CompuServe
CompuServe
Type
Subsidiary of AOL
Founded
1969
Headquarters
Columbus, Ohio, USA
Industry
Internet & Communications
Products
online services, ISP
Website
www.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 play-
er through the mid-1990s, when it was side-
lined by the rise of information services such
as AOL that charged monthly subscriptions
rather than hourly rates. Today the Com-
puServe Information Service operates as an
online service provider and an Internet ser-
vice provider, owned by AOL.
History
CompuServe was founded in 1969 as Compu-
Serv Network, Inc. (the earliest advertising
show the name with initial caps) in Colum-
bus, 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 actu-
ally Dr. John R. Goltz. Goltz and Wilkins were
both graduate students in Electrical Engin-
eering at the University of Arizona. Other
early employees were also recruited from the
University of Arizona, including Sandy Trevor
(inventor of the CompuServe CB Simulator
chat system), Doug Chinnock, and Larry
Shelley. Wilkins replaced Goltz as CEO with-
in the first year of operation.
The objectives of the new company were
twofold: to provide in-house computer pro-
cessing support to Golden United Life Insur-
ance Co.; and to develop as an independent
business in the computer time-sharing in-
dustry, by renting time on its PDP-10 mid-
range computers during business hours. It
was spun off as a separate company in 1975,
trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol
CMPU.
At the same time, the company recruited a
number of executives who shifted the focus
from offering raw timesharing services, in
which customers wrote their own applica-
tions, to one that was focused on packaged
applications. The