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The World Wide Web in 1985: A Revolutionary Beginning

In 1985, there was no such thing as the World Wide Web. Heck, even the idea of computerizing every home was still catching on. However, despite this lack of understanding, the company behind Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64, had already made a significant impact.

Quantum Link: A Pioneer in Online Services

The Commodore 64, one of the most popular home computers at the time, offered users a glimpse into the future with its online service. With full-color animated graphics, real-time chat rooms, virtual shopping, and even the ability to play multiplayer games online against other users, Quantum Link was a true pioneer in the field.

The Legacy of Quantum Link

This innovative service later became America Online, which propelled itself to become one of the largest internet providers on the planet throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s. The success of America Online can be attributed to the numerous failed projects that were part of its development process.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enIn 1985, there was no suchthing as the World Wide Web.Heck, even the idea of computerin every home was still catching on.And yet there was Quantum Linkfor the Commodore 64,an online service with full-color animated graphics,real-time chat rooms, virtual shopping,and even the ability to play multiplayer gamesonline against other users.This later became America Online,which propelled itself to being one of thelargest internet providers on the planetthroughout the '90s and into the early 2000s.And yet, the whole thing was theresult of so many failed projectsthat the press referred to thecompany behind Quantum Linkas a \"cockroach.\"What happened?This is LGR Tech Tales,where we take a lookat noteworthy stories of technological inspiration,failure and everything in between.This episode tells the tale of theunlikely origins of America Onlinethrough a little service called Quantum Link.It's the late 1970s.Home computer sales were really taking offshifting thousands of units in the United States alone,through companies like Radio Shack,Apple and Commodore.But while this burgeoning marketgenerated plenty of excitement,actually using the machines was a bitlacking in terms of social interaction,unless you went out and visiteda local computer users group.And although various communicationsnetworks like the ARPANEThad existed on computing platforms for years,this was mostly limited to governmentbusinesses and higher education,with not really much of anythingavailable for home computers.So the market was wide open fora network suitable for those users,and two services rose to the challenge in 1978.Radio Shack's MicroNET,which later became CompServe,and the Digital Broadcasting Corporation, or DBC,from Bill von Meister and Jack Taub.Mr. Taub was an investormost known at time for serving asChairman of the Board for Scott Publishing,creators of the Scott catalogue,often referred to as the \"stamp collector's bible.\"As well as making a ton of money bystriking a deal with the U.S. Postal Serviceto sell Scott's stamp catalogues andmerchandise in 35,000 post offices.Then, there was Bill von Meister,a man whose friendsand colleagues referred toas a pathological dreamerand a serial entrepreneur,fresh off his success with a long-distancetelephone service called TdX Systems.And his latest idea caughtthe attention of Jack Taub,who was looking for a new investmentin the Washington, D.C. area.So one of the big appeals of connectingcomputers to other computerswas so you could send electronic mail, or \"e-mail.\"Ooh, what an idea!Von Meister's thought wasto transmit these messagesover FM subcarriers,which were the unused partsof the FM radio spectrum.And so, with $500,000,von Meister and Taub foundedthe Digital Broadcasting Corporationin 1978.Due to technical challenges thatcouldn't be overcome, though,the idea was soon scrapped and they were forcedto move on.But they weren't gonna stop,and what came next was the result of seeingso many data centers in theWashington area that went unusedmost of the time.Why not let folks access thishuge source of informationusing a dial-up modemfrom a computer at home?Hmm, that was promising, so in 1979,DBC rebranded to SourceTelecomputing Corporation,with the service itself beingtitled simply \"The Source.\"It was formally announced at Comdex in June of 1979,as a service that allowed computer users to dial inusing home telephone lines to not only send emailsbut check the news and stocks,post to electronic bulletin boards,and even play games like Star Trek and Hammurabifor a rate of anywhere from $2.75to $10 an hour.It seemed to be a guaranteed hitwith over 5,000 people signing upto the service within one year,and even Professor Issac Asimovdeclared the source to be\"the start of the information age.\"Granted he *was* their paid spokesperson.But, hey! Issac Asimov! Wow!However, behind the scenes, it was chaotic.Source Telecomputing's co-foundershad been butting heads since the start,and even disputed who came up withthe idea for The Source in the first place.And in all the excitement, their debtshad risen into the multiple millions.But at the same time, they'd caught theattention of the Reader's Digest Association,who saw great potential in the possibilitiesfor electronic publication,and wanted to purchase the company.Talb took the reins in a hurryand sold 51% of The Source to theReader's Digest Association in 1980for $3 million,setting off a flurry of lawsuits by von Meisterand he won a settlement against him forillegally seizing control of the company.Taub then sold off a whole lot moreof the company to Reader's Digest–they owned 80% of it–and von Meister just went off to do his own thing.He was flush with cash andeager to start a new business,so he began working on his next idea.And that...was music on demand.Similar to The Source in that itrelied on accessing data from home,he called it the Home Music Store,and the idea was to beam music via satellitefrom a studio in Utah,backed by the Osmond family.Yes, *that* Osmond family.Anyway, the Home Music Storewould let you select a song, pay for it,and a satellite service would thentransmit it to a local cable TV system.Then they'd