55 Years Ago, A Simple Mistake Sparked the Birth of the Internet
55 years ago, the Internet was born from the mistake of two scientists
Tuhin Sarwar:
In October 1969, a landmark event quietly took place that would transform humanity. Two scientists, Charlie Kline and Bill Duvall, attempted to send a message over a novel connection between computers located 350 miles apart at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute (SRI). They typed “login,” but only managed to transmit “LO” before the system crashed. Unaware of the momentous nature of this exchange, they had just laid the groundwork for the modern internet.
A Cold War-Era Experiment
The origin of the internet lies in the Cold War, a period marked by fierce competition between superpowers. The U.S. Department of Defense funded a project known as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), aiming to enable data transmission without relying on traditional telephone lines. This ambitious project employed a method known as “packet switching,” where data is broken into packets and sent across a network, making it resilient to disruptions. What started as a government-funded experiment in data exchange soon became the foundation of the Internet.
