For those who were born Oct 29, 1969, the date is quite memorable. It was on this day that internet too came to life.
Now, the room from where the first message was sent, only to be crashed after sending just two letters, has been opened as a functional computer lab.
The staff at Room No.3420 of Boelter Hall at University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA), communicated 45 years ago with the staff at Stanford University, using SDS Sigma 7 computer – the refrigerator-sized machine that was used to host the first message.
“This machine is where the internet breathed to life and spoke its first words,” said Leonard Kleinrock, then computer scientist and the brain behind the idea.
The first node was placed at the UCLA and the second at Stanford.
That two-node transmission marked the birth of internet.
The first message was supposed to be ‘log in’ but the system crashed after the ‘L’ and ‘O’ were transmitted.
About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer sent a full ‘log in’.
The first permanent link was then established Nov 21, 1969, between the IMP (interface message processor or router as we know today) at the UCLA and Stanford.
By December 1969, four nodes were permanently installed at the UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, University of Utah and University of California
