— A message in BYTE Magazine's October 1984 issue, announcing the launch of BYTEnet, which eventually became the BYTE Information eXchange (BIX). The network may have been the most ambitious online effort by a media outlet in the days before AOL and Prodigy made it easy. The magazine's writers, including "Computing at Chaos Manor" columnist Jerry Pournelle, visited BIX often, sometimes contributing content unique to the network. (Side note: Jerry Pournelle, who is also a famous science fiction author, is pretty much the most awesome human being who ever lived. He's 83 years old and he's been blogging pretty much since they invented wire.)"We believe that this project will lead to enhancements in the content of the magazine. It will keep us in closer touch with the interests of our readers and will help us learn the best ways to use electronic communications in conjunction with our traditional print publication. We'll let you know about new developments in this area as soon as we can."
Five notable developments in the history of publishing stuff on computers
In 1969, The New York Times released its first online article database, which it called the New York Times Information Bank, or InfoBank. The tool offered access to stories from both the complete Times collection and selected archive materials from 60 other publications. "The Information Bank has been developed with the end user specifically in mind; every effort has been made to bridge the gap between the world of automated information systems and the student, business executive, government official or other information seeker," wrote Sally Bachelder, the marketing representative of the database product, in an academic journal article. If you ever wondered by the Times' online database was so much better than every other newspaper's, this is why.
In 1970, a computer terminal in Columbia, South Carolina, sent an Associated Press story to another terminal in Atlanta. This, according to Poynter, was the first time a computer terminal was used to write, edit, and publish a story in full.
In 1974, the British Broadcasting Service started Ceefax, the first teletext-based information service to go into wide use. This service, which was shown on television during the dead of night and accessible on British TV sets sets, proved popular enough that competing television networks created their own versions of Ceefax. It was in constant operation for nearly 40 years, until the shutoff of BBC's analog television signal in 2012. Here was the final broadcast.
Also in 1974, Dow Jones launched an online information service, built around its Wall Street Journal, that was designed specifically for investors, rather than researchers. The service accordingly didn't have a lot of archival material, and instead was designed to offer up-to-the-minute financial news—news that cost a pretty penny and was sold on a contract basis to investors.
In 1993, AOL released its RAINMAN markup language for building screens and content in its proprietary interface. This tool, created by two of AOL's cofounders, effectively was one of the first content management systems that went into wide use—in other words, the WordPress of the 90s. Not that a lot of people knew about it way back when—heavily moderated by non-disclosure agreements, it only really became publicly known after a community of AOL hackers came about.
— Bob Johnson, vice president of the Columbus Dispatch, discussing (in a 1980 interview) why he felt the online version of the Dispatch, which was being testing on CompuServe that year, wouldn't compete with the print product. The Dispatch was the first newspaper to go online—partly a hometown-pride play on the part of the Columbus, Ohio-based CompuServe—and it was far from the last."We do think that it provides us with an excellent means to supplement the daily newspaper, by providing readers with updated information, after they receive their paper, throughout the day, so that any time during the day that a reader wants the latest story, the latest bit of information on a particular item, all they have to do is dial into the CompuServe service."
How CompuServe convinced the country's largest newspapers to put their stories on its service
As we all know about the modern internet, the news industry's relationship with the series of tubes is mutually beneficial. Sure, the news wires throw out a bunch of stuff on the internet, but the internet often is just as great a source for news fodder.And back in 1983, CompuServe gave back to the news wires in a big way. One of the service's earliest prominent users, Christopher Dunn (or CHRISDOS), had met the love of his life, Pamela Jensen (or Zebra3), through the service's chat lines, known at the time as CB Simulator.Eventually, their story got picked up by the Chicago Tribune, which created a bit of a media sensation. The public was introduced by CHRISDOS and Zebra3 to the idea of online dating, and the couple ended up getting married, even showing up on Donahue at one point."If it weren't for the way we met, I think we could just be any other 25-years-married couple," Dunn told the Tribune in a 2008 retrospective story. "I've always adored her. She adores me. It's very easy to love my wife, I guess that's just the way I am."It was just the first of many viral news stories that the online news machine would swallow up and turn into content. But it may be perhaps one of the most heartwarming.