The First Internet Connection Ever Made
October 29, 2009 by Rico Mossesgeld
Filed under Networking
During the same year man walked on the moon, the first node of what later became the ARPANET—predecessor to something we all know as the Internet—was set up. UCLA’s Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Leonard Kleinrock, played a big part of this, developing the “basic principles of packet switching” that made such a groundbreaking achievement possible. The dude won a National Medal of Science last year for this, and he’s the one explaining how what’s basically the first internet connection was made in the video below:
Leonard Kleinrock
The first network switch, known as an Interface Message Processor (IMP), arrived at UCLA on Labor Day weekend, 1969. The UCLA team led by Kleinrock had to connect the first host computer to the IMP. This was a challenging task, as no such connection had ever been attempted before. However, by the end of the first day, bits began moving between the UCLA computer and the IMP. By the next day, researchers had messages moving between the machines.
A month later, a second node was added at the Stanford Research Institute, and on Oct. 29, 1969, the first host-to-host message was launched from UCLA.
A great example of how taking the first step is definitely enough to push advances that can literally change the way the world works!
