Encounter 29 · 29 of 42 · 29 October 1969
LO
On 29 October 1969 a programmer at UCLA typed LOGIN toward a machine at SRI. The receiving computer crashed after O. Computing, that night, was a tool that did not finish the word.
Boelter Hall 3420, UCLA
Look at the teletype, not the later cloud.
Room 3420, Boelter Hall, 22:30 in the IMP log. Kline was twenty-one and liked the hours. Duvall was at SRI, not at Stanford University. Kleinrock’s lab had IMP serial number 1, a BBN machine the size of a freezer. The intended string was LOGIN. That is the before: a test between two hosts, not a christening.
The letters
- LTyped at UCLA. Confirmed at SRI on the voice line.
- OTyped. Confirmed.
- GThe SRI host crashed. The first message was LO.
- About an hour laterThe host recovered. LOGIN completed. Kline logged the night.
The tool failed in the middle of the word. They used it anyway.
1969
The log
22:30. Talk to SRI, host to host. L, O, crash. Kleinrock attributed the bug to SRI’s software. An hour later, the whole word.
Later
Lo and behold
Hence, the first message on the Internet was “lo”, as in “lo and behold!”Leonard Kleinrock, afterward, on his own page of the log. He has said he added the joke later. A later joke. Not a 1969 intention. Destiny is not in the logbook.
Accident is not promoted into authorship. Two letters are two letters.
What is a network when it still cannot finish a word?
Private. No one else will see it.
Source
- primary01 · UCLA IMP log, 29 October 196922:30 hours. CSK. First host-to-host ARPANET transmission, UCLA SDS Sigma 7 to SRI SDS 940. Scan published by Leonard Kleinrock.Record
- interview02 · Charley Kline, NPR interview, 2010Later recollection with Duvall: typing L, O, then a crash on G. About an hour later, LOGIN completed.Record
- institutional03 · UCLA Samueli, 29 October 2019Institutional anniversary: Boelter Hall 3420, LOGIN, crash after two letters, later full transmission the same night.Record
Boelter Hall · 29 October 1969 · two letters