On October 29th 1969 the first message was sent through the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork) between the four remotely located computers that it consisted of. The message was “LO”. It was supposed to be “LOGIN” but the network crashed after the first two letters. And so what eventually became the Internet was born.
Happy Birthday Cyberspace!
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…and here’s a short programme (10 minutes) from the BBC World Service about how it was done.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz2wx?fbclid=IwAR1Iwfz6v-GIg3Lr8mksj-OSKf762IRgcMJtrLx169DaKBqpjQEHpXHqqL4
Surely, “and lo! The internet was born”?
Missed an opportunity there, didn’t I.
“Abbey Road” already out, Jimi’s last studio L.P. released, Dylan’s 60s recordings completed.
29th October 69 sure sounds like the future … end of the Golden Age?
….and selling hippy wigs in Woolworth’s.
A few months ago I had a play with a piece of software that simulated the Honeywell 316 system that the Interface Message Processors ran on.
Someone had managed to acquire the source code for the IMP software, and has made it possible to run three instances of this system simultaneously, and send a message from one machine to another via one sat between the two. And that was about it, really.
I’ve already ordered the 50th Anniversary edition of the message, retyped by Giles Martin.
It was Lo and now it’s LO!!.
Oh, well played.
I read a book a few years ago about the infrastructure of the Internet, and it mentioned one of the pioneers of Arpanet. When the author visited him in his University office he was on the phone to tech support because he couldn’t get online.
Isn’t that because he was on the phone?