I worked for bbn.com back in the mid 2000's before they went out of business. BBN employed some of the smartest people I've ever worked with, but the company couldn't figure out how to keep the business relationships going. I remember having a conversation with my colleague saying "How does a company that invents the internet go out of business?"
I was eventually laid off along with about 30% of the company. I saw people who worked there for 18 years brought to tears because BBN was all they knew. My key take away was that experience was that no matter how impactful your tech company is on society, leadership's vision really determines the trajectory.
I started at BBN a few years before that, a month before the sale to GTE. It was a shame, they definitely had some tremendously bright people.
I also have on a couple of occasions worked at Eli Lilly, who had a class A because they were early to the Internet; I found it vaguely humorous that between BBN and Lilly I'd worked on more class A networks than most people would ever have the opportunity to.
Sad to see the current state of http://symbolics.com/ with a big "as seen on" section and all those social sharing buttons. It's like updating a historical center with shag carpeting and lava lamps.
The fourth IETF proceedings (back when the Internet Engineering Task Force was an internet engineering task force) contains a list of the 143 second-level domains registered as of July 10, 1986.
Of the 40 listed .com domains, the following are not in the list in the OP article:
adelie.com
buck.com
cca.com
mecc.com
nbi.com
next.com
olivetti.com
proteon.com
pyr.com
rca.com
tmc.com
vse.com
One of the five listed .org domains is not in the article: csc.org
The one listed .net domain is cs.net, also not in the article.
Speaking of DEC.com, it was purchased for $57,500 few years ago by Paul Kocher. I'd say it was a bargain, considering the rich heritage of DEC and it's alexa ranking.
Funny that the 20th domain ever registered had a hyphen in it (bell-atl.com). They probably thought it would be easier to read than bellatl.com or bellatlantic.com
It doesn't surprise me that Northrop were early into domain registration, they always were an unconventional-thinking company.
Nor does it surprise me that the post-merger leadership abandoned the domain name. I think that says a lot about their attitude ( acquire, grow, acquire )
gmr.com whois - General Motors Research & Development Center of General Motors Research & Development Center since 2017. Gmr was registered with Network Solutions LLC. on May 08, 1986. General Motors Research & Development Center resides in WARREN, USA and their email is rpresby@mail.com.
I see 5 domains registered on Aug. 5th, 1986, then no more domains for another month. And 12 on Dec. 11 1986, then again another month with no registrations.
Yes, they were done by email and were a massive pain in the ass. There was a text file template you'd fill out and email it to ISI. The domains were free but you had to have working nameservers for them and that was the tough part. As a young undergrad in 1993, I wanted to register a few but couldn't find anyone to serve DNS for me. The Vanderbilt IT staff was unwilling to help and I didn't know anybody else until I met my buddy Bob Collie (who owns bob.net). I ended up registering cjs.com, grateful.com, eleet.com and some others but let most of them expire when I couldn't afford the annual $70 per-domain fee that Network Solutions started charging after they took over from ISI. The only one I kept was bikeworld.com, which I had registered for my dad's bike shop. He still uses it today.
I believe they were done by email or online form (edited to be more accurate), but were all verified by a human and entered into the database manually. So you had to wait for the processing run to get your domain in, which was at the whims of the person who had to process them.
I think you could do online+fax-followup from sometime around 93 or 94, but until then: mail. Even then online was dodgy (unreliable) at best. Easier to call ISI and see how they wanted it this year...
EDIT: I operated a regional thing off BBN, and I could do the nasty bits of hoisting myself to administrative acceptance. I can't imagine what it must have required for someone just trying to 'join' before 1990-or-so.
In the sea of dead links, early tech companies, think tanks, and so on, I was happy to see my local (Boston) PBS and NPR affiliate, WGBH. I don't usually think of public broadcasting as an early tech adopter, so even in Boston it was a pleasant surprise to see they registered one of the first 100 .org domains.
> Respondent Yana Beklova, who at one stage worked for the Complainant, requested an amount between USD 500,000 and USD 1,000,000 for the transfer of the disputed domain name, that the registrant of the disputed domain name sought to hide its identity through a WhoIs privacy protection service, that the Respondents tried to transfer the disputed domain name out of the reach of the Australian courts to avoid legal proceedings after having received the cease and desist letter, that some of the Respondents named by the Complainant have been involved in previous UDRP proceedings, which suggests a pattern of conduct, and that the disputed domain name was registered to intentionally attract customers looking for the Complainant’s website for commercial gain by creating a likelihood of confusion.
I don't believe Wikipedia. The fourth IETF proceedings lists 90 .edu domains registered as of July 10, 1986.
Of those, 18 are still currently registered but are not in Wikipedia's list: buffalo.edu
colgate.edu
du.edu
houston.edu
lehigh.edu
merit.edu
mosis.edu
riacs.edu
sdsu.edu
sunysb.edu
tmc.edu
ucar.edu
uchicago.edu
uiowa.edu
umb.edu
uoregon.edu
villanova.edu
vt.edu
A further 7 are no longer registered:
mich-state.edu
ntsu.edu
ogc.edu
pittsburgh.edu
ukans.edu
wanginst.edu
waterloo.edu
I wonder what the story is behind nordu.net being the first registered domain name (I'm assuming it's the same nordu.net that exists today; I don't actually know although the dates seem to match up.) It is associated with research networks but it still seems a bit odd that they registered before BBN, Berkeley, and organizations like those.
