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A capsule history of online news and information
systems
by David Carlson
© 1999-2009 All Rights Reserved
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Select a decade |
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| 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
1990-94
| Year | U.K. | U.S. & Canada | Europe | Asia/Other |
| 1990 | Microsoft introduces version 3.0 of Windows. It really works and sales take off. Its sales hit $1 billion, an industry first. | |||
| 1990 con't |
Sept. 5: Prodigy goes national, offering local dialups in most major U.S. cities. IBM and Sears have invested $600 million. Within a month it has 500,000 subscribers at $12.95 per month. | Spain: The videotex service Ibertex has 6.000 users, most of them companies. | ||
| 1990 con't |
Sept. 29: AOL, still a service for Apple owners, announces a monthly feature called "Online Tonight," an online talk show, and says PC software is in the works. | Spain: TV3
(Catalan Television) creates its own teletext system called
“Teleservei” (teleservice) in September. |
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| 1990 con't |
Oct. 1: GEnie, the online service owned by General Electric, announces it will offer unlimited night and weekend access for $4.95 a month. It has 200,000 subscribers. | |||
| 1990 con't |
October: Access Atlanta becomes local dialup system offering classifieds, the business section and movie reviews. Cost: $6.95 per month. | |||
| 1990 con't |
Oct. 15: Rocky Mountain News in Denver launches an 8-week trial of Ala Carte Edition, a mainframe-based videotex system. It closes Dec. 15. | |||
| 1990 con't |
Dec. 13: The Electronic Trib, first multi-line,
PC-based electronic newspaper system, is launched by The Albuquerque
Tribune using BBS software and a 286-12 PC. Screen shot |
Switzerland: Hypertext Markup Language is invented by Tim Berners-Lee, an Englishman, and colleagues at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. | ||
| 1990 con't |
December: Prodigy gets in trouble with its members by charging extra for electronic mail and for censoring its online bulletin boards. Thousands quit the service in protest. | October: Tim Berners-Lee coins the phrase "World Wide Web" to describe his hypertext project. Other thoughts were "Information Mine." | ||
| 1990 con't |
The World comes online (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access. | New countries connected to the Internet: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Greece, India, Ireland, Korea, Spain and Switzerland. | ||
| 1990 con't |
December: USA Today and Prodigy announce an agreement to create classified advertising on Prodigy. | Christmas: Tim Berners-Lee's GUI-based Web browser, first called the World Wide Web and later renamed Nexus to avert confusion, is demonstrated on a NEXT computer. | ||
| 1991 | Jan. 26: E&P article says "such daily newspapers" as the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Omaha World-Herald, Newsday, Rocky Mountain News and Atlanta Journal-Constitution offer local videotex services. | |||
| 1991 con't |
February: Omaha World Herald closes its videotex service saying, "The public just didn't buy it." | May 17: Switzerland: CERN releases the World Wide Web standard. | ||
| 1991 con't |
June: Prodigy, overwhelmed with E-mail, begins charging users who send more than 30 messages a month. Subscribers are furious. | June: a freeware Web server called httpd (version 0.1) is released by CERN. | ||
| 1991 con't |
Sept. 6: Despite the E-mail debacle, Prodigy boasts 1 million accounts less than a year after launch. | Linux, a Unix-like operating system, is created by Linus Torvalds and released free across the Internet. | ||
| 1991 con't |
November: Tribune Co. says it will offer Chicago Online, an America Online service combining info from all its Chicago media properties. Its Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale papers will follow, Tribune Co. says. | |||
| 1992 | Internet Society (ISOC) is chartered. Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000. | |||
| March: AOL begins offering stock to the public on the NASDAQ market. | ||||
| 1992 con't |
May: Chicago Online, the first newspaper service
on America Online, is launched by the Chicago Tribune. Screen shot |
News of a coup in Russia is put on the Internet by Glasnet and Relcom before the television networks can broadcast it. | Japan: Captain still is operating but has only 120,000 subscribers as of March. | |
| 1992 con't |
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch launches Post-Link, a service based on the StarText software. | May 6: France's Minitel now serves more than 6 million terminals with 1,800 information sources. | ||
| 1992 con't |
Connect:>\Observer is launched by the Charlotte
Observer using BBS software. |
May 15: Pei Wei, a student at Stanford University, writes ViolaWWW, a GUI browser for UNIX, and students at Helsinki University of Tehnology write Erwise, another UNIX browser. | ||
| 1992 con't |
Spokane, Wash.: S-R Minerva is launched by the
Spokesman-Review/ Spokane Chronicle using BBS software. Screen shot |
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| 1992 con't |
The term "personal digital assistant" enters the lexicon with Apple's release of the Newton. | |||
| 1992 con't |
NAA reports 11 newspapers have an online presence in the U.S. and Canada and more than 250 offer voice information services. | |||
| 1992 con't |
February: Gannett's Florida Today launches on CompuServe. Content focuses on U.S. space program. | |||
| 1992 con't |
June 9: Congress removes restrictions prohibiting commercial use of the Internet. | |||
