The Internet: It was 40 years ago today . . .

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

The Internet: It was 40 years ago today . . .

I began writing this online message 40 years to the minute since the
first time the internet went live. At 7:00 pm on Oct. 29, 1969 UCLA
computer scientist Leonard Kleinrock had one of his programmers,
Charlie Klein, send a message from his computer at UCLA's engineering
school to his colleague Bill Duvall, who was sitting at a second
computer at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Palo Alto. Klein
typed LOG, one slow character at a time, and Duvall's computer was to
supply the IN to form the complete command, login, which would connect
the machines. Duvall was also connected by telephone to Klein, and he
reported each letter as it got through. First the "L," then the "O."
But when Klein typed the "G," the Stanford computer crashed. That
makes LO the first electronic message.

read the rest of this post on the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan
____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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