If i remember correctly, they created the first transatlantic ARPA link in the first years of proto-internet, so they were there from the beginning, ie before DNS. Maybe they just stared to use DNS earlier than Berkeley.
They had a rather respectful network in 1993, they probably had been running for more than 15 years by then.
You learn something new every day. I actually had to look them up. It appears that they're unique in having registered a domain name on the same day that DARPA registered the TLDs.
ADDED: I do wonder if the date is fudged a bit. I suppose it's possible that both DARPA and Nordic network people were hard at work registering things on New Year's Day but I have my doubts :-)
Readit News
I was eventually laid off along with about 30% of the company. I saw people who worked there for 18 years brought to tears because BBN was all they knew. My key take away was that experience was that no matter how impactful your tech company is on society, leadership's vision really determines the trajectory.
I also have on a couple of occasions worked at Eli Lilly, who had a class A because they were early to the Internet; I found it vaguely humorous that between BBN and Lilly I'd worked on more class A networks than most people would ever have the opportunity to.
Deleted Comment
symbolics.com - Still exists
bbn.com - Redirects to raytheon.com
think.com - Dead
mcc.com - Redirects to thecryptogenius.com (sometimes, not sure what's going on with it)
dec.com - Redirects to paulkocher.com
northrop.com - Dead
xerox.com - Alive, Xerox website
sri.com - Alive
hp.com - Alive, HP website
bellcore.com - Dead
ibm.com - Alive, IBM website
sun.com - Alive, sun website (oracle.com)
intel.com - Alive, intel website
ti.com - Alive, Texas Instruments
att.com - Alive, ATT
gmr.com - Dead
tek.com - Alive, Tektronix website
fmc.com - Alive, FMC website
ub.com - Alive, United Bitcoin website
bell-atl.com - Dead
Of the 40 listed .com domains, the following are not in the list in the OP article: adelie.com buck.com cca.com mecc.com nbi.com next.com olivetti.com proteon.com pyr.com rca.com tmc.com vse.com
One of the five listed .org domains is not in the article: csc.org
The one listed .net domain is cs.net, also not in the article.
[1] http://www.symbolics-dks.com/
Nor does it surprise me that the post-merger leadership abandoned the domain name. I think that says a lot about their attitude ( acquire, grow, acquire )
They could’ve just pointed it to http://gm.com
I always forget that dashes are allowed in domain names.
I built this a while back:
https://linkpeek.com/blog/website-screenshot-of-every-two-le...
https://linkpeek.com/blog/firework-project-screenshot-every-...
tl;dr: IANA reserved all the single-letter domains in 1993, except for some that had been grandfathered in.
All the two-letter .com domains are registered, and only available on the secondary market.
Deleted Comment
Symbolics -> Lisp Machines, Lisp software
BBN -> Jericho Lisp Machine, BBN Lisp, various Lisp applications
Thinking Machines -> Connection Machine CM1, a massive parallel accelerator for Symbolics Lisp Machine, *Lisp
MCC -> had a network of 100+ Lisp Machines, developed Cyc, Orion (a Lisp OODB) and a Lisp-based CAD system - amongst others
Xerox -> Interlisp, Interlisp-D Lisp Machine
SRI -> AI research with lots Lisp applications
I see 5 domains registered on Aug. 5th, 1986, then no more domains for another month. And 12 on Dec. 11 1986, then again another month with no registrations.
I hated having to use the InterNIC template when I was handling domain regs back at that place we were both involved with.
Note that this actually precedes the web by several years
The SRI NIC had a template file you'd fill out and email it in. For example, see RFC-1032: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1032
I registered my first .edu in 1986 (maybe 1987) and my first .com in 1988.
It was done similarly for getting IP blocks assigned. I emailed in a form around 1986 and got a class B assigned for my university (still in use).
EDIT: I operated a regional thing off BBN, and I could do the nasty bits of hoisting myself to administrative acceptance. I can't imagine what it must have required for someone just trying to 'join' before 1990-or-so.
Deleted Comment
> Respondent Yana Beklova, who at one stage worked for the Complainant, requested an amount between USD 500,000 and USD 1,000,000 for the transfer of the disputed domain name, that the registrant of the disputed domain name sought to hide its identity through a WhoIs privacy protection service, that the Respondents tried to transfer the disputed domain name out of the reach of the Australian courts to avoid legal proceedings after having received the cease and desist letter, that some of the Respondents named by the Complainant have been involved in previous UDRP proceedings, which suggests a pattern of conduct, and that the disputed domain name was registered to intentionally attract customers looking for the Complainant’s website for commercial gain by creating a likelihood of confusion.
IIRC, rice.edu was the 8th domain registered on the entire internet.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_r...
Of those, 18 are still currently registered but are not in Wikipedia's list: buffalo.edu colgate.edu du.edu houston.edu lehigh.edu merit.edu mosis.edu riacs.edu sdsu.edu sunysb.edu tmc.edu ucar.edu uchicago.edu uiowa.edu umb.edu uoregon.edu villanova.edu vt.edu
A further 7 are no longer registered: mich-state.edu ntsu.edu ogc.edu pittsburgh.edu ukans.edu wanginst.edu waterloo.edu
They had a rather respectful network in 1993, they probably had been running for more than 15 years by then.
ADDED: I do wonder if the date is fudged a bit. I suppose it's possible that both DARPA and Nordic network people were hard at work registering things on New Year's Day but I have my doubts :-)