Oldest Dot-com Domain Turning 30 48
netbuzz writes: On March 15, 1985, Symbolics, Inc, maker of Lisp computers, registered the Internet's first dot-com address: Symbolics.com. Sunday will mark the 30th anniversary of that registration. And while Symbolics has been out of business for years, the address was sold in 2009 for an undisclosed sum to a speculator who said: "For us to own the first domain is very special to our company, and we feel blessed for having the ability to obtain this unique property." Today there's not much there.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, if he could 3D print his dong
If??? This is one of the easier files, I could have this done before cocktail hour today.
Re: (Score:2)
(that's one story submission I don't think will make the front page)
may not be much there (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
how symbolic
Re: (Score:1)
So go hit the wayback machine. You can see it from 1996 until 4 days ago. Amazing, huh?
Nothing there... (Score:2)
Now that it's been /.ed
I wish I "cdr" seen it (Score:3, Funny)
It's been that long? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
!ihnp4 ?
Re: (Score:2)
!ucbvax
Re:It's been that long? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that long. Even before this registering of the domain, the "internet" was already underway. What the registering did was provide a common name that everyone could agree upon so that you didn't have to use the IP address directly and you could use DNS so that you didn't have to enter all your favorites into the hosts table.
Also symbolics.com was NOT the first domain. First registrations were darpa.org/darpa.net/darpa.gov and nordu.net. Not only was nordu.net there on the first day, it is also the oldest domain that is still active. For the next registration after symbolics.com, there was bbn.com on the same day as several .EDU domains. The .EDU domains far outnumbered .COM domains during 1985, which makes sense because the internet was highly academic in nature, and even the early commercial domains were primarily using it in their research divisions.
I found it odd that when searching for this list (it's on wikipedia) that I easily found several other hits that listed only the early .COM domains and it took a lot more digging to find hits listing all the early domains. But I guess that in the modern era that only for-profit commercial companies matter to the mass media and general public.
Re: (Score:3)
I should clarify, the DARPA registrations were for the TLDs only (ie, ORG/NET/EDU/GOV, but not COM for some reason). But nordu.net still registered before symbolics.com.
Re: (Score:3)
Nope, digital.com predates symbolics.com. NSI screwed up the dates. Check with Reid who don't forget enabled BIND by paying Vixie to write it when they were both at DECWRL.How could anyhting predate the domain of the guys that wrote the code?
Re: (Score:2)
I think that list is just the registration with the official registrar, but there may have been unofficial usage of the TLDs? I was just a student at the time though and not doing any sysadmin stuff yet.
bbn.com (Score:4, Informative)
bbn.com was registered 9 days later - still around, doing the same thing - government sponsored research.
Re: (Score:2)
Not surprising. BBN still had Internet node-zero running on an old DEC when I interviewed there in 1987.
Re: (Score:2)
bbn.com AND five universities. So BBN was really in a 6 way tie to be second...
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a .COM domain so that mass media doesn't notice it. Just as they didn't notice nordu.net who registered a few months before symbolics.net :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Mine was free then. I did a dictionary search against whois and abnormal was free. I just knew I had to have it. That was close to 20 years ago.
Anyway there will be cake for anyone who RSVPs.
Symbolics instigated the free software movement (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to remind everyone about Symbolics' place in history. Symbolics was founded by a bunch of Richard Stallman's co-workers from the MIT AI lab, and Symbolics' business tactics provided the primary motivatation for the Stallman's creation of the Free Software movement. See
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html [gnu.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Symbolics was an amazing company. I was doing AI R&D for a large company back in the 80's, where we had several 3670s and 3640s. Even after all these years, I have not seen anything as robust and easy to work with as Lisp+Flavors on their Genera environment.
Re: (Score:2)
Oldest still held by same company is XEROX.COM (Score:5, Informative)
Number 7 on the list of oldest registered domain names [wikipedia.org].
BBN is apparently owned by Raytheon [bbn.com].
Apple.com is number 64, just under two years later. One of the benefits of getting in on the ground floor like that was big blocks of IPv4 addresses - apple.com still controls a /24 block, I think.
When did microsoft.com get created?
My personal intro to the internet was at the University of Maryland - I was there when the TAC to Ft. Meade was installed.
Re: (Score:1)
One of the benefits of getting in on the ground floor like that was big blocks of IPv4 addresses - apple.com still controls a /24 block, I think.
...and Xerox has (or maybe had) 13/8.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
/24 is *SMALL*
Try /8
NetRange: 17.0.0.0 - 17.255.255.255
CIDR: 17.0.0.0/8
NetName: APPLE-WWNET
NetHandle: NET-17-0-0-0-1
Parent: ()
NetType: Direct Assignment
OriginAS:
Organization: Apple Inc. (APPLEC-1-Z)
RegDate: 1990-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-02
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-17-0-0-0-1
SYMBOLICS IS NOT THE FIRST DOT COM (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone gets this wrong.
BIND was written at Digital when Brian Reid looked at Mockapetris spec and got Vixie to take the Berkeley B-Tree code and produce BIND.
Now what do you suppose the chances are that he didn't bother to grab digital.com? How bout zero? If you guessed that, you deserve a cookie.
Reid has the nic receipt for digital.com and it predates symbolics.com. February vs. March, NSI screwed up the dates in one of their transitions.
Ref: Brian Reid. Ask him yourself. This was explained on one of the domain mailing lists during the DNS wars.
Still 5 Months Until... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
According to the information posted at digital.com [slashdot.org]:
In 1985, Digital became the fifth company ever to register a .com domain name when they purchased dec.com. In 1993 they also registered digital.com, and became the world’s first computer vendor to open a public website on October 1 of that year.
Free domains (Score:2)
Not the oldest Dotcom (Score:1)
Kim Dotcom is 41 QED.
Remember how .coms were treated back then? (Score:2)