Barry Shein's The World STD was selling dial-up Internet on a legally questionable basis starting in late 1989 or early 1990, and then on an approved basis by 1992. He claims to be and is generally recognized as the first to ever think of selling dial-up Internet access for money. The High Performance Computing Act of 1991 put U.S. government money behind the National Information Infrastructure, the National Research and Education Network (NREN), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and more.
