EVERYTHING YOU’RE DOING RIGHT THIS SECOND (ie, Reading This Blog Post on The Internet (TM)) STARTED IN LA!
Photo by Caleb Lucas on Unsplash
Is your perfect day (other than cruising from West Hollywood to Santa Monica on an exclusive LA Tour on an electric bike, hint hint) switching between your best friends, The Screens (Big Screen= Computer, Little Screen= Phone) and surfin’ the NET? The Internet- everyone’s best friend and worst enemy, and an integral part of Los Angeles history. Did you kNOW that the very first internet signal/message was received in Los Angeles? Let me explain. The Internet has a birthday (WHAT?!) and if it had a birth certificate, the place of birth would be Los Angeles. On October 2nd, 1969, an operator at UCLA sent/attempted to send the first internet message (think 2000’s AIM, but a little earlier) from a server in Los Angeles to a computer in Menlo Park, CA. The operator attempted to write “LOGIN,” but only made it to “LO” before the server crashed. (“Login” allegedly…maybe they were really trying to just send “LOL”…we will never know!) The program the operators were using was called “ARPANET,” a precursor to the internet as we know it, and by the end of the year, Arpanet linked 10 computers nationwide. In honor of LA’s contribution to the Internet, text someone you care about a “LO” today.
See it on our Los Angeles Tours: Los Angeles Tour – You’ll pedal right past the beautiful UCLA campus, the transmission site for the first Internet message on our popular Los Angeles Tour!
