Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Cafe Cyberia - first internet cafe in London.
Way back in 1994 the very first internet cafe was born in London's Fitzrovia.
Called Cyber Café (or Cafe Cyberia) it opened with a single 64Kbs leased line and ten or so computers. A very large cappuccino would set you back £2.60.
You could just sit there and scroll through internet links, if my memory serves me correctly or pay to explore further.
Rumour had it at the time that this place was the first internet cafe in Europe, but probably not! It certainly was the first in London.
Needless to say we were hooked on the concept and added something called a modem to the computer we were buying at the time anyway. That was 1996. We had little clue what to expect.
In the end the first forray into cyberworld wasn't up to much. One image would take 20mins to download. Connections were of course dialup and very slow. We knew only two other people with an email address.
We joined via the company Compuserve, one of only two companies offering this new service in the UK at the time. Compuserve welcomed us to a global community of just '3 million users worldwide'.
Within 18mths we were moving out of our flat and decided to leave the computer behind. It was already outmoded by better and faster machines.
Today Cafe Cyberia is under a different name but even that is currently shut. If you're ever in Fitzrovia pop by 39 Whitfield Street (corner with Scala Street), W1T 2SF for a little internet history.
Called Cyber Café (or Cafe Cyberia) it opened with a single 64Kbs leased line and ten or so computers. A very large cappuccino would set you back £2.60.
You could just sit there and scroll through internet links, if my memory serves me correctly or pay to explore further.
Rumour had it at the time that this place was the first internet cafe in Europe, but probably not! It certainly was the first in London.
Needless to say we were hooked on the concept and added something called a modem to the computer we were buying at the time anyway. That was 1996. We had little clue what to expect.
In the end the first forray into cyberworld wasn't up to much. One image would take 20mins to download. Connections were of course dialup and very slow. We knew only two other people with an email address.
We joined via the company Compuserve, one of only two companies offering this new service in the UK at the time. Compuserve welcomed us to a global community of just '3 million users worldwide'.
Within 18mths we were moving out of our flat and decided to leave the computer behind. It was already outmoded by better and faster machines.
Today Cafe Cyberia is under a different name but even that is currently shut. If you're ever in Fitzrovia pop by 39 Whitfield Street (corner with Scala Street), W1T 2SF for a little internet history.
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