Sep. 6--When the Internet was riding its '90s boom, one of the most heated battles played out in central Ohio.

Columbus-based CompuServe, the first major commercial service that gave home-computer users access to cyberspace, was competing with America Online to become the dominant Internet service provider.

Eventually, AOL prevailed, emerging as a tech-industry heavyweight with an international brand that still endures.

By comparison, CompuServe faced a slow decline that crossed a major milestone this summer: the closing of the company's headquarters in Upper Arlington, with remaining workers shifted to its Dublin location. In its heyday, the company employed 1,300 workers in central Ohio, including 810 at its headquarters.

"Companies are like people in some ways. Sometimes, they continue to change and adapt. Sometimes, they

don't," said Jeffrey M. Wilkins, who helped found CompuServe in 1969.

Still, the CompuServe name lives on in a small way with its CompuServe 2000 service that offers online access for $17.95 a month. It is targeted mostly at budget-minded customers of AOL, attracting a level of business the company won't reveal. Thirty employees are left in Dublin to manage the venture.

It's a long way from heady times.

"They get a lot of credit for being the first online service," said Allan Weis, who talks about how he helped build the foundation of the Internet in his new book, The Business of Changing Lives:How A High-Tech Company Invested in Kids and Creativity.

"They really were a pioneer. They were the first online service, way before everybody else. They were pioneers and entrepreneurs. They get high marks in my book."

As the tech bubble ballooned, CompuServe got caught in a Wild West of an industry that was changing so fast that few were likely to survive. Even AOL, CompuServe's eventual parent, has hit difficult times.

"It was a great run," Wilkins said. "I think the average life of a company in the United States is a little shorter than 29 years.

"I was there for the first 15. We basically invented everything ever done on the Internet," referring to online activities now taken for granted: making purchases, arranging travel, looking up stock quotes and checking weather forecasts worldwide.

How it all began

CompuServe was founded 40 years ago as a computer time-sharing service by Wilkins and his father-in-law, Harry K. Gard. It was conceived as the computer department of Golden United Life, a startup life-insurance company that made an initial investment of $1 million in the company.

"The insurance stuff never really grew, and we spun away from insurance," said Paul Lambert, who joined the company in 1973, when it was based in a converted hardware store in Columbus, and retired from it 27 years later. "We got almost all of our revenue serving the (daytime business computer) audience. Then Jeff Wilkins and his team said, 'Can we figure out a way to use the computers at night?' "

A suggestion that the company serve hobbyists who were playing with a new product called "personal computers" sparked the company's entry into electronic mail and early chat rooms.

Two online businesses soon developed.

One service was "retail," serving thousands of people who paid an hourly fee for access to prepackaged innovations, such as online shopping, stock quotations and global weather forecasts.