BBSs & ISPs
One of Gerhardt's jobs at Tandy was assistant Sysop at the Tandy COCO SIG (special interest group) at Compuserve. He never lost interest in this on-line business, and though he left Tandy, he stayed active in the SIGs that serviced the users of Tandy computers. After the CAD code base was sold, he redirected his company toward the BBS and telecommunications markets.
BBSs, scaled-down versions of on-line services covering a very narrow niche, were the predecessors of the ISP community and the BBS magazine Boardwatch is credited with motivating the development of ISPs. Gerhardt concurrently operated three successful BBSs from his home office in Bloomingdale, Illinois. The COCO-Nuts, BBS was Gerhardt's most ambitious and successful BBS.
Active in the early stages of the commercial Internet era, Gerhardt was involved with the creation or management of three different ISPs of recognition. He was on the board of WWA — WorldWide Access (now Verio), one of the first ISPs in the U.S. While Director of Business Development at WWA, he spearheaded such innovations as 5ESS-VDS (Virtual Dial System), DSL deployment and KidCam.
Gerhardt was also executive vice-president and founder for Pinnacle Communications, one of the first pure DSL ISPs, up until 2000.
Gerhardt's original software development company having gone through a number of changes and name changes over the years, was closed in 2005 after 22 years due to a divorce.
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