The Source (Source Telecomputing Corporation) was an early
online service, one of the first such services to be oriented toward and available to the general public.
The Source described itself as follows:
The Source was in operation from 1978 to 1989, when it was purchased by rival
CompuServe
CompuServe, Inc. (CompuServe Information Service, Inc., also known by its initialism CIS or later CSi) was an American Internet company that provided the first major commercial online service provider, online service. It opened in 1969 as a times ...
and discontinued sometime thereafter.
The Source's headquarters were located at 1616 Anderson Road,
McLean, Virginia
McLean ( ) is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community and census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. The population of the community was 50,773 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is ...
, 22102.
History
The Source was founded in 1978 as Digital Broadcasting Corporation by
Bill von Meister,
with support from
Jack R. Taub,
a businessman who had been very successful publishing the
Scott catalogue
The Scott catalogue of postage stamps, published by Scott Publishing Company, now a subsidiary of Amos Media, is updated annually and lists all the stamps of the world that its editors recognize as issued for postal purposes. It is published in f ...
of postage stamps. Initially the idea was to transmit email using an unused
subcarrier piggy-backed onto FM radio signals.
Instead, the two hit on the idea of an "information utility," using cheap overnight excess capacity in
minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...
s and data networks to make online information available to dial-up subscribers.
Dialcom Inc., located in Silver Spring, MD was the backbone of The Source
and supplied all of the networking, computing power and software development until the sale of The Source to The Reader's Digest Association. Robert Ryan was the President and CEO of Dialcom for fifteen years and concurrently served as the founding President of The Source and remained in that role for three years and then decided to return full-time to Dialcom. Having secured publishing rights and put in place the necessary software, the system was announced at
Comdex in June 1979. At a launch in New York the following month,
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov ( ; – April 6, 1992) was an Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. H ...
declared it to be "the start of the information age."
Prices were initially US$100 for a subscription,
then $2.75 per hour off-peak. However, the project had already run up large debts, and soon began running out of money. Taub sold an 80% controlling stake to
The Reader's Digest Association to keep the company afloat.
Von Meister initiated legal action, and received a $1 million pay-off. He went on to found
Control Video Corporation, which ultimately evolved into
AOL.
Reader's Digest had high expectations for The Source, and established for the company its own purpose-built installation of
Prime minicomputers in McLean, Virginia. However, subscriber numbers were slow to build, and (unlike the leaner set-up at rival
CompuServe
CompuServe, Inc. (CompuServe Information Service, Inc., also known by its initialism CIS or later CSi) was an American Internet company that provided the first major commercial online service provider, online service. It opened in 1969 as a times ...
) this facility became an expensive and under-used overhead to maintain. Losses continued to mount, and chief executives came and went. Rumors abounded of an impending sale, but eventually
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer company that in the 1960s was one of the nine major U.S. computer companies, which group included IBM, the Burroughs Corporation, and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the N ...
put up $5 million in 1983 in return for
stock options, and came in as an operating partner.
As the microcomputer boom continued, subscriptions reached a peak of 80,000 members, but later fell back (compared to 500,000 at CompuServe by 1989). During much of its existence The Source charged a start-up fee of about $100 and hourly usage rates on the order of $10 per hour. In 1984, the registration fee was $49.95, and The Source charged $20.75 per hour between 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, and $7.75 per hour on nights, weekends and holidays for 300
bits-per-second service. For service at 1200 bits per second there was a $5.00 per hour surcharge during weekday hours, and a $3.00 per hour surcharge at all other times. To place these costs for data services into an historical context, The Source's base nighttime and weekend rate of per hour in 1984 was approximately twice the federal minimum hourly wage in this same time period, placing the ability to access data with a personal computer in the hands of businesses and wealthy households only. Just as the expense of books gave rise to the library, the advent of data services provided by school and public library computers was a natural progression during this period in history.
The Source provided news sources, weather, stock quotations, a shopping service, electronic mail, a chat system, various databases, online text of magazines, and airline schedules. It also had a newsgroup-like facility known as PARTICIPATE (or PARTI), which was developed by Participation Systems of Winchester, Massachusetts. PARTICIPATE provided what it called "many to many" communications, or computer conferencing, and hosted "Electures" on The Source, such as
Paul Levinson's "Space: Humanizing the Universe" in the spring of 1985.
Intended for use with 300 and 1200
baud dial-up
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...
telephone connections, The Source was
text-based
In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...
for most of its existence.
References
External links
David Carlson's Virtual World - The Online TimelineThe Source Keeps Trying ''
InfoWorld
''InfoWorld'' (''IW'') is an American information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a Web-only publication. Its parent company is International Data Group, and its sister pu ...
'', 5 November 1984. Including a box on the service's early history.
YouTube videofrom
Bits and Bytes Bits or BITS may refer to:
Technology
* Plural of bit, computer memory unit.
*Drill bits, cutting tools used to create cylindrical holes
*Background Intelligent Transfer Service, a file transfer service
*Built-in tests
Institutions
* BITS Pil ...
Episode 5, demonstrated The Source and interviewed some of its employees
{{DEFAULTSORT:Source, The
CompuServe
Technology companies established in 1979
Technology companies disestablished in 1989
Pre–World Wide Web online services
Products and services discontinued in 1989