Maybe even more amazing: In about 1985 Sears piloted a thing called "Electronistore." You could go into a Sears store and browse the catalog and place orders

Maybe even more amazing: In about 1985 Sears piloted a thing called "Electronistore." You could go into a Sears store and browse the catalog and place orders on a computer (a PC/XT) with a credit card. The computer setup was very creative. At the time, a PC couldn't really display high quality photos, and there wasn't hard drive capacity for the photos of the Sears catalog anyhow. The solution was to make each product photo a frame on a Laserdisc. The computer was connected to a TV/Monitor that could be electronically commanded to switch inputs between the computer and the laserdisc player. The computer could command the laserdisc player to seek to a certain frame and freeze the frame. You could browse and search the catalog, and then hit a button and it would show you the picture, then you'd hit another key and go back to the text interface for ordering. Anyhow they ran the pilot and not too many people used it since you could just use the catalog instead which had all of the same products, so they shut it down and never really returned to e-commerce. (article about it from the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112020112/https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-04-21-8501230730-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20201112020112/https://www.chica...)