(video courtesy of Boing Boing)
40 years ago today, something remarkable happened. Scientists gathered in a UCLA lab to watch as ARPANET, the predecessor of what we know today as the Internet, sent bytes of dummy data between two computers connected to a switch by some dull gray cable. What’s remarkable about this was that this was the first time two independent systems were connected by a network, and the first time two independent systems spoke and acknowledged one another as peer, independent systems. Thus, the first network was born.
I couldn’t possibly do the moment justice – without that one moment in time, I wouldn’t be typing this, you wouldn’t be reading it, and you wouldn’t be able to watch the video above of Dr. Leonard Kleinrock discussing what those moments in his lab were like, 40 years ago. Check out the video above, and then hit the source post at BoingBoing below.