"A Newspaper? On a PC? That’s Crazy Talk"  in the Bits column on the the New York Times website,  Sam Grobart shares a  video from a 1981. It a San Francisco television newscast about the two San Francisco print publications pioneering newspapers on PCs.

"Imagine if you will sitting down to your morning coffee... turning on your home computer to read the days newspaper"

"That's Crazy Talk!"

The San Francisco PC owner dials ...and I mean dials... look at the monitors... look at the keyboards but really, really look at that red rotary dial phone.  That's primitive. The PC owner dials "a local number that will connect him with a computer in Columubus Ohio"   CompuServe?

The two hours it took the newspaper to download to the PC and the $5 per hour access charge compared to the twenty cents the daily paper costs puts "That's Crazy Talk" in 1981 perspective.  

Was it CompuServe?

"An Internet Pioneer

Founded in 1969 as a computer time-sharing service, Columbus, Ohio-based CompuServe drove the initial emergence of the online service industry. In 1979, CompuServe became the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities and technical support to personal computer users. CompuServe broke new ground again in 1980 as the first online service to offer real-time chat online with its CB Simulator. By 1982, the company had formed its Network Services Division to provide wide-area networking capabilities to corporate clients."

"Tomorrow imagine if you will sitting down to your morning coffee... turning on your home computer to read the days newspaper"

and remember 1981...