[ih] Nit-picking an origin story

[vinton cerf]

BBN did indeed do pre-shipment inter-IMP tests and perhaps used their fake
hosts to do it. I don't know if they had anything connected to the IMPs on
the BBN 1822 interfaces before shipping to UCLA and SRI. Bob K might know.

The "LOgin" story seems way overemphasized in my view since it was a small
bug that got fixed fast. I am guessing that the terminal on the UCLA side
was running through the SEX timesharing system in a process that had access
to the IMP 1822 channel. It was presumably running in echoplex mode. Not
much of a message exchange but did show packet-switched terminal access to
a remote timesharing system.

v


On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 1:16 PM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> The NPL network already existed and had for awhile, a couple of years but
> I will have to go look at sources to be exact.
>
> Of course, what this should say is the first messages exchanged on the
> ARPANET.
>
> I am sure BBN tested it before they delivered it, but I don’t remember now
> what Hafner says about that.
>
> Take care,
> John
>
> > On Aug 16, 2025, at 12:41, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > My Facebook feed just delivered a tidbit from UCLA that begins:
> >
> >   "In 1969, UCLA Professor Leonard Kleinrock directed the transmission
> >   of the first message between two networked computers..."
> >
> > I found myself wondering a bit about that characterization:
> >
> > 1. Didn't BBN do some inter-host packet exchanges, when testing the
> >   IMPs, before shipping them to UCLA and SRI?  Wouldn't that have
> >   counted as the actual first?
> > 2. There were other packet research projects, at the time, but I don't
> >   remember the details of timing of other 'WAN' and 'LAN' project.
> >   1969 was early enough that it's entirely possible the others were
> >   later, but I'd be interested in hearing the details.
> >
> > I suspect the refinement of the UCLA statement would be:
> >
> >   "In 1969, UCLA Professor Leonard Kleinrock directed the transmission
> >   of the first message between two networked computers
> >
> > --
> > Dave Crocker
> >
> > Brandenburg InternetWorking
> > bbiw.net
> > bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> > mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social
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