[1] Ovid was founded in 1984 by Mark Nelson, who had developed an interface to MEDLINE, the world's largest and oldest medical database, produced by the US National Library of Medicine.

In order to fund operations, Nelson began building computers in his apartment, selling them along with the software.

Nelson, who had majored in English Literature and minored in classical languages, chose the name Ovid as a homage to the ancient Roman poet's most famous work, Metamorphoses.

Several years later, Nelson started the Alpheios Project, non-profit software to facilitate the reading of ancient Greek and Latin.

[3] In 1998, Nelson, who still retained the majority of Ovid shares, was wary of the market bubble that had been building for several years.