Thanks to CompuServe's CB Simulator, 'Digital Fox' Accessed 'Data Hari' and Proceeded to an 'Altared' State Probably like the 1960's generation liked to think it invented sex, today's "yoof" probably like to assume that they invented "on-line", however it was not so, as shown by this advert for CompuServe - a company actually founded in 1969 as a dial-up service[source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compuserve]. During the 1980s dial-up remained alive and well in the form of Bulletin Board Services (BBSs) or Viewdata-based technologies like Prestel, especially around the "modem explosion" years of the mid 1980s, following the de-regulation of the UK telecoms market. [extra: hamish_dialup_1985.jpg|School-friend Hamish and Nosher online to Mitcham BBS using a BBC Micro and a Pace Nightingale modem, in 1985]CompuServe itself was one of the "big three" ASCII-based dial-up services in the US, the others being The Source and Dow Jones. Between them, they had 400,000 subscribers. Another service doing well in the US was Comp-U-Card. After years of trying to kick-start teleshopping using micros, despite almost no-one at the time owning computers[source: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/69/CUC-International-Inc.html], the company finally reported profits of $800,000 on a turnover of $4 million in 1984[source: "Securing the future of Videotex", PCN, May 19th 1984, p. 4]. At the time, it was listing 60,000 products that on-line tele-shoppers could get a 25% discount on by buying direct from the factory, a business model that pre-dated Amazon by over a decade. The advert is interesting in that it clearly shows the fore-runner of Internet Relay Chat, which wouldn't be "invented" until 1988, in the form of an electronic "CB Radio". Even the idea of a handle (or "nick" in IRC parlance) and the concept of public chat rooms and private channels are well established.