The Birth of the Internet

The U.S. State Department's Facebook page shared a photo of a room at the University of California where the first internet message was sent on October 29, 1969, stating: "The internet was initiated by a man named Bob Taylor, who worked for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense in Washington, D.C. He had three computers in his office, each connected to one of ARPA's multiple projects in Massachusetts, Los Angeles, and Menlo Park." Taylor was frustrated that he could not communicate with all three projects through one computer and that the three projects could not communicate directly with each other to share information. According to the site, "Taylor's solution to this problem, which later became the first computer network, was called ARPANET, and it completed its first mission that same night in 1969 (1348 in the Iranian calendar) when Charlie Klein from the University of California in Los Angeles sent the message 'lo' to Bill Duvall in Menlo Park. This message was supposed to be the word 'login,' but the device crashed after sending two letters and could not send the complete word. However, less than an hour later, they were able to send the message in full."