This is the first ever Internet message sent

On this day, October 29th, 1969, 47 years ago, the first ever electronic message had been sent.

Published
Updated
59 seconds read time

A variety of apps are used today to send tens on billions of messages every day. We use chat apps, like Facebook Messenger, Viber, WeChat, and WhatsApp, to communicate with our friends, family, and colleagues.

This is the first ever Internet message sent 01

On this day, October 29th, 1969, 47 years ago, the first ever electronic message had been sent. The message was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline trough ARPANET, the precursor to the modern Internet.

At the time, ARPANET was used for testing new network technologies, and it connected many universities and research centers. The first two nodes of the ARPANET were the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute, between which the first ever message exchange took place.

This is the first ever Internet message sent 02

The UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock and his student Charley Kline sent the first message to Bill Duval at Stanford University. Kline wanted to send the message containing the word "login", but the system crashed after he entered the letter "o", meaning that the first ever internet message was - "lo".

However, they still managed to send the message "login" an hour after the first message.

While the first message was quite a feat in 1969, today's messages have changed significantly, we often reduce our communications to the exchange of GIFs or emojis.

Lana has a passion for technology and science. She spends her time looking for the latest and most interesting technology and science news. Her passion is in gadgets, wearables, and other cool and interesting applications of technology or science. She also spends her free time gaming in MMOs like World of Warcraft. She has prior experience covering technology for publications and breaking news. If she’s not doing either, you might just find her exploring the metaverse in VR. Lana wants to expand TweakTown’s coverage of mobile, wearables and gadgets while also bringing her experience with science and general tech to TweakTown. Her area of coverage is around science, technology, smartphones, wearables, and general neat gadgets. She hopes to one day be able to drive around in her self-driving car while she schedules an appointment for a SpaceX trip to the moon on her smartwatch.

Newsletter Subscription

Related Tags