The First ARPANET Message

The Internet did not arise from a single invention, but ARPANET, supported by the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), was an important predecessor. On October 29, 1969, the UCLA team attempted to log into a computer at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), sending the command LOGIN. After the first two letters, “LO,” were successfully transmitted, the receiving system crashed. “LO” therefore became the first recorded message between ARPANET hosts, although the intended command was the full word LOGIN. It was an early networking test, not the arrival of today’s finished Internet.