I well remember my first connection to the internet. From a North London office on a state of the art IBM PC with Windows 3.1, I loaded up the Compuserve software from floppy disc, selected the closest dial up node from the list and hit dial. The fax modem screeched into action and I was eventually connected to CompuServe Information Service. (CIS)

The daddy of all online services at that time was home to forums on every conceivable subject. On-Line shopping? They had that. And stock quotes, worldwide weather forecasts, they even had online airline ticket booking via SABRE.
And of course it had email. For many of us our Compuserve email address was our first.

It always had an air of professional dignity not shared by many of its younger competitors. Compuserve users were always more tech savvy. A Compuserve account was a badge worn with pride by its users.

The original CompuServe user IDs consisted of seven octal digits in the form 7xxxx,xx – a legacy of PDP-10 architecture – (later nine octal digits in the form 7xxxx,xxxx and finally ten octal digits in the form 1xxxxx,xxxx) that were generated in advance and issued on printed “Snap Paks.” The Internet e-mail address of a CompuServe user was their user ID in the form xxxxx.xxxx@compuserve.com where the comma in the original ID was replaced with a period. In 1996, users were allowed to create an alias for their Internet e-mail address, which could also be used for a personal web page; the members who had used the service the longest were allowed first pick of the new addresses. In 1998, users were offered the option of switching their mailbox to a newer system that provided POP3 access via the Internet, so that any Internet mail program could be used. Current Compuserve email addresses look like XXXXXX@cs.com.

One popular use of CompuServe in the 1980s was file exchange, particularly pictures. From 1986 it hosted perhaps the first online comic in the world, T.H.E. Fox. CompuServe introduced a simple black-and-white image format known as RLE (run-length-encoding) to standardize the images so they could be shared among different microcomputer platforms. With the introduction of more powerful machines, universally supporting color, CompuServe introduced the much more capable GIF format, invented by Steve Wilhite. GIF went on to become the de facto standard for 8-bit images on the Internet in the early and mid 1990s.

Hundreds of thousands of users visited its thousands of moderated Forums, forerunners to the endless variety of discussion sites on the Web today. Many Forums were managed by independent producers who then administered the Forum and recruited moderators, called “sysops”. Among these were many where hardware and software companies offered customer support.

In 1992, CompuServe and Eliot Stein’s ShowBiz Forum hosted the industry’s first electronic movie press kit, for the Universal computer-themed feature film Sneakers; the film’s director, Phil Alden Robinson, participated in online chats with ShowBiz Forum members to promote the picture.

As the internet became the Web, and newer services like AOL came on the scene, Compuserve lost many of it’s users and was eventually absorbed by AOL in 1997. It carried on though with a core of dedicated users. But the writing was on the wall a long time ago. It’s website looked dated, it’s access software build date, for Windows NT, is January 11 1999, and the service hasn’t been marketed with any great enthusiasm for a long time.
“CompuServe: Get On with It.” is probably the most memorable line from any CompuServe TV commercial. Aimed at AOL’s serious data capacity problems at a time when CompuServe had all the bandwidth it needed and more, it aired in 1996, less than 12 months before AOL absorbed the service

After 30 years of sterling service to the online community, the plug was pulled on Compuserve Classic on June 30 2009.
CompuServe Classic Ourworld Web pages were taken offline on that date, but e-mail users will be able to continue using their CompuServe e-mail addresses via a new e-mail system.

The ‘Compuserve 2000′ service will continue to operate where available.