On 12 March, the World Wide Web celebrated 25's birthday, but this anniversary would not have been possible if two decades earlier had not preceded it ARPANET, the first switching network data in "packages". The first ARPANET Internet message was sent in 1969 by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Although the first attempt was rather "missing" (the system managed to send only two letters and then "crashed"), the data soon began to "run" opening a new chapter in the history of communications. Today, the room from which the historic mission took place has been turned into a museum, offering the public the opportunity to see the "room where the Internet was born".
The 3420 Room
From the outside, room 3420 in the Boelter Hall building of the University of California, Los Angeles does not "attract" the eye at all: through the glass of the ordinary door, an "ancient" can be seen machine which looks like a large typewriter and what looks like a metal cabinet with electronic components and cables protruding from it. And yet these "oldies", which 45 years ago were the cutting edge of technology, were the ones that led to today's miracle of the Internet.
While still a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Leonard Kleinrock, now a professor at UCLA, grasped the mathematical basis of packet switching, the transmission of data as independent "packets" on nodes that can be used by many users. packet switching is now the basis of the Internet. Leonard Kleinrock's idea, which he developed in his doctorate in the early 1960s, attracted the interest of ARPA, the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Service (now DARPA). ARPA has decided to fund a pilot project to develop such a pioneering network.
A team of computer engineers at BBN developed a ground-breaking hub interfaceς επεξεργασίας μηνυμάτων – Interface Message Processor ή IMP – ο οποίος αποτέλεσε ουσιαστικά το πρώτο router. Ο πρώτος IMP τοποθετήθηκε στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Λος Άντζελες στην Καλιφόρνια όπου εργαζόταν πλέον ο δρ Leonard Kleinrock, ο οποίος και ανέλαβε να σχεδιάσει το δίκτυο και να διεξαγάγει πειράματα.
"LO" - the first message
On October 29, 1969, Dr. Leonard Kleinrock and his team gathered in Room 3420 to try to send the first message to the Stanford Research Institute, where a second node was located. The message was "LOGIN", but as soon as the first two keys were pressed, the system "crashed". So the first message sent from the network that would later evolve on the Internet was, as Professor Leonard Kleinrock himself told Gizmodo online magazine, a simple "LO". An hour later, however, the researchers repeated the attempt, this time successfully.
By December 1969, four IMPs had been established on a permanent basis - at UCLA, Stanford, the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. In 1970 the IMP moved to the East Coast, connecting 13 nodes in various research centers. In 1971 the number increased to 18 and this growth continued at a steady pace: in 1981 the network now connected 213 computers while another one was connected every 20 days leading steadily to the "explosion" of the Internet that followed.
Forgotten and thrown
After the first glory, however, room 3420 passed into... obscurity. The "ancient" ones, now with the advancement of technology, were retired and the space turned into a laboratory with modern equipment for the next generations of students. In 2011, however, the university established the Kleinrock Center for Internet Studies in honor of the professor. Leonard Kleinrock himself undertook, together with a group of his collaborators, to "resurrect" the "Internet room" to become the headquarters of the new center.
In addition to the electronic equipment, the room was completely restored, obtaining the decor of the time with every detail - the team of researchers even composed the same color on the walls based on old photos. So today visitors can see "alive" a piece of our modern history. "How many revolutions do you know where you can see - within a few meters - where exactly they started?" says Professor Leonard Kleinrock proudly. "Here, on this machine, the Internet came to life," he said in his first words.
Posted in Helios Plus
