Looking for a bit of history

Very first fully functional ecommerce site

[lgn1]

Trying to dig up some research.

When did the first fully functional ecommerce site,
with a fully functional shopping cart (ie. taking credit cards online with or without SSL), become live on the Internet, and when did this occur?

Are they still around?

[satanclaus]

There were a number of sites processing cards in the mid 90's. Memory isn't serving too well. Try looking up Internet History in Teoma or Google. They're saying 1994 which seems about right to me. I started in this business in 98 and was only behind by a few years compared to my associates.

[lgn1]

I tried Internet history, but their are no specifics.
I didn't get started until late 97 with our web site, and the earliest ecomm sites I can remenber is late 1995.

[bcolflesh]

www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/WCBirth.html

Section #7

Hotwired claimed to be the first eCommerce site to accept payments in the form of credit card details, in October 1994

Maybe true - maybe not.

[lgn1]

It appears that accepting credit cards online based on the article was not possible before late 1994, since that is when form and post components were introduced.

It appears that we are fast approaching the 10th anniversary of ecommerce, in the next 6 to 8 months, and this fact is going unnoticed.

Does anybody have any good contacts at hotwired, to prove their claims, or better yet firm up the date of there first online credit card payment. This is something, I never forgot, so I expect they would not either.

[plumsauce]

Ok, not the internet, but online, and predating
the internet itself:

COMPUSERVE

where you could buy shareware, product support
and hard goods.

They even had a MALL.

I sold a number of shareware products
there.

Ok, so my first language wasn't VB :)

[plumsauce]

It appears that accepting credit cards online based on the article was not possible before late 1994, since that is when form and post components were introduced

Using a tty interface, form and post were not needed.
(see earlier message about COMPUSERVE)

As a matter of fact, until recently, banks quite
happily did all of this stuff on tty interfaces.

If you have noticed that your teller now takes
longer to do the same transaction, it's because
they now have to move their hands from the
keyboard to mouse around. Previously, they did
everything on the keyboard without having to
deal with a mouse.

A gui is not necessarily an improvement.