User blog:Rushboy70/Prodigy history

I’m going to talk about the history behind prodigy Communications Corporation (Prodigy Services Corp., Prodigy Services Co., Trintex) was an online service that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features.

Prodigy Communications, L.P. Type Public Industry Telecommunications Fate Defunct (part of AT&T Inc.) Founded February 13, 1984; 34 years ago (as Trintex) Headquarters White Plains, New York, U.S. (earlier) Austin, Texas, U.S. Products Telephone, Internet, Television Initially, subscribers using personal computers accessed the Prodigy service by means of copper wire telephone "POTS" service or X.25 dialup. For its initial roll-out, Prodigy supported 1,200 bit/s modems. To provide faster service and to stabilize the diverse modem market, Prodigy offered low-cost 2,400 bit/s internal modems to subscribers at a discount. The host systems used were regionally distributed IBM Series/1 minicomputers managed by central IBM mainframes located in Yorktown Heights, New York.[1][2]

The company claimed it was the first consumer online service, citing its graphical user interface and basic architecture as differentiation from CompuServe, which started in 1979 and used a command-line interface.[3]

By 1990 it was the second-largest online service provider, with 465,000 subscribers trailing only CompuServe's 600,000.[4] Its headquarters were in White Plains, New York[5] until 2000, when it moved to Austin, Texas.