delphi was actually launched in october 1981, at jerry milden's northeast computer show, as the kussmaul encyclopedia--the world's first commercially available computerized encyclopedia. (frank greenagle's arête encyclopedia was announced at about the same time, but you couldn't buy it until much later.) the kussmaul encyclopedia was actually a complete home computer system (your choice of tandy color computer or apple ii) with a 300-bps modem that dialed up to a vax computer hosting our online encyclopedia database. we sold the system for about the same price and terms as britannica. people wandered around in it and were impressed with the ease with which they could find information. we had a wonderful cross-referencing system that turned every occurrence of a word that was the name of an entry in the encyclopedia into a hypertext link—in 1981...