| 1992 con't |
July: Lynx, a non-graphical Web and gopher "browser" is released by the University of Kansas. | November: 26 "reasonably reliable" servers exist on the World Wide Web, according to CERN. | ||
| 1992 con't |
Microsoft releases Windows 3.1. | |||
| 1992 con't |
IBM and Motorola introduce the PowerPC 601 chip and Apple begins developing Macs to run it. | |||
| 1992 con't |
November: Delphi becomes the first consumer online service to offer access to Internet mail, ftp, newsgroups, telnet and gopher. | |||
| 1993 | January: AOL introduces its Windows version. It adds 290,000 subscribers in the next year. | February: First alpha version of Marc Andreesen's Mosaic browser for Windows is released by the NCSA at a conference at CERN in Geneva.. | ||
| 1993 con't |
March 2: First known Internet E-mail message from a head of state is sent by Bill Clinton. | |||
| 1993 con't |
July 7: Cox Newspapers and Prodigy announce a partnership to put Cox's Atlanta and Palm Beach newspapers on Prodigy. | Number of countries reachable by E-mail: 117. | ||
| 1993 con't |
April 21: AOL lowers prices from $7.95 for two hours a month plus $6 for each additional hour to $9.95 for five hours a month and $3 for each additional hour. | CompuServe has more than 1.5 million members, 90,000 of them in Europe. | ||
| 1993 con't |
May 10: San Jose Mercury News launches Mercury Center on America Online. Screen shot | April 30: CERN board declares that WWW technology will be freely usable by anyone. | ||
| 1993 con't |
Intel releases the first Pentium chip. It runs at 60 MHz. | |||
| 1993 con't |
August: Mosaic, first graphical Web browser for Windows, is released by the University of Illinois. It causes WWW to grow at a 341,634% annual rate of service traffic. | |||
| 1993 con't |
September: Time magazine says it will launch a service on AOL. | |||
| 1993 con't |
September 2: Middlesex (Mass.) News launches first
Internet gopher-based online newspaper. Screen shot |
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| 1993 con't |
September: Book publisher O'Reilly launches Global Network Navigator, a seminal Web magazine. | |||
| 1993 con't |
Sept. 25: CompuServe, Prodigy and AOL have a combined 3.9 million subscribers. | |||
| 1993 con't |
U.S. White House comes online. | |||
| 1993 con't |
October: First journalism site on the Web is launched at the University of Florida. There now are about 200 Web servers in the world. | |||
| 1993 con't |
Nov. 12: Washington Post says it will create Digital Ink, a separate company to explore online products. Meanwhile, the Detroit Free Press says it will go online with CompuServe. Free Press Screen shot | Spain: Servicom, the first consumer online service in Spain, is publicly demonstrated on Nov. 8. | ||
| 1993 con't |
Apple says its new consumer online service, eWorld, will debut in April, 1994. | |||
| 1993 con't |
December: Prodigy for Windows finally debuts, nearly a year after AOL's Windows version. 232,000 orders are placed in the first 10 days. | Spain: A Spanish language daily newspaper from Barcelona, El Periódico de Catalunya, offers its content through Servicom. | ||
| 1993 con't |
Dec. 8: First article about the Web appears in the New York Times under the byline of John Markoff. | |||
| 1994 | More than 3 million hosts exist on the Internet. Editor & Publisher reports about 20 newspaper online services exist worldwide, mostly BBSs. | |||
| 1994 con't |
Jan. 19: The first newspaper to regularly publish on the Web, the Palo Alto Weekly in California, begins twice-weekly postings of its full content. Price: Free. | |||
| 1994 con't |
January: The first online venture from the Raleigh News & Observer is Nandoland, a bulletin board system aimed at public-school children. Tour | |||
| 1994 con't |
January: Salt Lake Tribune opens a BBS called Utah Online. Screen shot | |||
| 1994 con't |
February: America Online hits the 600,000 subscriber mark. | |||
| 1994 con't |
British Telecom is hired by Microsoft to develop a data communications network in the UK, Europe and Asia. | Canada: Southam, Canada's largest newspaper publisher, and Prodigy announce an alliance to explore the Canadian market. | Spain: “El Periodico de Catalunya” announces on Feb. 25 a 3 year project to develop a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Link | Singapore: The Straits Times installs ISDN link from newspaper to advertising agencies. |
| 1994 con't |
March: Nando.net is launched in Raleigh as an ISP, and it begins offering gopher and telnet-based news services on the Internet. | |||
| 1994 con't |
March 13: Access Atlanta, the first newspaper site on Prodigy, is launched by the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, a Cox newspaper. Tour | |||
| 1994 con't |
March: Washington Post announces it will put Washington Post Extra on Interchange, Ziff-Davis' new consumer online service. It actually launches more than a year later. | |||
| 1994 con't |
March 31: Journalist, the first software package allowing users to make a "personalized newspaper," is introduced for Prodigy users. Price: $79.95. | |||
| 1994 con't |
April: Trib.com is launched as an ISP and Internet news service by the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune. It includes "The Electronic Signpost," a Web-based newspaper. | |||
| 1994 con't |
Netscape is formed by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen and a Web browser, Netscape Navigator 1.0, is released. | May 25-27: First International WWW Conference, called the "Woodstock of the Web" is held in Geneva. VRML is conceived. | ||
| 1994 con't |
June: The New York Times launches @Times on AOL.
