Welcome to the Tech Mem Ride Home for Black Friday, November 29th, 2019.

I'm Brian McCullough. Today, since it's a holiday week in the U.S. I'm going to do what I've done once

before on holiday weeks and give you an episode from the Internet History

Podcast Archives. This is a story about tech history that if you've never heard it will blow your mind.

What if I told you there was a crazy entrepreneur who was the true founder of what would eventually

become America online.

He was the guy who hired Steve Case back before AOL was AOL.

What if I told you that same entrepreneur invented true networked online gaming, not in the era of Xbox 360 or Stadia even, but back in the days of the

Atari 2,600. What if I then told you that same entrepreneur invented a Napster or Pandora or Spotify like music service all the way back in 1981?

Before the compact disc was even widely available.

That man is William Von Meister,

and he is the subject of this episode.

This is such a crazy story about a hard drinking, heavy smoking, women chasing entrepreneur

seemingly from the madman cloth who was, quote, a pathological entrepreneur with a reality

distortion field that would give Steve Jobs a run for his money.

It's a story about a dozen hair-brain businesses, none of which were really successful,

excepting of course that some of or all of them led their DNA to the company that would become

AOL, but all of which were also way ahead of their time and in many ways pre-Saged technologies that we take were granted today.

This was the 14th podcast episode I ever produced.

Listening back, I sound like such a podcasting baby, but believe me, if you've not ever heard this story before, you will be amazed.

Happy holidays to anyone celebrating. I'll be back with a regular episode on Monday.

In a way you could say that William von Meister came from royalty. His great-grandfather, Wilhelm Meister, founded the, oh boy,

...