What is the first Internet Service Provider in the UK

Could you suggest me the name/year of first UK ISP ?

andon...

GPO-Telephones (later to be BT)
apx 1974?

Frederick Williams...

My guess: MoD or Janet.

Old Grizzly...

About 1967 i worked at Bristol Aeroplane company and we used to write

pmj...

Ah!...
The "good old days"???
:-)

Old Grizzly...

It might interest you that at that time i had the job of calculating
geometry on a research aircraft wing. We did calculations using 7 figure
logarithms then, with some being done on Comptometers, If we changed a
control section, which happened with regular monotony, all had to be
re-calculated and using logarithms it used to take about 3 weeks to
complete the set. :-(
I had picked up some IBM training manuals and learnt to program in my
lunch hours, but all aginst my supervisors wishes. Anyway that first
computer run i did for 5/6p completed in about 15 minutes, thats the
whole lot of dialling, logging on, running the tape, and getting the
output and logging off. Better than 3 weeks eh? ;-) i told my supervisor
i had gone against his wishes and showed him the output and he relented
and said so i cant stop you now :-) and so i started an incredible
journey. :)

That was a little bit before my time - I didn't really have any
Contact with any Computers (whether Connected up to anything else,
r not) until about the late 70's/early 80's...

our program onto an ASR33 Teletype (
tape then dial into a location that was Newport (UK) then it was
Birmingham and when we heard the data tone push a data button on the
phone and run the Punched tape. Your results were printed on the
terminal along with data like cpu time and charges My first run i
remeber was 5 shillings and 6 pence.

Ali...

Did that include phone charges or just use of the CPU?

Old Grizzly...

Not sure, but as a norm all telephone calls were through a switchboard
but this was a direct dial phone so it might have included a phone
charge.

pmj...

LOL!
& when I first Connected to the Internet - on my own Phone - (using
an 0845 PAYG ISP Number & a 56k "Steam Driven" Dial Up Modem),
my Phone Bills were about 300 Quid per Quarter!!!

Now, with a 4mbps (500 KBytes/Sec Download Speed) HiSpeed, BroadBand,
Always On, Whooosher Cable Modem Internet Connection, with no Data
Transfer Caps or Limits, we pay about 25 Quid Per Month (Plus another
Tenner for a Phone Line.
:-)

Now was that classed as an ISP ? i dont know it was all so new to me

Frederick Williams...

No, because the "I" in "ISP" stands for Internet and the Internet (or
any internet) uses IP which didn't exist in 1967.

pmj...

No - I don't think that was an *Internet* Connection...

The Internet (Interconnected Network of Networks) wasn't invented
(or available) until some time after that.

In the 70's & early 80's there were a lot of "Bulletin Board"
(Dial Up) Systems around, which used Modems, over the Phone Line,
to Connect to other Computers, but that wasn't the *Internet*

& there were also things like "Prestel" (ViewData) which was

Old Grizzly...

Hee Hee funny you should say that ....... The site was a very large
airfield site and i was in a Design office while the data processing
centre was about 1/2 mile away so i used to take the cards up to be
processed then walk back and then the joy of picking up the output that
was sometimes only about 1/2 inch thick coz the job had failed ;-) them
were the days.

primarily for Business use (such as Travel Agents & Insurance
Companies etc,) but were also available for Public/Domestic Consumer
use & I had a Prestel/ViewData Modem (Prism VTX 5000) on my Sinclair
Spectrum, (& also used a similar thing with a BBC Micro) which
Connected up to the "MicroNet 800" Network.

The Calls were charged at as (proper) Local Call (or you could Dial
into a National Number as well - both Geographic Numbers - that was
before the days of (so-called) "LocalRate" & "NationalRate", Non-
Geographic Numbers) & there was a Monthly "Membership Fee" as well,
on top of the Call Cost (& the Phone Line Rental)

But that also wasn't "The Internet"
Domestic/Consumer ISP's - Internet Service Providers - (at least in
the UK) didn't become available until the late 80's & early 90's

The "Web" (as we know it), which is actually just a *part* of
"The Internet" didn't start up until the Early/Mid 90's.

