Who was Theodore Constantine Papes Jr.?

Mr. Papes was born in Gary, Indiana in 1929. When he started his career in 1952 as a salesman for IBM who would have thought what he would eventually accomplish. In the late 80s this visionary was the head of a company called Trintex. Trintex was formed jointly by CBS, AT&T, and Sears. In 1988 he was responsible for rolling out an online internet provider called Prodigy. At the time home computers were in their infancy. But everyone knew that this technology was going places. The idea of Prodigy caused quite a stir in the news media when it was first announced. Prodigy's business model depended on advertising and the developing of online purchasing of products. In its beginnings buying products online was not widely accepted like it is today. When you subscribed to their service you initially were charged a fee based on usage. If you exceeded that time, you were charged extra for the overage.

People did not have access to computers like they do today. Computers were not in almost every home. Prodigy and later services like AOL helped to develop the interest in people purchasing computers for personal use. The computer of the time had a 20 MB internal hard drive (note the size megabytes), 80386 processor, color graphics, 5.25-inch floppy drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor, internal modem, a DOS operating system, and various programs on floppy disk. The only ways at the time to access the internet were through a local university or CompuServe. Ah yes, the good old days.

There were no graphical interfaces. If you were clever, you could buy a book and learn to write code for a simple menu system in DOS for your computer so that you wouldn't have to type in commands for certain functions that you used a lot. Windows had not been born yet. What Mr. Papes did when he created Prodigy was to make an easy to use online service provider. There were bulletin boards where you could communicate with other computer enthusiasts and the first personal email systems. Oddly enough the email services were developed mainly to aid in the purchase of online products. You could keep track of your stocks and investments and before long there were actually companies that began to let you purchase your own stocks online and of course online bill payment. People were enthralled and hooked.

A few years later AOL was born and eventually the combination of AOL and the lure of high speed internet through cable service providers caused Prodigy to lose subscribers. Prodigy just couldn't keep up, was sold, and disappeared. Who could resist the speed and benefits of high speed? I wonder where we would be today without the foresight and drive of Mr. Papes.

It's a shame that not much has been seen in the news about the man who had been responsible for creating such a wonderful service. There was a piece written about him on January 15, 2010 in a financial news piece online in an article on Street.com. So it looks as if we have come full circle, as hearing about his company was part of a financial news announcement when Prodigy was getting ready to begin the transformation of the internet as we know it today.

Mr. Papes passed away in his sleep at the age of 81 on January 8, 2010. There wasn't anything about it in the news at the time but it should have been covered. He was a great leader and there should be more recognition for him. We all have a lot to thank this man for. He was responsible for helping to bring the internet to us and helping to create a lasting legacy.

Sources:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10661913/1/internets-unheralded-visionary-leadership-matters.html?puc=_tscrss
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist/
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/naplesnews/obituary.aspx?n=theodore-constantine-papes&pid=138444425
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)