On this date in 1969, the inaugural message was transmitted on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), a packet-switching network developed by the United States Department of Defense. The internet’s deep ancestor, ARPANET originally consisted of four Interface Message Processors (IMP), which were sewn together by leased line modems that transferred an astonishing 50 kbit per second. By early December 1969 — two months after the first message was sent — all four nodes of the original network were linked together.
I’ll be honest. Almost none of the words in that last paragraph make any sense to me. But the content of the first message may be viewed below the fold.
Once ARPANET was up an running, it was only a matter of time before DoD employees were passing around chain letters — a pastime that soon cloyed — and receiving strange notices from a certain Prince Michael Okoye of Nigeria, who had recently come into the possession of $27 million, the result of deliberate over-invoicing of certain contracts awarded by the the state-run oil company he’d successfully managed for many years. By January 1970, several ARPA programmers were surprised to learn that Richard Nixon was a secret Muslim who refused to pledge allegiance to the American flag.
Fortunately, the internet — which descended from ARPANET — was considerably less silly.
For the truly geeky, a .pdf of the first ARPANET message can be seen here.
14 comments
October 30, 2008 at 6:28 am
PorJ
I can’t be the only person who sees a connection between today’s two anniversary posts (ARPANET and NOW). Both are about developing social networks, facilitating communication to promote political/government (broadly defined) actions and altering the public sphere. Both started with a small group of visionaries who were soon joined by enthusiasts. There are many other similarities, but I have class now.*
*Joshua Meyrowitz, in No Sense of Place, and Susan Douglas in Where the Girls Are, agree on the catalyzing role of “new” media (primarily TV) in modern feminism.
October 30, 2008 at 6:56 am
Levi Stahl
I can’t believe I fell for that and clicked through. I think my credibility as a capable twenty-first-century adult just plummeted like the Dow.
October 30, 2008 at 7:05 am
Ahistoricality
Rickrolling? I’ve given up on blogs for less.
October 30, 2008 at 8:19 am
washerdreyer
Rickrolling?
I was impressed by it, it’s a good tonal shift.
October 30, 2008 at 3:44 pm
KRK
So you’re saying there was no pr0n?
October 30, 2008 at 4:53 pm
karen marie
you got me!
i was reading the post to my brother (he’s in his car driving home from work in arizona) so you rick rolled two at once!
October 30, 2008 at 6:11 pm
chris
I hate you.
October 30, 2008 at 6:13 pm
andrew
Once I saw from the mouseover that that was actually a youtube link, I would have disappointed had that not been a rick roll.
October 30, 2008 at 6:22 pm
kid bitzer
‘stabby stabby’ is good.
but i see it more as a james brown “huh!” moment.
i think nixon just did a spin across the floor, then a quick fist-pump “huh!”, and then he’ll drop into a split.
doing the funky president.
gordon liddy got a brand new bag.
October 30, 2008 at 8:09 pm
urbino
Sometimes, kb, you make me break out in a cold sweat.
October 31, 2008 at 9:14 am
kid bitzer
it’s a man’s world, urbino.
December 2, 2008 at 6:55 am
me
penis
December 2, 2008 at 7:11 am
Michael Turner
lo
December 2, 2008 at 7:25 am
Michael Turner
I was trying type “login messages were probably the first messages to be sent on the internet”, but, as in the first actual attempt, there was a crash after the first two characters.
Typical. I once wrote this program for the Mac back in the mid-80s, and it seemed to be working fine. For me. Time to try it out on real users. I didn’t want to prime my user-interface test subjects with any preconceptions, so I just sat a co-worker down and fired the thing up. He stared at the screen for a few seconds, frowned, said disconsolately “I don’t know what to do,” and then his hand dropped listlessly onto the numeric keypad. I hadn’t written anything to handle numeric keypad keystrokes. The program took a long walk off a short pier. (But it took that long walk instantly, which is what’s impressive about computers even now, in the rare cases where something happens instantly anyway.)
I thanked my volunteer crash test dummy and told him to go away.