When you're left on your own, you're not alone.

1993 might have marked the tail end of the home computer era - only Commodore's Amiga and Atari's ST were still on the market - but it also marked the dawn of another: the World Wide Web.

Although you wouldn't know it yet as this advert from CompuServe doesn't directly mention the internet, focusing instead on its own network of databases, email services and over a million other CompuServe users on what it was calling the "largest worldwide community of personal computer users".

Tracing its influences back to US Department of Defense ARPA military projects started in the late 1960s, the modern internet would end up being based more on networks like the first UK/US international X.25 packet-switched IPSS network of 1978, or the the US National Science Foundation's NSFNET of the mid 1980s - although it wasn't until as late as 1995 before commercial interests were allowed onto the latter network.

It was also 1995 that the internet - or Internet as it was then referred to, as a proper noun reflecting the actual name of the network - would really become mass market, largely thanks to this sudden incease in commercial use, but PCW had already reported on it in its April 1993 issue.

It compared the internet to a terrestrial version of Orac - the genius but irrascible computer in cult TV sci-fi series Blakes 7 - which with its Tarial Cell component could instantly access the knowledge of every other computer in the galaxy also using Tarial Cells, which was apparently all of them.

However it wasn't like the internet as would be recognised in 2025. 

Instead, most services, such as databases, Usenet, WAIS, Archie - considered as the first search engine - or Gopher, were accessed in text mode using Telnet, whilst files were downloaded using FTP. 

It would take the widespread availability and support for the World Wide Web and with it the web browser - developed first by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 whilst at CERN, but popularised by NCSA Mosaic, released in 1993, and later Netscape, released in late 1994 - before the public really took to it.

It was also slow, as most users - especially in the UK - accessed the internet via dial-up modems, often via intermediaries like CIX - where amusingly to connect to the internet the user would dial up, log in and then type "RUN INTERNET" . 

The very first modems ran at 150 or 300 Baud - roughly equivalent to 300 bits per second - but by 1993 modems were capable of 14,400 bps. 

However, many computers, especially budget clones, struggled with these higher speeds over their regular serial connections, with modem manufacturer Hayes worried enough about the situation to offer special buffered serial cards[source: "How to use the Internet", PCW, April 1993, p. 390] to support its modems.

It was also not very cheap, even though CompuServe announced a price drop in April 1993. 

Although its basic service price was going up by a dollar to $8.95, or about [[6|1993]] per month in [[now]], the price for access to other services was falling from $12.80 to $8 per hour, for 2400 bps access, or from $22.80 down to $16 for 9600 bps modems[source: "CompuServe drops its charges", PCW, May 1993, p. 212]. 

That's still around [[11|1993]] per hour in [[now]]. In the UK, adults spend on average 4.5 hours <i>per day</i> online[source: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/online-habits/from-apps-to-ai-search-how-the-uk-goes-online-in-2025], which if hourly usage charges had remained the same would cost a staggering [[1485|1993]] per month in [[now]] money.

Luckily, there were a few alternatives such as the pioneering and influential dial-up service Demon Internet from Demon Computers - a value-added reseller specialising in custom software for [@Apricot] computers[source: "Buying a five-user network", PCW, September 1993, p. 357] - which became one of the UK's first internet service providers when it launched in April 1992. 

For only £10 a month, or around [[10|1993]] in [[now]], Demon offered direct-to-internet TCP/IP connections with no additional charges, other than the dial-up costs themselves. 

Whilst Demon's service was considered reliable and cheap, PCW did point out that its early dial-up utilities were "archetypal anorak software", with cryptic names like KA9Q, PCElm and SNews. It said:

~"KA9Q, originally written for packet radio, is an autodialler: it uploads and downloads your Usenet and mail postings, and manages any other sessions you initiate. PCElm is a mail reader while SNews is a news reader. The three have been linked with a coherent interface that still needs some work on its documentation and help files, but will let you use the software from a single front-end. It’s still not going to win any ease of use awards, but is beginning to look no more inhuman than any other comms software."

Demon's service ran on infrastructure provided by Pipex, the UK's first commercial ISP and which had been established in 1991[source: https://web.archive.org/web/20121101022035/http://www.gtnet.gov.uk/corporate/about/]. Pipex installed its first trans-Atlantic connection - a 64kbps leased line - in 1992[source: https://support.bbc.co.uk/support/history.html].

Continuing its "Into the Internet" article, published in April 1993, Wendy M Grossman summed up the early internet:

~"It’s the biggest network in the world. It connects government departments, research facilities, academic institutions, and commercial and non-profit organisations, linking all their smaller networks together so they can exchange information. It is the network that interlinks other networks: that’s where it gets its name.  No-one is actually sure how big the Internet is, because there’s no-one in charge of it taking notes.  No-one can tell for sure, either, how many people use it. One estimate is four million, but how do you count? If CompuServe has a gateway to the Internet, and it does, and CompuServe has one million users worldwide, does that make all those million CompuServe users Internet users?"



Meanwhile, the advert itself features a nice sunset shot of the skyline of Liverpool, and a folorn Audi by itself in a car park.

Mentioned in the advert is access to over a thousand databases, including NewsGrid, the Financial Times and ICC, as well as discussion forums, probably based on CompuServe's own CompuServe/FORUM, launched in 1990.

A couple of months later, CompuServe added an extra hundred databases via its purchase of marketing rights to Knowledge Index - a subset of the iQuest database.

These included subjects as diverse as extracts of Soviet publications since 1982, the Chapman and Hall database of chemicals, and the full text of the Scramento Bee since 1988.

The main IQuest facility containing 300 databases was also available via CompuServe, however it cost a whopping $9 - about [[6|1993]] in [[now]] terms -  per query, in addition to CompuServe's own charges.



