IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) — Today is October 29. On this day in 1969, around 10:30 p.m., the first message was sent over ARPANET, the precursor to the internet.
UCLA Professor of Computer Science Leonard Kleinrock and his student Charley Kline had been at work, setting up a message transmission to go from the ‘UCLA SDS Sigma 7 Host’ computer, all the way to the ‘SRI SDS 940 Host’ computer, which was manned by Bill Duvall at the Stanford Research Institute, 350 miles away.
The professor had been working on a method of information transfer called packet switching that was implemented in ARPANET, which broke down information into smaller bundles of information that could be routed independently and reassembled at the destination, with lost packets retransmitted as needed.
Charley manned the helm, sending off the first message, which was meant to be “login”. However, the system crashed after the first two letters were sent. So the first message on the internet was just “lo”. A couple hours later, they completed the transmission. This one message began a chain reaction that led to the internet as we know it today.
Sources used for this story:
