October 29, 1969
First ARPANET host-to-host message
On October 29, 1969, UCLA and SRI completed the first ARPANETAdvanced Research Projects Agency Network — the U.S. research network that pioneered packet switching and became a precursor to the internet. host-to-host connection — Charley Kline typed "login" and the first two characters "lo" were received before the remote host crashed.
What it was for
The link between UCLA's Sigma 7 and SRI's SDS 940 over BBN Interface Message Processors proved packet-switched networking between computers. ARPANETAdvanced Research Projects Agency Network — the U.S. research network that pioneered packet switching and became a precursor to the internet. grew to four nodes by December 1969 and became the research network that evolved into the modern internet.
Why it's here
The first ARPANETAdvanced Research Projects Agency Network — the U.S. research network that pioneered packet switching and became a precursor to the internet. login was the proof that computers could talk across a packet network.
Why it mattered
It launched the networking research program that became the global internet.
What it solved
Universities and labs needed to share computing resources without dedicated phone lines to every machine.
Media
ImageARPANET logical map (1977)ARPANET / Computer History Museum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Related
- ARPANET switches to TCP/IPJanuary 1, 1983
- Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish TCP/IP designMay 1974
- DEC PDP-1 introducedNovember 1960