 12 references 13 external links history edit founding edit compuserve was founded in 1969 as compu serv network inc. the earliest advertising shows the name with initial caps in columbus ohio as a subsidiary of golden united life insurance . while jeffrey wilkins the son in law of golden united founder harry gard sr. is widely credited as the first president of compuserve the initial president was actually dr. john r. goltz . 1 goltz and wilkins were both graduate students in electrical engineering at the university of arizona . early employees also recruited from the university of arizona included sandy trevor inventor of the compuserve cb simulator chat system doug chinnock and larry shelley . wilkins replaced goltz as ceo within the first year of operation . the company objectives were twofold to provide in house computer processing support to golden united life insurance ; and to develop as an independent business in the computer time sharing industry by renting time on its pdp 10 midrange computers during business hours . it was spun off as a separate company in 1975 trading on the nasdaq under the symbol cmpu . concurrently the company recruited executives who shifted the focus from offering time sharing services in which customers wrote their own applications to one that was focused on packaged applications . the first of these new executives was robert tillson who left service bureau corporation then a subsidiary of control data but originally formed as a division of ibm to become compuserve s executive vice president of marketing . he then recruited charles mccall who followed jeff wilkins as ceo and later became ceo of medical information firm hbo & co. maury cox who became ceo after the departure of mccall and robert massey who followed cox as ceo . barry berkov was recruited from xerox to head product development and marketing . in 1977 compuserve s board changed the company s name to compuserve incorporated . in 1980 h & r block acquired compuserve . the purchase provided cash to expand operations and helped h & r block diversify its tax season based earnings . technology edit the original 1969 dial up technology was fairly simple the local phone number in cleveland for example was a line connected to a time division multiplexer that connected via a leased line to a matched multiplexer in columbus that was connected to a time sharing host system . in the earliest buildups each line terminated on a single machine at compuserve s host so different numbers had to be used to reach different computers . later the central multiplexers in columbus were replaced with pdp 8 minicomputers and the pdp 8s were connected to a dec pdp 15 minicomputer that acted as switches so a phone number was not tied to a particular destination host . finally compuserve developed its own packet switching network implemented on dec pdp 11 minicomputers acting as network nodes that were installed throughout the us and later in other countries and interconnected . over time the compuserve network evolved into a sophisticated multi tiered network incorporating asynchronous transfer mode atm frame relay fr internet protocol ip and x. 25 technologies . in 1981 the times explained compuserve s technology in one sentence compuserve is offering a video text like service permitting personal computer users to retrieve software from the mainframe computer over telephone lines . 2 compuserve was also a world leader in other commercial services . one of these was the financial services group which collected and consolidated financial data from myriad data feeds including compustat disclosure i b e s as well as the price quote feeds from the major exchanges . compuserve developed extensive screening and reporting tools that were used by many investment banks on wall street . cis edit the consumer information service had been developed almost clandestinely in 1978 and marketed as micronet through radio shack . many within the company did not favor the project ; it was called schlock time sharing by the commercial time sharing sales force . it was allowed to exist initially because consumers used the computers during evening hours when the compuserve computers were otherwise idle . as it became evident that it would be a hit compuserve dropped the micronet name in favor of their own . compuserve s origin was approximately concurrent with that of the source . both services were operating in early 1979 being the first online services . micronet was made popular through the issue 2 of commodore disk user which included programs on how to connect and run micronet programs . by the mid 1980s compuserve was one of the largest information and networking services companies in existence and it was the largest consumer information service in the world . it operated commercial branches in more than 30 us cities selling primarily network services to major corporations throughout the united states . consumer accounts could be bought in most computer stores a box with an instruction manual and a trial account login and awareness of this service was extremely high . by 1987 the consumer side would be 50 % of compuserve revenues . the service continued to improve in terms of user interface and offerings and in 1989 compuserve purchased and dismantled one of its main competitors the source . the corporate culture was entrepreneurial encouraging skunkworks projects . alexander sandy trevor secluded himself for a weekend writing the cb simulator a chat system that soon became one of cis s most popular features . instead of hiring employees to manage the forums they contracted with sysops who received compensation based on the success of their own forum s boards libraries and chat areas . 3 newspapers edit in july 1980 working with the associated press compuserve began hosting text versions of the columbus dispatch . the new york times virginian pilot and ledger star the washington post san francisco examiner san francisco chronicle and los angeles times were added in 1981 to what became known as the compuserve experiment . additional newspapers followed bringing the total number of different newspapers available to subscribers to eleven . 4 according to an editor involved in the project accessing the articles in these newspapers made up 5 % of compuserve s traffic . reading an entire newspaper using this method was impractical however . the text of a 0.20 print edition newspaper would take two to six hours to download at a cost of 5 per hour after 6 p.m. . 4 5 selling connectivity edit another major unit of compuserve the compuserve network services was formed in 1982 to generate revenue by selling connectivity on the nationwide packet network compuserve had built to support its time sharing service . compuserve designed and manufactured its own network processors based on the dec pdp 11 and wrote all the software that ran in the network . often and erroneously called an x. 25 network the compuserve network implemented a mixture of standardized and proprietary layers throughout the network . one of the proprietary layers was called adaptive routing . 6 the adaptive routing system implemented two powerful features . one is that the network operated entirely in a self discovery mode . when a new switch was added to the network by connecting it to a neighbor via a leased telephone circuit the new switch was discovered and absorbed into the network without explicit configuration . to change the network configuration all that was needed was to add or remove connections and the network would automatically reconfigure . the second feature implemented by adaptive routing was often talked about in network engineering circles but was implemented only by cns establishing connection paths on the basis of real time performance measurements . as one circuit became busy traffic was diverted to alternative paths to prevent overloading and poor performance for users . while the cns network was not itself based on the x. 25 protocol the network presented a standard x. 25 interface to the outside world providing dialup connectivity to corporate hosts and allowing compuserve to form alliances with private networks tymnet and telenet among others . this gave compuserve the largest selection of local dialup phone connections in the world in an era when network usage charges were expensive but still lower than long distance charges . other networks permitted compuserve access to still more locations including international locations usually with substantial connect time surcharges . it was common in the early 1980s to pay a 30 per hour charge to connect to compuserve which at the time cost 5 to 6 per hour before factoring in the connect time surcharges . this resulted in the company being nicknamed compuspend compu erve or ci . cns has been the primary supplier of dial up communications for credit card authorizations for more than 20 years a competence developed through its long relationship with visa international . at the peak of this line of business compuserve carried millions of authorization transactions each month representing several billion dollars of consumer purchase transactions . for