The content, mostly arts coverage, is widely criticized. Screen shot |
June: Over 1,500 Web servers are registered with CERN. | ||
| 1994 con't |
June 20: Minneapolis Star-Tribune becomes second
newspaper to sign on with Interchange. Screen shot |
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| 1994 con't |
July: Raleigh News and Observer goes to the net,
launching the NandoTimes and the SportsServer, both Web-based
news services. |
Spain: “El Mundo” of Madrid publishes a database on CD-ROM of its news from the first six months of 1994. | ||
| August: AOL tops the 1 million subscriber mark. | ||||
| 1994 con't |
August 24: San Jose Mercury News announces it will add a Web site to its online ventures in the fall. | |||
| 1994 con't |
Mercury Center launches "NewsHound," an electronic clipping service. | |||
| 1994 con't |
Sept. 7: New York Times says it will put its classifieds on the Internet for a six-month experiment. | |||
| 1994 con't |
Sept. 9: Delphi Internet, an online service offering Internet access, announces the Sunday Times of London will begin an online edition. | Sept. 13: First rumors of Microsoft's plan to start an online service, codenamed Marvel, emerge in the trade press. | ||
| 1994 con't |
September: Time Warner launches its Pathfinder site on the Web. Tour | |||
| 1994 con't |
Oct. 18: AOL says it will introduce a Web browser for its more than 1 million members. | Spain: “El Mundo” starts an edition on the Internet, but only with “Su dinero” (your money) and “La revista” (the magazine), two weekly suplements from the newspaper. It launches Oct. 22. | ||
| 1994 con't |
Times Mirror's Los Angeles Times and New York Newsday
launch online editions on Prodigy. Times screen shot Newsday screen shot |
Spain: The weekly magazine "El Temps" begins offering its content on Servicom. | ||
| 1994 con't |
Nov. 1: A Guild strike shuts down San Francisco's daily newspapers. Strikers and management create rival dailies on the Web, the Free Press, and The Gate. | Spain: In October, CompuServe opens nodes in Spain. Access costs 8 $ per hour. | ||
| 1994 con't |
Nov. 22: Microsoft launches The NBA Basketball Daily, a proprietary online news service, in conjunction with a new CD-ROM title. | Nov. 29: Deutsch Press Agentur reports some 200 newspapers around the world are offering editions online. It says 48 papers have "full-fledged electronic editions." | ||
| 1994 con't |
December: San Jose Mercury News begins beta testing Mercury Center Web. | Russia: Children at a Moscow middle school create an online school newspaper via Glasnet, AP reports on Dec. 1. | ||
| 1994 con't |
December: The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun and University of Florida Interactive Media Lab launch a BBS called Sun.ONE. Tour | |||
| 1994 con't |
Dec. 7: The Daily Telegraph launches a Web-based version, The Electronic Telegraph. | Dec. 6: Boston Globe announces formation of an electronic publishing venture to launch in second half of 1995. | ||
| 1994 con't |
Dec. 12: Seattle Times says it will launch a BBS-based electronic newspaper. | Luxembourg: Europe Online is founded by three European publishers. | ||
| 1994 con't |
December: Prodigy becomes the first consumer online service to offer Web browsing. | |||
| 1994 con't |
Dec. 14: First World Wide Web Consortium meeting is held at MIT. | |||
| 1994 con't |
Java, a programming language that allows animation on Web pages and much more, is introduced by Sun Microsystems. |
| Select a decade |
||||
| 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |