A beacon of the early internet is about to be silenced. AOL’s dial-up internet service is shutting down Tuesday, ending one of the web’s first mainstream access points. Once a dominant technology player, AOL, initially called America Online, provided the gateway for millions of people to get their first taste of the web. Signing into the service — a process accompanied by a noisy, garbled series of computerized tones that sounded like a drowning robot — became a rite of passage

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