In the age of Amazon Prime shipping it’s all too easy to forget that there was once a time, not all that long ago, when you couldn’t shop online for life’s necessities, like a beef jerky dehydrator and K-Cups, so easily. And it certainly wasn’t on your doorstep the next day. (Fist pump for living so close to an Amazon fulfillment center.)

So, what was the first purchase made on the Internet?

The year was 1994 – an era of Pulp Fiction, PlayStation and televised courtroom drama. And though Pizza Hut is often attributed with this Internet first (they began selling pepperoni pies online in late August of the same year), it was a 21-year-old cyberspace entrepreneur named Dan Kohn in New Hampshire who had the golden ticket.

On August 11 Kohn’s buddy in Philadelphia, Phil Brandenberger, purchased a CD from NetMarket, Kohn’s online store. Punching in a secret code to send his Visa credit card number to, he was charged $12.48, plus shipping, for Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales album. Requiring his customers to download a particular browser to ensure uber-secure transactions, this was the first time a transaction was protected by encryption technology.

There are, of course, discrepancies. The Internet Shopping Network, later acquired by the Home Shopping Network, touts itself as being the first on the scene, claiming to have beaten Kohn by about a month with the selling of computer equipment. Regardless, 1994 was a turning point for e-commerce, an industry that’s expected to reach $523 billion in the U.S. by 2020.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, Brandenberger’s CD did arrive, unscathed, via FedEx. And he walked in fields of gold… until he ditched his compact disc for an online streaming service that is.

New York Times