40 Years Ago Today

At 2100, on 29 October 1969, engineers 400 miles apart at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and Stanford Research Institute (SRI) prepared to send data between the first nodes of what was then known as Arpanet.

It got the name because it was commissioned by the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa).

The fledgling network was to be tested by Charley Kline attempting to remotely log in to a Scientific Data Systems computer that resided at SRI.

Kline typed an "L" and then asked his colleague Bill Duvall at SRI via a telephone headset if the letter had arrived.

It had.

Kline typed an "O". Duvall said that arrived too.

Kline typed a "G". Duvall could only report that the system had crashed.

The first of many crashes on the internet.

They got it working again by 22:30 and everything went fine. After that first misstep, the network almost never put a foot wrong.

The rest has made history and we are still making it.