Delphi Forums is a
U.S.
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
online service provider
An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, ...
and since the mid-1990s has been a community
internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
site. It started as a nationwide
dialup service
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 ...
in 1983. Delphi Forums remains active as of 2022.
History
The company that became Delphi was founded by
Wes Kussmaul
Wes or WES may refer to:
* Westmorland, county in England, Chapman code
__NOTOC__ People and fictional characters
* Wes (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
* Wes Madiko (1964–2021), Cameroonian musi ...
as Kussmaul Encyclopedia in 1981 and featured an encyclopedia,
e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
, and a primitive chat. Newswires, bulletin boards and better chat were added in early 1982.
Kussmaul recalled:
Delphi was actually launched in October 1981, at Jerry Milden's Northeast Computer Show, as the Kussmaul Encyclopedia--the world's first commercially available computerized encyclopedia. (Frank Greenagle's Arête Encyclopedia was announced at about the same time, but you couldn't buy it until much later.) The Kussmaul Encyclopedia was actually a complete home computer system (your choice of Tandy Color Computer or Apple II) with a 300-bps modem that dialed up to a VAX computer hosting our online encyclopedia database. We sold the system for about the same price and terms as Britannica. People wandered around in it and were impressed with the ease with which they could find information. We had a wonderful cross-referencing system that turned every occurrence of a word that was the name of an entry in the encyclopedia into a hypertext link—in 1981...
In November 1982, Wes hired Glenn McIntyre as a software engineer primarily doing internal systems. Glenn brought in colleagues Kip Bryan and Dan Bruns. Kip wrote the software that became Delphi Conference and Delphi Forums. Dan upon finishing his MBA at Harvard, become President and subsequently CEO when Wes moved on to form Global Villages.
On March 15, 1983, the Delphi name was first used by General Videotex Corporation. Forums were text-based, and accessed via
Telenet
Telenet was an American commercial packet-switched network which went into service in 1975. It was the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. Various commercial and government interests paid monthly fees for dedicated lines ...
,
Sprintnet
Telenet was an American commercial packet-switched network which went into service in 1975. It was the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. Various commercial and government interests paid monthly fees for dedicated lines ...
,
Tymnet
Tymnet was an international data communications network headquartered in Cupertino, California that used virtual call packet-switched technology and X.25, SNA/ SDLC, BSC and Async interfaces to connect host computers (servers) at thousands of la ...
, Uninet, and
Datapac.
In 1984, it had 4 million members.
Delphi was extended to Argentina in 1985, through a partnership with the Argentine IT company Siscotel S.A.
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 E-mail (July 1992),
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
,
Telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet contr ...
,
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
, text-based
Web access (November 1992),
MUDs,
Finger
A finger is a limb of the body and a type of digit, an organ of manipulation and sensation found in the hands of most of the Tetrapods, so also with humans and other primates. Most land vertebrates have five fingers ( Pentadactyly). Chambers ...
, and
Gopher
Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...
. "To a lot of people at the time, we seemed to be in an enviable position" says Dan Bruns, Delphi's CEO. "But we didn't have a lot of financing to fuel our growth..."
In 1993, Delphi was sold to
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
's
News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...
. News Corporation recognized that there would be growth in consumer use of the internet and attempted to use Delphi as its vehicle. It had 125,000 text-based customers in 1995 and had 150 employees. Murdoch hired away IBM's director of high-performance computing and communications, Alan Baratz, in 1994 to run Delphi. Under Baratz Delphi acquired space in
Cross Point an office complex in
Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. Alongside Cambridge, It is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of ...
constructed for
Wang Laboratories
Wang Laboratories was a US computer company founded in 1951 by An Wang and G. Y. Chu. The company was successively headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1954–1963), Tewksbury, Massachusetts (1963–1976), and finally in Lowell, Massachuset ...
and built a large state-of-the-art server farm. Bruns and General Manager Rusty Williams stayed on. Delphi peaked with 500,000 paid subscribers and about 600 employees.
