UCLA and Stanford researchers send first internet message via ARPANET

On October 29, 1969, the first message sent over ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet, was limited to just two letters: ‘LO’. The attempt was intended to transmit the command ‘LOGIN’ between computers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California.

During the experiment, student programmer Charley Kline attempted to connect from UCLA to programmer Bill Duvall at Stanford while maintaining a telephone connection. While the letters ‘L’ and ‘O’ were successfully transmitted, the system crashed upon the typing of the third letter, ‘G’.

Professor Leonard Kleinrock, who led the UCLA team, noted that the system was restored approximately one hour later, allowing the connection to be completed successfully. The accidental message ‘LO’ has since been viewed as a symbolic precursor to the phrase ‘lo and behold’.