CompuServe Starter Kit
Year First Appeared
1990
Creator
Maurice A. Cox, Robert J. Massey, Alexander B. Trevor
A boxed membership-and-software package for getting onto CompuServe: it provided the CompuServe Information Manager, sign‑up credentials, and instructions so new users could register and start using CompuServe’s dial‑up email, forums, news, and other services; the 1994 kit included install disks and waived the first month’s basic fee.
Importance in Internet Culture
CompuServe’s starter kits lowered the barrier to entry for dial‑up online services, accelerating mass adoption of email, forums, and chat and seeding the user habits that later transitioned to the World Wide Web.
Interesting Fact
CompuServe’s original user IDs featured a comma (e.g., 70000, 11), a relic of its PDP‑10 system; for Internet email the comma was replaced by a period.