Wes Kussmaul

Wes Kussmaul, author of several books about online security, is the founder of the Kussmaul Encyclopedia, the first online encyclopedia.

In 1971, while stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base (SAC), Kussmaul received a degree in physics from the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Missouri. After his military service, he became a systems analyst at Liberty Mutual, developing mainframe database applications. His positions in sales management for Gould Incorporated, Benson SA and Tektronix, Inc. and his territory in the Cambridge, Massachusetts research and development community put him in contact with the pre-web Internet pioneers.

In 1980, Kussmaul developed the Kussmaul Encyclopedia which came complete with its own computer system. Kussmaul's online encyclopedic database cross-referenced topics by employing an early example of hypertext. In 1981 he founded the company that became Delphi. Located at 3 Blackstone Street in Cambridge, Delphi was first known as Kussmaul Encyclopedia. In 1982, it featured the ASCII-based encyclopedia, chat, email, newswires and bulletin boards. On March 15, 1983, the Delphi name was first used by General Videotex Corporation. Delphi also carried the Grolier's Online Encyclopedia, which by 1989 had 31,000 entries.

One of the contributors to the Kussmaul Encyclopedia was Dudley M. Marchi, who wrote these Kussmaul entries in May 1984: "Thomas Pynchon," "Harold Pinter," "The Beatles," "John Fowles," "John Lennon," "Michel Foucault."

Kussmaul recalled:

As Delphi's CEO, Kussmaul launched a spin-off company, Global Villages, Inc., to provide magazine publishers with the tools and information that allowed them to offer online services to their subscribers and advertisers under their own name.

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