Wes Kussmaul
Encyclopedia
In 1971, while stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base
Whiteman Air Force Base
Whiteman Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located approximately south of Knob Noster, Missouri; east-southeast of Kansas City, Missouri....
(SAC), Kussmaul received a degree in physics from the University of Central Missouri
University of Central Missouri
The University of Central Missouri is a four-year public institution in Warrensburg, Missouri.- History :...
in Warrensburg, Missouri
Warrensburg, Missouri
Warrensburg is a city in Johnson County, Missouri, United States. The population was 16,340 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Johnson County. The Warrensburg Micropolitan Statistical Area consists of Johnson County. It is home to the University of Central Missouri.-History:Warrensburg...
. After his military service, he became a systems analyst at Liberty Mutual
Liberty Mutual
Liberty Mutual Group, more commonly known by the name of its primary line of business Liberty Mutual, is a diversified global insurer and the third largest property and casualty insurer in the United States based on 2010 net written premium. It is the 82nd company on the Fortune 500 list for 2011...
, developing mainframe database applications. His positions in sales management for Gould Incorporated, Benson SA and Tektronix, Inc. and his territory in the Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
research and development community put him in contact with the pre-web Internet pioneers.
Kussmaul Encyclopedia
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 hypertextHypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
. 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
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
," "Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
," "The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
," "John Fowles
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
," "John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
," "Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
."
Kussmaul recalled:
- Delphi was actually launched in October 1981, at Jerry Milden's Northeast Computer Show, as the Kussmaul Encyclopedia--the world's first commercially available computerized encyclopedia. (Frank Greenagle's Arête Encyclopedia was announced at about the same time, but you couldn't buy it until much later.) The Kussmaul Encyclopedia was actually a complete home computer system (your choice of Tandy Color ComputerTRS-80 Color ComputerThe Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was a home computer launched in 1980. It was one of the earliest of the first generation of computers marketed for home use in English-speaking markets...
or Apple IIApple IIThe Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
) with a 300-bps modem that dialed up to a VAX computer hosting our online encyclopedia database. We sold the system for about the same price and terms as BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaThe Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
. People wandered around in it and were impressed with the ease with which they could find information. We had a wonderful cross-referencing system that turned every occurrence of a word that was the name of an entry in the encyclopedia into a hypertext link--in 1981! (Phil Macneil gets credit for that one.)
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.
After Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
’s News Corporation bought Delphi in 1993, Kussmaul sold the hosting portion of Global Villages Inc. to a partnership that became part of NTT Verio, an operation known as The Village Group.
The Authenticity Institute
Wes Kussmaul developed The Authenticity Institute in conjunction with his two books: “Quiet Enjoyment” and “Own Your Privacy” (PKI Press). All three are a response to the architectural flaws of the internet that make identity security difficult and an impending authenticity inflection point, which demonstrates a paramount need for authenticity among internet users.Wes Kussmaul is currently the CIO and CEO of The Authenticity Institute, a business incubator that focuses on commercial, non-commercial and non-profit enterprises that promote authenticity of identity online. The Authenticity Institute and its members produce Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure (QEI). QEI is the construction of 'safe spaces' online where users can operate without worry of identity theft and manipulation. QEI is a form of Public Key Infrastructure
Public key infrastructure
Public Key Infrastructure is a set of hardware, software, people, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke digital certificates. In cryptography, a PKI is an arrangement that binds public keys with respective user identities by means of a certificate...
(PKI) that uses personal assertions of identity, attestation of identity by a public authority, and a set of ‘keys’ for encrypting and decrypting information which are controlled by the user in order to create and ensure these ‘safe spaces’. Currently, there are five members of The Authenticity Institute that directly contribute to QEI:
- Reliable ID: A commercial branch of notaries that attest to assertions of individual identity.
- StartCom: A commercial group in charge of hosting and managing certification authority.
- The City of Osmio: Provides duly constituted public authority, backed by the International Telecommunications Union, to all attestations of identity.
- Authentrust Inc: For mid- to large-sized identity management software enterprises. Authentrust ensures the identity of people who are given access to their networks.
- Internet Child Protection Inc: A non-profit that verifies and makes known the age and gender of all site users.
Books
Kussmaul's books about online privacy and security include Quiet Enjoyment (2004), Own Your Privacy (2007) and The Future Needs You (2007).See also
- Academic American EncyclopediaAcademic American EncyclopediaAcademic American Encyclopedia is a 21-volume general English-language encyclopedia published in 1980. It was first produced by Arête Publishing, the American subsidiary of the Dutch publishing company VNU ....
- List of online encyclopedias
- Vannevar BushVannevar BushVannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...