Eight Amazing Internet Facts

It’s officially the internet’s 40th birthday, and I’m sure the blogosphere will soon be full of posts discussing it’s history. I’d just like to share eight things I have read, that each made me go “Wow! I didn’t know that!”

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• The first word typed into the internet was “Login” (Shame they didn’t take a leaf out of Morse’s book, with his classic “What hath God wrought?”)
• Within 12 years, that first network of two machines became 213. In the next 12 years, it became 16 million!
• The first usable web browser didn’t come until 1993, but by ‘95 Amazon had arrived and by ‘98 Google were on the scene
• As recently as January 1994, there were a total of 623 websites on the whole internet. Just 623!
• Sweden has the highest rate of internet users at 75% of the population
• Only 35% of internet users use the English language online
• The biggest selling item on the internet is books

And I’ve saved the best until last:

• Although the first word typed into the net was meant to be “login” there was a problem…….

I’ll let Oliver Burkeman from The Guardian tell you the story:

“………..still, Kleinrock recalls a tangible sense of excitement that night as Kline sat down at the SDS Sigma 7 computer, connected to the IMP, and at the same time made telephone contact with his opposite number at Stanford. As his colleagues watched, he typed the letter L, to begin the word LOGIN.

"Have you got the L?" he asked, down the phone line. "Got the L," the voice at Stanford responded.

Kline typed an O. "Have you got the O?"

"Got the O," Stanford replied.

Kline typed a G, at which point the system crashed, and the connection was lost. The G didn't make it through, which meant that, quite by accident, the first message ever transmitted across the nascent internet turned out, after all, to be fittingly biblical:

"LO.”………

Some other “Eights”

1/ Eight things I hate about Twitter

2/ Eight things I love about Twitter

3/ Eight ways to overcome a lack of motivation as a blogger