Doc's note: In 2026, you can order nearly anything you want online and have it show up on your doorstep within a couple of days – or even hours. But in the 1980s, there weren't marketplaces to sell things online.
Today, Marc Chaikin – founder of our corporate affiliate Chaikin Analytics – tells the story of one of the world's first e-commerce markets and how it helped create the modern experience of online shopping...
Three hundred bits per second...
That's about 186 times slower than the early dial-up Internet connections of the 1990s.
At 300 bits per second, it would take around 18 minutes to load Google's basic homepage to a computer screen. And attaching a PDF file to an e-mail could take a couple of hours.
But thanks to the development of high-speed Internet and fiber-optic cables, today's Internet experience is very different.
We can access data at lightning speeds. That means loading information online in a matter of milliseconds.
Heck, we can stream movies and TV shows on our cellphones while riding along in the car.
And thanks to fast and reliable Internet access, more than 2.7 billion people across the globe today shop online.
But on March 4, 1983, one of the world's first e-commerce markets was made possible by 300 bits per second.
And it happened by accident.
A Pioneer in Electronic Commerce
You see, two years earlier, Alex Randall bought an IBM PC. It had 16 kilobytes of memory and two floppy-disk drives.
Randall had a PhD in systems theory. So he spent a lot of time on his computer.
Soon, his wife complained that she hardly saw his face anymore. And she wanted a computer, too.
Back then, everyone wanted a PC. But for the average family, a new IBM computer was expensive. At the time, it cost $1,565 (about $5,400 in today's dollars).
When Randall and his wife looked at the classified ads to check out used computers, they were shocked. As Randall later put it...
The prices were all over the place, and the descriptions didn't make any sense.
This gave them an idea for a business that would help people who owned computers sell the devices to other folks.
So Randall and his wife started the Boston Computer Exchange out of a small office.
In the beginning, it was anything but computerized. The business used a card-and-pencil system that kept a record of folks who wanted to sell a computer or buy a used one.
Randall and his team would go through each of the cards and match buyers with sellers. Then they would call people to make the sale.
But it was only after they computerized their records by entering all the information into a database that business took off...
With the help of a 300-bits-per-second modem, Randall struck a deal to upload his database into an electronic bulletin board for computer buyers and sellers to see.
The next day, the business got a call from someone in Santiago, Chile. He saw the bulletin board and wanted to buy one of the computers in the database.
Keep in mind that the Boston Computer Exchange was a bold idea back then...
At the time, most businesses were content selling things the old-fashioned way – through direct salespeople and in physical stores. So Randall's Boston Computer Exchange business was a pioneer in electronic commerce.
So just think about what a novelty it must have been for Randall to consider packing up a computer and mailing it to Chile – all thanks to his electronic bulletin board.
It probably sounded like a joke to his friends.
Despite that, it was the beginning of a revolutionary change...
Today, e-commerce is just another part of our everyday life. We buy everything from smartphones and computers to furniture and plane tickets online... without even thinking about it.
Keep that "novelty" concept in mind. We've been seeing tons of new tech emerge around AI and quantum computing.
And many of the naysayers might sound incredibly reasonable. After all, they still say things like, "This is just a novelty. And no one ultimately knows what to do with this stuff."
But we've seen firsthand the rapid changes that can take place... and the incredible investment opportunities they create along the way.
Good investing,
Marc Chaikin
Editor's note: The massive, rapid changes in the AI industry are creating exciting – and risky – opportunities for investors. But Marc says that AI will soon rupture into two sectors. It could either cost you all your gains since 2022 or potentially double your money if you understand what's coming to AI stocks this month and why. Click here to learn more.
