[Dallas59]

A timeline for the development of e-commerce:

1971 or 1972: The ARPANET is used to arrange a cannabis sale between students at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later described as "the seminal act of e-commerce" in John Markoff's book What the Dormouse Said.

1979: Michael Aldrich demonstrates the first online shopping system.

1981: Thomson Holidays UK is the first business-to-business online shopping system to be installed.

1982: Minitel was introduced nationwide in France by France Télécom and used for online ordering.

1983: California State Assembly holds first hearing on "electronic commerce" in Volcano, California. Testifying are CPUC, MCI Mail, Prodigy, CompuServe, Volcano Telephone, and Pacific Telesis. (Not permitted to testify is Quantum Technology, later to become AOL.)

1984: Gateshead SIS/Tesco is first B2C online shopping system and Mrs Snowball, 72, is the first online home shopper

1984: In April 1984, CompuServe launches the Electronic Mall in the USA and Canada. It is the first comprehensive electronic commerce service.

1990: Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, using a NeXT computer.

1992: Book Stacks Unlimited in Cleveland opens a commercial sales website (www.books.com) selling books online with credit card processing.

[nickcarraway]

1971 or 1972: The ARPANET is used

Maybe it was ARABNET.

[Larry Lucido]

You mean the first sale was grass, not porn?

[jcon40]

great comment. ..

[GOPJ]

So Dallas, are you going to add Faisal bin Fahd al-Osaimi’s name between Tim Berners-Lee and Book Stacks Unlimited in Cleveland? /s