[ih] First ARPANET Link Put Into Service: November 21, 1969

Steve Crocker steve at shinkuro.com
Mon Nov 24 02:25:12 PST 2025 

I checked with Kleinrock.  His records note that Larry Roberts visited UCLA
on 21 Nov 1969.  The FJCC was in Las Vegas the preceding three days.  I
don't have any direct data indicating Larry went there before coming to
UCLA, but it's plausible.

Neither Larry nor Barry Wessler came to UCLA very often.  I don't recall
any other time either of them came during 1968-71.  Larry and Len had other
opportunities to get together.  They knew each other well and did not need
formal site visits very often.  I moved from UCLA to (D)ARPA to work
directly for Larry in mid-1971.  I was still enrolled in UCLA as a grad
student, so I kept away from contractual interactions with UCLA.  Vint may
have more to say about whether Larry visited UCLA from mid-1971 onward.

Larry's visit on 21 Nov 1969 was memorable for me.  Our machine was a Xerox
(née SDS) Sigma 7.  Mike Wingfield had connected a DEC 340 (or maybe 338)
display.  I had arrived from MIT and had a lot of experience with the TECO
editor.  I implemented TECO on the Sigma 7 and used the display to show the
contents of the buffer.  Larry, who usually showed very little emotion,
took note of it when I showed him, but didn't say much.  Only later, while
working for him, did I learn he was an experienced TECO programmer.  When
email first became operational, he wrote a TECO program to read email.  It
was painfully slow moving from one message to the next.  There was a
character count in the email header, but it didn't match the and the
character count in the TECO buffer because new line characters in an
incoming message were converted to two characters, NL (new line) followed
by CR (carriage return), so he advanced the pointer one character at a time
to find the next header.  I modified his code to speed up the movement by
advancing the pointer a line at a time.

I'm guessing Peter Salus interviewed Kleinrock or Roberts and somehow
fastened on 21 Nov as an important milestone.

Steve

On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 4:05 PM Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:

> After seeing the back and forth on this thread, I now think 21 Nov 1969
> was when Larry Roberts came to UCLA.  I'll try to check with Kleinrock.
>
> Steve
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Nov 23, 2025, at 3:48 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > Perhaps someone in the Bay Area can go to CHM and ask what actually
> happened on November 21, 1969...?   /Jack
> >
> >> On 11/23/25 12:22, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >>  Here is Don Nielson's response to my inquiry.  I did cut out the first
> paragraph as it only was for me. There is a typo regarding the 1972 ICC
> meeting.
> >> barbara
> >>    ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Don Nielson <
> nielsonz at pacbell.net>To: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>Sent: Friday,
> November 21, 2025 at 10:05:40 PM PSTSubject: Re: Fw: [ih] First ARPANET
> Link Put Into Service: November 21, 1969
> >>  "*** paragraph deleted*****
> >>    I'm certain about the following:
> >>    1.  First ARPANET connection - Between Bill Duvall at SRI and
> Charlie Kline of UCLA
> >>      on what has been accepted as 29 Oct 1969.  I tried my best to
> confirm the date
> >>      while this date was being pushed by Len Kleinrock of UCLA. Even I
> and Marc Weber
> >>      the CHM dug into Engelbart's dinky handwritten notebooks and other
> stuff on file at
> >>      Stanford. As far as we could tell, nothing was noted on the SRI
> end, indicating no big
> >>      deal at the time.  So, what has come to be accepted derives from a
> brief jot on Charlie's
> >>      scratchpad:  "22:30  Talked to SRI Host to Host". Charlie and Bill
> are still around
> >>      and have confirmed and elaborated on the incident, being quoted in
> some places.
> >>  2. ARPANET demo at the International Computer Communication Conference
> in WDC
> >>      of NCP in Oct 19723.
> >>  3. First 2-net demo of TCP was on 27 Aug 1976.  PRNET and ARPANET.
> >>  4. First 3-net demo of TCP was on 22 Nov 1977.  PRNET, SATNET, and
> ARPANET.
> >>    All this is easily available so 21 Nov 1969 seems an aberration by
> someone.
> >>  Take good care,  Don
> >>      On 11/21/25 10:14 AM, Barbara Denny wrote:
> >>       Hi Don
> >>   Hope you are doing well.  This came up on the internet history list.
> I am wondering if you could shed some insight on the log.
> >>   Hope you have a good holiday.
> >>   barbara
> >>     ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Vint Cerf via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> To: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> Cc: "
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org" <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2025 at 09:50:33 AM PST Subject: Re: [ih] First
> ARPANET Link Put Into Service: November 21, 1969
> >>    crocker and I were wondering the same thing off the list.
> >>  v
> >>      On Fri, Nov 21, 2025 at 12:49 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
> <
> >>  internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>    > Can anyone explain why the article says "What Happened on November
> 21st"
> >>  > but the image of the "First ARPANET IMP log" shows "29 OCT"? /Jack
> >>  >
> >>  > On 11/21/25 09:37, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> >>  > > there are so many milestone dates....
> >>  > >
> >>  > > v
> >>  > >
> >>  > >
> >>  > >
> >>  > > On Fri, Nov 21, 2025 at 12:03 PM Frantisek Borsik via
> Internet-history <
> >>  > > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>  > >
> >>  > >> Happy birthday to the Internet!
> >>  > >>
> >>  > >> https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/november/21/
> >>  > >>
> >>  > >> All the best,
> >>  > >>
> >>  > >> Frank
> >>  > >>
> >>  > >> Frantisek (Frank) Borsik
> >>  > >>
> >>  > >>
> >>  > >> *In loving memory of Dave Täht: *1965-2025
> >>  > >>
> >>  > >> https://libreqos.io/2025/04/01/in-loving-memory-of-dave/
> >>
> >>
> >
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