Before there was the Internet there was Compuserve, which was founded in 1969 and by 1979 was among the first commercially successful online & e-mail services (see 1991 advertisement), before being acquired by AOL in 1998 and ultimately eclipsed by the modern broadband-fueled Internet. Yesterday Compuserve Classic officially ended its life as an ISP service, an important footnote for those who've had Compuserve e-mail addresses for nearly a generation. While the Compuserve Classic forums and service died yesterday -- the largely irrelevant Compuserve 2000 AOL sub-brand lives on if you'd like to retain your e-mail address for geek cred or just pine wistfully for online's yesteryear.