broadcast it to your homeand you could record it to tape.Yeah, no, home taping was already killing music,if companies like Warner Bros. were to be believed,and the idea flopped before it got off the ground.But, hey, it was already talking with Warner at the time,and seeing as they owned Atari,why not try it with games instead?This resulted in the founding of theControl Video Corporation in 1982and their first product:the Gameline.A beefy $60 cartridge for the Atari 2600,containing its own modem and internal storage.Von Meister wanted to announce it at theJanuary Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.But seeing as he didn't want to pay foran expensive booth on the show floor,he did the only logical thing.He paid for a hot air balloon, a bar of gold,and a bunch of bikini-clad showgirls.Tethered to the Tropicana Hotel,the hot air balloon was emblazonedwith huge red letters that read GAMELINE.The showgirls would escort visitorsdrawn in by the balloon to a suite in the hotel,where there would be ademonstration of the Gameline, plusa chance to win a bar of gold.And wouldn't you know it? It worked.Interested parties started pouring in,with preliminary orders reaching 150,000 units.And here's how the Gameline worked–and keep in mind this is in 1982.After paying a $15 fee,subscribers dialed in to browsea library of games on a server.And then it would downloadone at a time to the cartridgeand people could play the gameas long as they wanted to offlineuntil they booted it backed up andselected another game, and so on.There were grand plans to expand this as wellinto accessing news, banking, messaging and so on,but NOPE!Gameline turned out to be an expensive failure,shipping out 40,000 unitsand having retailers ship back 37,000 of thembecause no one was buying!Throw in the video game market crash of 1983,and Gameline was ensureda swift and merciless death.But there was still a spark ofgreatness in von Meister's mess,which brings us to Jim Kimsey,Mark Seriff,and Steve Case.Mr. Kimsey was a Vietnam veteran-turned-successful businessman,who had founded a slew ofsuccessful trendy singles bars.Mr. Seriff had a Master's in Sciencefrom MIT and years of experiencedeveloping audio and data communicationstechnologies for multiple companies.And Mr. Case was...well, he was a guy in his mid-20swho ran a business out of hisapartment tasting pizzas for Pizza Hut.But since Case's brother Danwas a major investor for the company,he had a way in,being hired as a marketing intern.In fact, all these guys werebrought in by various investorsand friends of the company who werehighly concerned about the future.And this introduction of new bloodmeant it was time for the old blood to leave,with von Meister being oustednot long after this.Apparently, the final straw was when heshowed up to an urgent creditors meetingin a brand spanking new BMW 735i.And yet their employees hadn't been paid in ages,and they were so low on cash,people were using cardboardto separate desks becausethey couldn't afford cubicles.Von Meister was promptly askedto leave and not come back.Leaving everything in the handsof Kimsey, who became the CEO,Seriff, who became the CTO,and Case, who became theirVice-President of Marketing.At this point, there were a total ofabout ten people at the companyand why not just start over?One of the first orders of businesswas to rename Control Videoto Quantum Computer Services, Inc.A name with no actual meaning, but they liked it,because it sounded scientific and trustworthy.And it was none other than CommodoreInternational who took that bait.In partnership with Commodore, QuantumComputer Services would cease making hardwareand instead focused on softwarefor the Commodore 64 and 128.Quantum then paid $50,000to license some softwarefor a service called PlayNet,which was the first graphical person-to-persononline communication and game networklaunched in 1984and somehow it was even worseoff than Quantum Computer was.So they needed the money and they took the deal.Quantum used the PlayNet software and protocolsas the basis for their own onlineservice they called Quantum Link,or Q-Link for short.And on the night of November 1, 1985,Quantum Link officially launched witha peak of almost 100 concurrent users.In fact, it was pretty stable,and by the end of 1986,the service had expanded to 50,000 subscribers.And although this still wasn'tfantastic in the eyes of investors,it was enough to get theattention of Lucasfilm Games.With their product Habitat,they introduced the first graphical large-scalevirtual community exclusively through Q-Link.Subscribers could createtheir own custom avatarsand interact with a virtual worldin real time alongside other users.A whole 8-bit reality to explore,complete with its own governmentrun by other players.And it was created using softwarethat later became the basis for LucasArts'Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion,or SCUMM,which is legendary in its own right.And all along this time, Steve Casekept getting better and better at his job,defying expectations and impressing enoughto become the Executive Vice-President in 1987.But as promising as their executives were,and as forward-thinking as their software was,it still just wasn't quite enough.And Q-Link still wasn't a huge hit.And other online services suchas Prodigy and CompuServewere blowing past them interms of content and users alike.In fact, CompuServe was snapping upcompetitors all over the place,and even bought Quantum Link'sdistant ancestor, The Source,in 1989.Bulletin board systems werealso on the rise in popularity.And while they lacked thegraphical prowess of Q-Link,they had a leg up with theircustomized niche communitiesand overall accessibility.It was also becoming clearer with each passing monththat the future lay with IBM PC compatibles,yet Q-Link was still only onCommodore's aging 64 line of computers.It was time for a change.And while they knew this change would be big,no one could have anticipatedjust how massively this changewould affect the future.If you enjoyed this video, then thanks,and I hope you stay tuned for thenext one which is going to coverthe rise and subsequent fall of America Online.AIM, those friggin' floppy disks and CDsthat would come in the mail every other day.So stay tuned for that.And as always, thank you very much for watching.\n"