Mike Tullett...

Yes, I recall using an early form of the web in late 1993 at work, using
the NCSA Mosaic, soon to be followed by the one of the earliest Netscapes -
1.2 which is still on this PC. Previously, Gopher was in widespread use

then.

datasmog...

I think what you had there was an early wide area network, which is
essentially what the internet is, although you only had a connection to
one specific remote machine. A bit like having a remote server accessed
over a phone line.
We had a similar set up in the early seventies when I worked at
Sellotape in Boringwood. We were connected to a remote server somewhere
in the Southampton area I think. All our invoices etc were run overnight
there and shunted back to us in the morning to be printed out on
continuous stationary.
The computer was about the size of the Isle of White.

pmj...

LOL!
:-)

The IBM mainframe we had at Winsor & Newton in the late 60's was as big

pmj...

LOL!
:-)

Maybe it's just as well that Dave Lear isn't old enough to have
been involved with things like that???
:-)

Just think how big *his* Computer would have been!!!
Maybe about the size of the U S of A?
Or Russia?
Or Australia?
:-)

OK then - & how big was the *Monitor* (Display Device) that you used?
:-)

I mean how *small* was the *Screen* Size (& how big was the case
that it was fitted in)
:-)

Ali...

The computer I used in the late sixties didn't have a screen of any size!
The operator had a teletypewriter-like device, the rest of us got line-
printer fanfold printouts (or teletype paper tape or Hollerith 80-column
cards if requested).

as Ireland.

andon...

Oh easily. Just one smoothing capacitor for the PSU was the size of a
tower block. People just cannot imagine how many transistors that
there are inside a current Intel / AMD cpu. hundreds of thousands,
and back then the size of a single transistor would have been the
size of 20 fags. In the 50's they would have been the equiv of a
tampon light-bulb.

Ali...

Direct dial to the Data Processing Centre - no Internet involved (it didn't
exist - see the link posted by Frederick Williams), so not an ISP.

datasmog...

Presume you are talking commercial ISP's for the use of Joe public as
opposed to the education network (JANET) or any military stuff that the
Queen used.

Well, Compuserve and AOL are not UK so they are out, but date from about
1995. UK, I guess it's a toss up between Pipex who reckon they've been
around for 10 years, and Demon.

Ponder...

Pipex claim to be the first commercial UK ISP though I believe Compuserve
had UK PoPs before that.

pmj...

I think that depends on what you mean by "UK ISP"?

If you are talking about an Internet Service Provider that
offered/offers generally available Internet Access (over a Telephone
Line?) to the *Public*, then I would have thought that Pipex (UUNet?)
were the first in the UK?

OK, as some have said, Compuserve (now part of AOL) also offered it,
but they were/are American.

Demon (now part of Thus) were prolly the firm that came up with the
first "realistically" priced Dial Up Internet Access, available to
the general Public & Globalnet also offered similar things.

Then there were the likes of all the various firms who offered
"Free" Internet Access, which is actually "PAYG" (Pay As You Go)
Where you didn't/don't have to actually pay a Monthly Fee , but you
paid for it as part of the Phone call.

Freeserve (who were originally owned by DSG - Dixons Stores Group -
Dixons, Currys & PC World etc & Operated using the Energis (POL - Planet
OnLine Network), then were bought by the French Firm Wanadoo
who are owned by France telecom who also own Orange) were the first
firm who made that sort of thing (PAYG Dial Up Internet Access)
really popular, but there were plenty of others before them.

So, can you please define what you mean by "UK ISP", then your
Question can be answered more accurately & completely.

BTW - Why do you ask?

Frederick Williams...

You may find this interesting:

Ali...

So, UCL could be claimed as the first ISP anywhere, since the Internet did
not exist until they connected to ARPAnet, and they certainly Provided a
Service to the other UK users.