By 1995, Delphi had lost many of its subscribers, and Bruns left Delphi. In 1996, NewsCorp decided to exit the online business, was laying off almost half of Delphi's employees and wanted to sell or close Delphi. Dan Bruns and some of Delphi's original investors bought Delphi from NewsCorp for an undisclosed amount. With only 50,000 paying subscribers left, Delphi was back to its pre-NewsCorp size. "We were on the same growth slope, but this time we were going down instead of up," he says. "It felt a little poetic."
In 1996, Delphi launched a free, ad-supported managed-content website with associated
message boards
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
and
chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...
s, under the management of a team led by Dan Bruns and which included Bill Louden, who had headed
GEnie
Jinn ( ar, , ') – also romanized as djinn or anglicized as genies (with the broader meaning of spirit or demon, depending on sources)
– are invisible creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian religious systems and later in Islamic myt ...
during its heyday. For a period of time, both text-based and web-based community services were available. After a year as a managed content site, Delphi reinvented itself as a community-driven service that allowed anyone to create an online community.
Prospero Technologies was formed in January 2000 as the merger of Delphi Forums and Wellengaged.
Webpages for forums were discontinued.
In 2001, Rob Brazell purchased Delphi Forums, merged it with eHow and Idea Exchange, and formed Blue Frogg Enterprises.
The Delphi.com domain was sold to
Delphi Corporation
Aptiv PLC is an Irish- American automotive technology supplier with headquarters in Dublin. Aptiv grew out of the now-defunct American company, Delphi Automotive Systems, which itself was formerly a component of General Motors.
History
The co ...
, the auto parts manufacturer. Prospero was sold to
Inforonics.
In 2002, Prospero reacquired Delphi Forums, joining it with
Talk City
Talk may refer to:
Communication
* Communication, the encoding and decoding of exchanged messages between people
* Conversation, interactive communication between two or more people
* Lecture, an oral presentation intended to inform or instruct ...
to form Delphi Forums LLC.
In 2008, online community developer
Mzinga acquired Littleton-based Prospero Technologies LLC, which was then owned by Bruce Buckland, chairman and CEO of Mallory Ventures. In March 2009, a Forrester Research analyst reported on
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
that Mzinga was having financial difficulties after it had completed a second round of layoffs. On September 1, 2011, Mzinga sold Delphiforums back to early owner Dan Bruns.
In January 2012, Delphi Forums resigned from the
Better Business Bureau
Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a private, 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization founded in 1912. BBB's self-described mission is to focus on advancing marketplace trust, consisting of 97 independently incorporated local BBB organizations in the Unite ...
in protest of their support for the
Stop Online Piracy Act
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a controversial proposed United States congressional bill to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking in counterfeit goods. Introduced on O ...
(SOPA).
In February 2013, Delphi Forums celebrated its 30th anniversary. Delphi owner Dan Bruns said, "It's true that the Delphi that launched in 1983 was very different from today's internet," Bruns said, "but one thing remains the same: places like Delphi Forums provide a friendly, comfortable setting for people to share common interests and passions and to build lasting friendships. If we keep that simple truth in mind, we have a terrific legacy to build on going forward."
During 2014, Delphi Forums began a beta test of a new forum interface, called Zeta. The current long-time format, now called Classic, also remains, and hosts may use either interface.
Additional sources
Delphi Forums History Project* [https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/boston/access/21341433.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Jun+24%2C+1995&author=Irving+Murphy%2C+Globe+Staff&pub=Boston+Globe+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&desc=Tenants%2C+acreage+added+at+former+Wang+Towers&pqatl=google NewsCorp moves Delphi staff to Crosspoint Building in Lowell]
References
External links
Mzinga
{{DEFAULTSORT:Delphi (Online Service)
Internet service providers of the United States
Internet forums
Pre–World Wide Web online services
Communications in Massachusetts
History of computing
History of the Internet