Five notable developments in the history of publishing stuff on computers

In 1969, The New York Times released its first online article database, which it called the New York Times Information Bank, or InfoBank. The tool offered access to stories from both the complete Times collection and selected archive materials from 60 other publications. “The Information Bank has been developed with the end user specifically in mind; every effort has been made to bridge the gap between the world of automated information systems and the student, business executive, government official or other information seeker,” wrote Sally Bachelder, the marketing representative of the database product, in an academic journal article. If you ever wondered by the Times’ online database was so much better than every other newspaper’s, this is why.

In 1970, a computer terminal in Columbia, South Carolina, sent an Associated Press story to another terminal in Atlanta. This, according to Poynter, was the first time a computer terminal was used to write, edit, and publish a story in full.

In 1974, the British Broadcasting Service started Ceefax, the first teletext-based information service to go into wide use. This service, which was shown on television during the dead of night and accessible on British TV sets sets, proved popular enough that competing television networks created their own versions of Ceefax. It was in constant operation for nearly 40 years, until the shutoff of BBC’s analog television signal in 2012. Here was the final broadcast.

Also in 1974, Dow Jones launched an online information service, built around its Wall Street Journal, that was designed specifically for investors, rather than researchers. The service accordingly didn’t have a lot of archival material, and instead was designed to offer up-to-the-minute financial news—news that cost a pretty penny and was sold on a contract basis to investors.

In 1993, AOL released its RAINMAN markup language for building screens and content in its proprietary interface. This tool, created by two of AOL’s cofounders, effectively was one of the first content management systems that went into wide use—in other words, the WordPress of the 90s. Not that a lot of people knew about it way back when—heavily moderated by non-disclosure agreements, it only really became publicly known after a community of AOL hackers came about.