100 Objects #22: AOL Disc

This episode of the 100 Objects series examines the AOL Disc, the free installation disc that America Online distributed at enormous scale in the late 1990s. In 1998, AOL pressed more CDs than any record label, even as the recording industry thrived. The disc campaign was a marketing coup, and it introduced much of America to the internet — so much so that, for a while, the internet was AOL. Yet the company that once defined getting online subsequently seemed to disappear. Reporter Alex Goldman investigates what happened.