Online and Computer Museum -- We Launch

The menus above  and below are blurry because they are photos of overheads I had once printed out to use for training classes I taught on using GEnie. This was the main screen - the first screen after the welcome screen - that GEnie subscribers saw if they logged on manually.  To get any where, you picked a number from the menu or typed in a command if you happened to know what the commands were.

I had originally learned about GEnie (and Compuserve) from fliers that were included with a modem I bought when a client required me to transmit my work to them electronically. I got hooked on the technology, decided "this is going to be big some day!" and after much thought submitted a proposal to launch a "roundtable" on General Electric Company's GEnie online service. The proposal was accepted and I started operating under the name The Home Office/Small Business Roundtable on August 8, 1988.   Here is what you'd typically see if you wanted to read any messages in a RoundTable. (This is from a RoundTable we ran for the Air Force Small Business Office on GEnie. I had never saved a copy of the HOSB RoundTable menu.

This was the logo I used on business cards I had made up. Unfortunately I've lost the early GEnie literature and photos.

We became known as HOSB. I kept that name on GEnie, but in 1990 started using the name Business Know-How to build small business information sites online on the Bell Gateways (which soon disappeared) and then on a brand new service Quantum Computer was launching called America Online.