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On 29 October 1969 a student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) sent the first message over the ARPANET, the network that grew into the internet, to a computer at Stanford Research Institute. He meant to type ‘login’, the command for signing in, but the system crashed after ‘l’ and ‘o’.

UCLA, 29 October 1969

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The story behind the card

The student was Charley Kline, working in Leonard Kleinrock's lab; at the other end, more than 500 kilometres away, was the programmer Bill Duvall. About an hour later the login worked. ARPANET was funded by ARPA, the research agency of the US Department of Defense, so that universities could share scarce and expensive computers. It used packet switching: a message is cut into small blocks that travel separately and are put back together at the end, an idea developed independently by Paul Baran in the United States and Donald Davies in Britain. By 5 December 1969 the network linked four sites: UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. On 1 January 1983 ARPANET switched to TCP/IP, the shared rules computers still use to talk across the internet, a date often called the internet's birthday.

Türkçe oku
İnternetin öncüsü ARPANET'teki ilk mesajı, 29 Ekim 1969'da Los Angeles'taki Kaliforniya Üniversitesi'nden (UCLA) bir öğrenci, Stanford Araştırma Enstitüsü'ndeki bir bilgisayara gönderdi. Öğrenci oturum açmak için “login” yazmak istiyordu, ama sistem “l” ve “o” harflerinden sonra çöktü.
UCLA, 29 Ekim 1969

Mesajı gönderen öğrenci, Leonard Kleinrock'un laboratuvarında çalışan Charley Kline'dı; 500 kilometreden uzaktaki Stanford Araştırma Enstitüsü'nde ise programcı Bill Duvall bekliyordu. Bir saat kadar sonra ikinci deneme başarılı oldu. ARPANET'i, üniversiteler az sayıdaki pahalı bilgisayarı ortaklaşa kullanabilsin diye ABD Savunma Bakanlığı'nın araştırma kurumu ARPA finanse etmişti. Ağ, paket anahtarlama denen yöntemle çalışıyordu: Mesaj küçük parçalara bölünür, parçalar ayrı ayrı yol alır ve varış noktasında yeniden birleştirilir. Bu fikri ABD'de Paul Baran, Britanya'da Donald Davies birbirinden bağımsız olarak geliştirmişti. 5 Aralık 1969'da ağ artık dört merkezi birbirine bağlıyordu: UCLA, Stanford Araştırma Enstitüsü, Santa Barbara'daki Kaliforniya Üniversitesi ve Utah Üniversitesi. ARPANET 1 Ocak 1983'te, bilgisayarların internette bugün de kullandığı ortak iletişim kurallarına, yani TCP/IP'ye geçti; bu tarih çoğu zaman internetin doğum günü sayılır.

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Background reading: ARPANET
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