CONNECTING THE WORLD

Long before Amazon, Facebook, and Google became household names, Jeff Wilkins entered an unassuming building at 1387 W 5th Avenue in Upper Arlington to launch CompuServe, a computer time-sharing service. Equipped with little more than a folding chair and a phone book, Wilkins would go on to successfully help build a company that would fundamentally transform the way people connect and share information online.

Pictured: Jeff Wilkins. Photo courtesy of Jeff Wilkins.

CompuServe originated in 1969 as a subsidiary of the Columbus-based Golden United Life Insurance, founded by Wilkins’ father-in-law, Harry Gard, Sr. Hoping to increase his company’s data-processing capabilities, Gard reached out to Wilkins, who studied electrical engineering at the University of Arizona, to see if he could help. Wilkins introduced his father-in-law to John Goltz, a college acquaintance of Wilkins, who possessed the technical skills to support Gard’s vision.

Goltz, however, had an even bigger idea—literally. Rather than purchase a smaller computer for Golden United, he suggested the company invest in a mainframe computer—a far larger, more powerful system—and sell processing power to other companies. And he wanted Wilkins to run the business. In 1970, at just 27 years old, Wilkins relocated his family from Tucson, Arizona to Columbus to serve as President of CompuServe.

“We very quickly discovered what people really wanted to do was communicate with one another.”

Jeff Wilkins

The company quickly grew, expanding into Upper Arlington and Dublin. During this time, Wilkins found inspiration in an unlikely place: a lunch buffet at The Worthington Inn. While dining with his in-laws, Wilkins watched people at the buffet, where they would try small amounts of many dishes then return for more of the items they liked. Observing this behavior, Wilkins decided to deploy a similar approach at CompuServe, offering customers many types of services and seeing what they gravitated toward.

“We very quickly discovered what people really wanted to do was communicate with one another,” explained Wilkins.

In 1985, CompuServe launched an electronic mail system for businesses, known as InfoPlex, that served as the foundation of modern e-mail. The pioneering company would go on to launch other firsts, including one of the first real-time online chat systems available to the public and the first Graphics Interchange Format, popularly known today as the GIF. CompuServe subscribers were also the first to have access to online newspapers, with The Columbus Dispatch being the first newspaper to be made available by home computer in 1980.

However, it was one of Wilkins’ ideas that ultimately changed history by bringing cyberspace directly into people’s homes. During the day, CompuServe’s data centers were busy supporting business clients. But at night, the data centers—and their vast amounts of processing power—were left largely unused.

With personal computers becoming increasingly popular, Wilkins recognized this as an opportunity for the company to offer online connectivity to the masses. CompuServe became the first major provider of commercial internet service, establishing the foundation of our modern, digitally connected world.

Although Wilkins left CompuServe in 1985 and the company ceased operations in 2009, both Wilkins and CompuServe have left a lasting mark on the digital landscape and the central Ohio region. At its peak, CompuServe had more than 3 million subscribers, employed 1,300 people in central Ohio, and was an industry leader in computer network information services. Many CompuServe-trained staff also went on to run major corporations of their own, and the company’s extraordinary culture has endured among its alumni.

Importantly, thanks to Wilkins’ innovative vision and entrepreneurial spirit, Columbus remains a vital—and growing—technology hub today.