50 years ago today, the first Internet message was sent, and it contained a typo...

[JohnRBaker]

50 years ago today, the internet was born in Room 3420

Here’s the story of the creation of ARPANET, the groundbreaking precursor to the internet—as told by the people who were there.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90423457/50-years-ago-today-the-internet-was-born-in-room-3420

Here's the page from the logbook at UCLA documenting the event, which took place at 10:30pm PST, on Wednesday, October 29, 1969. The entry simply reads: “Talked to SRI, Host to Host.” Note that SRI was the 'Stanford Research Institute' in the Bay Area.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[IRstuff]

I think it was worse than just a typo:
> it was the first time the Internet crashed
> it was the first time the Internet had buffer overflow bug

So, unlike the selfie at the Oscars a few years back, the letter "G" actually did crash the entire Internet; of course, there were only two URLs active at the time ;-)

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[JohnRBaker]

My understanding was that, yes, the first attempt crashed the 'network'. A few minutes later, a second attempt was made, which was successful, but the message was so garbled that it was all but meaningless, however, it was received and that was the whole point of the exercise.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[DaveAtkins]

When it crashed, did they call IT?

DaveAtkins

 

[IRstuff]

In a way, since IT was the user that crashed it in the first place ;-)

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[VEBill]

"...did they call IT?"

The IT staff would presumably have asked them to go on-line to fill in a webform.