CNN interviews Leonard Kleinrock, a professor at UCLA who connected the school’s host computer to one at Stanford Research Institute and sent the first message over a computer network. The Internet traces its origins to that first transmission, which took place on Oct. 29, 1969.

From CNN.com:

CNN: In basic terms, what happened on October 29, 1969, and what was its importance to the Internet as we know it today?

Kleinrock: Millions of people helped create this Internet. I basically supervised the creation of the Internet at the first node, both in the first connection and the very first message. We had just by then connected the first two host computers to the Internet. The first one was on September 2, 1969, when UCLA connected its host computer to the first packet switcher, the first router if you will, ever on the Internet.

But there was no other computer to talk to. So a month later, Stanford Research Institute received its interface message processor, or IMP, connected it to their host computer, and we created the first piece of the backbone network when a 50-kilobit-per-second line was connected between UCLA and SRI.

Tags: Leonard Kleinrock, Stanford Research Institute, UCLA

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