Delphi was the first to open internet service to the general public.

I first signed onto the actual internet in the later 'seventies. There were long periods of time I had no business there, when I wasn't enrolled as a student and I didn't work for any entity on the internet, but I persisted and was granted access by the grace of others. From home I'd log on with a 300 Baud modem. Even a slow reader can keep up with the text as it appears on the screen at that speed. The entire university was connected to the internet via a 56k connection. (Technically it wasn't a consumer level 56k modem. Those came later.)

My wife and I had an AOL account for a few years because friends and family had AOL accounts. If you wanted to send them email, or otherwise interact with them by computer, you had to use AOL. AOL was an island then, much as facebook is an island now for so many people. My parents still use an AOL email account.

Until we got a local ISP in the early 'nineties, I remember using the Sprint dial up network to connect to Delphi or AOL. The per-minute charges were a really big deal. You'd go in, grab what you were looking for, or post what you had to say, and then get out. You'd grab your email headers, disconnect, decide which emails were worth reading, log in again, and grab only those.