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Delphi Forums)
Delphi started as a nationwide dialup service in 1983 with an ASCII interface similar to Compuserve. In 1992, it became the first US national commercial service to offer access to the Internet. It exists today as Delphi Forums with access through the Internet at http://www.delphiforums.com.
Timeline
1980 - 1982
Founded by Wes Kussmaul as Kussmaul Encyclopedia.
Featured encyclopedia, email, and a primitive chat.
Newswires, bulletin boards and better chat were added in early 1982.
1983 - 1992
Delphi online service, General Videotex Corporation.
Forums were text-based, and accessed via Telenet , Sprintnet , Tymnet, and Datapac (Canada).
The Delphi name was first used on March 15, 1983.
Delphi Partnered with ASCII Corp. of Japan to open online services in 1991.
1992 - 1993
Delphi online service, General Videotex Corporation.
Delphi was the first US service to provide national consumer access to the internet in 1992
It featurs included Email (July 1992), FTP, Telnet, Usenet, text-based web access (November 1992), MUDs, Finger protocol, Gopher protocol.
1993 - 1996
Delphi Internet Services - News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch.
Delphi had 125,000 text based customers in 1995, by 1996 they were down to less than 5,000 by some accounts, 50,000 by others. Other estimates of membership range from half a million, to 2.5 million during this time period.
1996 - 1999
Delphi Internet Services.
Delphi moves to a web-based interface, and free service. Advertising supported. Earlier forums have full websites, later forums have a single templated webpage.
2000 - 2001
Delphi Forums, Prospero Technologies.
Prospero was formed in January 2000 as the merger of Delphi Forums and Wellengaged. Webpages for forums are discontinued. December 2000, switch to PChat.
2001 - 2002
Delphi Forums, Blue Frogg Enterprises.
Rob Brazell purchases Delphi Forums, merges with eHow and Idea Exchange, forms Blue Frogg Enterprises. Prospero sold to Inforonics.
2002 - present
Delphi Forums, LLC.
Prospero reacquires Delphi Forums, joins it with Talk City to form Delphi Forums LLC. PChat2 introduced, December 2002
Source
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