Infonautics

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Infonautics, Inc. emerged from the Philadelphia-area technology scene in 1992, incorporated in Pennsylvania that November. Based historically in Wayne, it set out to make digital research feel less like a library scavenger hunt and more like asking a machine a reasonably intelligent question. Its early work grew from the Homework Helper concept, then branched into online information and reference services before the web became everybody’s default research desk.

The company’s calling cards included Electric Library, a paid digital-library service launched in 1996, and Encyclopedia.com, a free reference site launched in 1998. It also operated the Company Sleuth, Job Sleuth, Entertainment Sleuth and NewsDirectory properties. Infonautics reached Nasdaq in 1996, riding the first big wave of consumer internet optimism with a name that sounds like it was coined aboard a particularly optimistic spacecraft.

In December 1999, Infonautics completed a transaction with Bell & Howell that placed major educational-market Electric Library operations into the new bigchalk.com venture, while Infonautics retained its end-user business. By December 2000 its headquarters were documented in King of Prussia. On August 28, 2001, Tucows completed its acquisition of Infonautics in a reverse-purchase transaction; the combined public company subsequently took the Tucows name. Tucows sold eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com in August 2002.

Our Infonautics collection celebrates the dial-up-era confidence of a company that tried to organize the world’s useful information before search boxes became wallpaper. Put it on, summon the research robots, and remember when “online library” sounded like the future because, frankly, it was.