First ever email (nearly) sent 40 years ago

Posted on 30 Oct 2009 at 12:44

The very first internet failure occurred forty years ago to the day, corresponding almost instantaneously with the sending of the first email.

The email message, sent between Professor Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA and Douglas Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute, was supposed to comprise the single word 'LOGON'. However, milliseconds after the send command was entered the system crashed. The first email ever sent said simply (and informally), "LO".

In reality experiments with ARPANET, the network that effectively kick-started the internet as we know it, had been going on for a while before and in September 1969 successful data transfers were being made. However, these were of meaningless data and the LO email was the first useful communication, albeit brief and partial.

The first known computer virus was released onto ARPANET two years later in 1971. It was called Creeper and spread through the network infecting systems. The first personal computer virus appeared in the wild in 1981. It was called Rother J and infected Apple computers. PC viruses would not appear until 1986.

Author: Simon Edwards

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