WyzGuys Tech Talk

Although not the anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee’s marvelous invention of the World Wide Web protocol ( that’s on March 11), International Internet Day celebrates the Internet and the limitless resources and capabilities it provides.  As I like to say, the Internet levels the playing field for everyone, as the many blogs, websites, e-commerce sites, on-line businesses, and learning sites can attest.

According to the Internet Day website, the first transmission was sent between two computers over a remote network on October 29, 1969.

“Let’s go back to where it all started. The Internet, defined as a remote connection between two computers, was first achieved on October 29, 1969 (just a few months after Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon). In the glow of a green monochrome screen deep in the bowels of the computer science department at UCLA, a young graduate student picked up his phone and called the computer lab at Stanford. He is preparing to send the first message over an Internet connection. The men on either end of the phone are Charley Kline and Bill Duvall.

While not as famous as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren, Leonard Kleinrock, Charley Kline and Bill Duvall were the key players in the first Internet connection. Working on the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a network funded by the US Defense Department that connected four independent  terminals installed at ULCA, Stanford, the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Utah, Charley Kline attempted to send login information from UCLA to Bill Duvall at Stanford.

It almost worked, too.  Kleinrock attempted to send the word “login”, and he managed to send “L” and “O” before the connection between the terminals crashed.”

So that’s how it all began.