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Sylwia Vargas
Sylwia Vargas

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Trivia#5: The first word sent over the internet

Welcome to my little CS trivia series. Every week I post a new trivia piece.

Today's question is...


What was the first word sent over the internet?

The historic exchange took place 45 years ago, on October 29, on the ARPANET, or, what the first version of the Internet looked like. The programmers attempted to type in and transmit the word "login" from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute.

The log of the first message sent on the Internet.

However, the system crashed right after they typed in the "o." Therefore, the first word sent over the internet was "lo". The full word was transmitted an hour later.

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While lo does not mean anything in English (maybe except for the phrase lo and behold), it does mean it in Spanish or no in Hebrew. This, of course, brings to my memory the show "Little Britain" and their famous "computer says no".

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