Chris Stokel-Walker

The DNS was invented by two researchers at the University of Southern California called Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel, in 1983.

the ARPANET days, those overseeing the network maintained a file called hosts.txt, which contained easily understandable addresses for key points on the network. Each machine connected to the network stored this file locally on their devices, and it had to be kept up to date – typically manually.

Sure enough, it was needed. Kline, based at UCLA, typed the letters L and O into his computer – the start of the command ‘login’, that would allow him to log into the computer based in Stanford. But the G didn’t arrive. UCLA’s computer had crashed.

The first message sent over the internet, at 10.30 p.m. on 29 October 1969, as recorded in a lined notebook kept alongside the UCLA machine to act as a record of everything that happened on the device, was therefore ‘Lo’.