Delphi online service
Delphi was an early Internet service provider that started as a nationwide dialup service in 1983, and in 1992 became the first national commercial service to offer access to the Internet.
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Delphi, like ISPs GEnie and CompuServe, was never able to cope with the switch to graphic interface adopted by AOL, which swept past it in the late 1980s. It exists today only as Delphi Forums with access through the Internet.
History
The company that became Delphi was founded by Wes Kussmaul as Kussmaul Encyclopedia in 1982, featured ASCII-based encyclopedia, email, and a primitive chat. Newswires, bulletin boards and better chat were added in early 1982.
In March 15, 1983, the Delphi name was first used by General Videotex Corporation. Forums were text-based, and accessed via Telenet, Sprintnet, Tymnet, and Datapac (Canada).
Delphi partnered with ASCII Corp. of Japan to open online services in 1991.
Delphi provided national consumer access to the internet in 1992 Features included Email (July 1992), FTP, Telnet, Usenet, text-based web access (November 1992), MUDs, Finger protocol, Gopher protocol.
In 1983 Delphi was sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It had 125,000 text based customers in 1995, but by 1996 were down to were down to less than 5,000 by some accounts, 50,000 by others.
In 1996, Delphi moved to a web-based interface, a free service supported by advertising.
Prospero Technologies was formed in January 2000 as the merger of Delphi Forums and Wellengaged. Webpages for forums are discontinued.
In 2001, Rob Brazell purchased Delphi Forums, merged it with eHow and Idea Exchange, and formed Blue Frogg Enterprises. Prospero was sold to Inforonics.
In 2002, Prospero reacquires Delphi Forums, joins it with Talk City to form Delphi Forums LLC.