Type | Internet Services |
---|---|
Founded | 1992 |
Defunct | August 28, 2001 |
Fate | Acquired by Tucows |
Headquarters | Wayne, Pennsylvania, US |
Products | Digital Library |
Infonautics was an information services company, founded in 1992 by Marvin Weinberger, [1] Lawrence Husick, and Josh Kopelman, [2] [3] and had its headquarters in Wayne, Pennsylvania, United States. [4] It was a spin-out from Telebase, Inc., which retained a minority position in the company. The company's executives included Van Morris (CEO), Ram Mohan (COO/CTO), [5] Frederica O'Brien (CFO), and Gerard Lewis (General Counsel). Israel J. Melman was also a co-founder, a mentor to Marvin Weinberger and served on the boards of both Telebase and Infonautics, where he was also Chairman of the Board.
In 1990, Telebase founder Weinberger and outside counsel Husick conceived of Homework Helper, a $10 per month unlimited research service having a large multimedia database and a natural language user interface. Working with Brewster Kahle, a protocol was developed to run on the Thinking Machines massively parallel computer system, but in late early 1991, Conquest Software demonstrated its semantic search engine and a change in direction ensued. Hardware support was provided by Tandem Computers. Early work on the multimedia database system yielded multiple U.S. patents.
In 1996, the company was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. [6] It was delisted in 2001. [7] [8]
In 2001, Tucows acquired Infonautics through a business tactic called "reverse takeover". [4] Initially, Infonautics purchased Tucows and then changed its own name to Tucows. [9] On August 26, 2002, Tucows sold eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com to HighBeam Research.
The company created online services Homework Helper on Prodigy, [10] [11] Encyclopedia.com, [12] Electric Library, [13] and CompanySleuth. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
In 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the company was "one of the first Internet companies in the Philadelphia area" [4] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24]
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has generic name (help)We've seen tremendous collaboration, innovation and camaraderie through the years by the people who were part of Infonautics," Krupit said. "We are now experiencing a resurgence of the entrepreneurial community in Philadelphia, so the timing is excellent to help a new wave of entrepreneurs learn from pioneers and see how and how much we have already achieved in our region, and the possibilities for the future.
... bringing back some of the old Infonautics team for a discussion of what happened to the dot-com era Wayne-based startup that rolled out more talent than the old Montreal Expos farm system
Infonautics is legend in Philadelphia's investment and entrepreneurial communities