The first permanent ARPANET link, the internet's ancestor, went live
On this day · 21 November 1969
On November 21, 1969, a permanent ARPANET link between UCLA and Stanford Research Institute marked the internet's quiet beginning.
Three weeks earlier, the first message ever sent between two distant computers had crashed after just two letters: a UCLA student typed “LO” of “LOGIN” before the machine at the Stanford Research Institute gave out. But on November 21, 1969, the connection finally held. The first permanent ARPANET link was put into service, joining a computer at UCLA with one at SRI in Menlo Park, California.
ARPANET, funded by the U.S. Defense Department’s research arm, linked specialized routing computers called Interface Message Processors. UCLA supplied the first node, SRI the second, in a deliberately modest proof of concept.
The network grew quickly. By December 5, 1969, four sites were connected, and the packet-switching ideas tested on that first stable line became the foundation of the modern internet.
Two letters and a crash were how the most consequential network in history began.
Sources & references
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