It is a bit like the Queen
The internet is celebrating another birthday – it is the
40th year since the infant internet first spoke.
University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard
Kleinrock, who headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969. On October 29, 1969 Kleinrock led a team that got a
computer at UCLA to "talk" to one at a research institute. He wanted to get computers to exchange data by breaking
digitised information into packets fired between on-demand with no wasting of
time. Engineers began typing "LOG" to log into the
distant computer, which crashed after getting the "O."
"So, the first message was 'Lo' as in 'Lo and
behold'," Kleinrock recounted. "We couldn't have a better, more
succinct first message."
This is probably the best spin on the Internet breaking
that we have ever heard. Kleinrock's team logged in on the second try, sending
digital data packets between computers on the ARPANET because funding came from
the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) established in 1958. However this is the second date which is touted as the
beginning of the Internet.
Others insist that the dawn of the Internet age actually
was September 12 1969 when a team of boffins at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA) connected the first two machines on the first
node of ARPAnet.
We expect that future generations will fight wars over
this in the same way that people fight over whether or not December 25 really
was Jesus's birthday.