Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The First 100 Dot Coms Ever Registered

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bet-mine-isn't-in-there dept.

roman1 submitted an interesting list containing the first 100 .com domains registered. Many of the names you haven't heard of, many you have. What was interesting to me is that it took 2 years just to get 100 domains on-line.

10 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. I remember when.... by superid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of my very first introductions to enterprise networking and internet was back in about 1988. I was friends with the admin of a Vax cluster at a progressive little company. He had printed out "the host table" that he downloaded each night. It probably wasn't more than 80 or 100 sheets of fanfold greenbar. I remember browsing it a bit and the only two that I can remember were burlingtoncoatfactory.com and lucasarts.com (or was it lucasfilms?)

    anyway....get off my lawn!

  2. Internet connections by stoney27 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yea it took two years, but these where internet connections. Most companies where not thinking about connecting there computers to the outside world unless they where doing some research or involved with networking in some way. There was not let's put out our "Marketing message on the Internet", most of it was he we where working with this in School and we could use this technology to share information or for sending email.

    -S

    --

    It is said that a child learns wisdom from the parent,
    but the truly wise parent learns joy from the child
  3. This was the 80s by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1985, first domain. I'm fairly sure a few posting here weren't even born, most of the rest had other things on their mind than DNS problems (my main concerns was that I was going to a different school then and had to find new friends).

    The internet was but a dream. It was something that a few research companies, some universities and maybe even the ARPA cared about. Nobody had internet at home. If anything, we had modems to dial into BBSs.

    Does it make sense to register a COM domain? As in Commercial?

    Some companies realized that this will be the future (and I'm honestly surprised to see Siemens on the list, they must've had better and more visionary people in their upper echelons back then), and they registered their trademark as a com domain rather than fighting a lengthy battle with domain grabbers as many have done later. Cisco and a few others on the list make sense, since they are pretty tightly coupled with the success of the internet, being more or less networking companies.

    But, bluntly, why should any flower shop or manufacturer of beer bottles register "his" domain in the 80s? It was hardly their topic, and hardly any sensible way to sell their goods without an audience willing and able to buy via the net.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:This was the 80s by ajs · · Score: 3, Interesting

      1985, first domain. Which is kind of odd, since, by 1987 when I got to college, just about every technical company and University that I had regular dealings with had a domain name. It goes to show how fast it scaled.

      Does it make sense to register a COM domain? As in Commercial? Actually, in the beginning, ".com" was a dumping ground for those commercial organizations that were considered "just barely worthy." The perception was that the Internet was for the .mil and .edu crowd who were the founders of the Apranet. .com was created for those companies that wanted to be able to do business with the Internet-savvy types in the universities and military via email or offer ftp access to software updates and the like. There was no real sense that .com was for commercial exploitation of the Net.

      But, bluntly, why should any flower shop or manufacturer of beer bottles register "his" domain in the 80s? It was hardly their topic, and hardly any sensible way to sell their goods without an audience willing and able to buy via the net. And really, they should not have. They had no business (I mean that literally) using the Internet of that day. In the 90s, with the advent of the Web, everything changed. But remember that the Net predates the Web, and back in those days it wasn't really a place that flower shops could have gotten anything from.

    2. Re:This was the 80s by Hymer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The reason for those .com registrations back then is not what you assume... the reason was the need for human readable e-mail addresses. Most corporations wanted quick and easy way to exchange mails with .edu and .mil.
      You could either send snail-mail, call the university (or Pentagon) and hope somebody knew where the person you wanted to speak with were... or you could register on the net and send him an e-mail... and remember, this was the pre-cellular era.
      DEC was btw. very much involved in the whole (d)arpanet project (many universities used DEC computers to power the net back then).
      IBM was big iron for big business and tried btw. to build a global network based on SNA (read your SNA manual again, if you don't belive me).
      ...and yes you are right... the only reason for a pizzeria in Palo Alto to have a registered domain was for all those guys from HP, DEC and Cisco to order pizza by email... daily... tons of pizza every day... well, somebody just didn't see that option back then.

  4. Coincidence ? by nsebban · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In March 1986, it's interesting to see that HP, Bell, IBM, SUN, Intel and TI registered their domain during the same month. IBM and SUN, but also Intel and TI got theirs on the exact same day.

    --
    ____
    nico
    Nico-Live
  5. IDE.com registration and use of email by twasserman · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I was founder and CEO of Interactive Development Environments, Inc. (ide.com), which was the 78th dotcom on the "first 100" list. IDE developed the Software through Pictures multi-user graphical modeling environment that ran on a heterogeneous network of Unix workstations. We released our product in late 1984, got VC funding in May, 1988, and lasted until November, 1996, when we were merged into Aonix, which still exists today.

    Although we were 78th on that list, I believe that we were among the very first to place an ad that used an email address as a contact point. I was able to find an ad from the August, 1987, issue of Unix World, where we gave our email address as ucbvax!sun!ide!sales, using the UUCP format. Our customers were developers and early adopters, mostly on Sun workstations, so we actually got some email and some sales leads in this way. Of course, we switched to the "@ide.com" format as soon as we were able to do so. (Please post a reply if you are aware of an earlier use of an email address in a published ad.)

    Fun times....

    1. Re:IDE.com registration and use of email by Roadkills-R-Us · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I was wondering if anyone else was going to bring this up or if I'd have to. Since .com was the ugly stepsister, and most everyone had email and file transfer access through uucp, most people weren't in a hurry to change anything. For a small company without any research ties, it was (a) hard to get anything besides third or lower tier uucp, (b) a connection besides uucp to a university or a well-connected friend's company was horribly expensive, and (c) there wasn't much point- it bought you nothing.

      In 1988 I worked at Sales Technologies, which went by ...emory.edu!stiatl . Even when we registered salestech.com, it took a while before we could really do much with it. 98% of the people we did anything with still had to reach us through UUCP, which meant !!!!!!stiatl.

      It gave us huge geek foo, though.

  6. Re:Why? by ecloud · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In 1985 it would have been hard to envision the 'net as we know it now. It was nearly 10 years before the general public would discover the web. Why were these companies bothering? Mostly just for professional collaboration via telnet or ftp, right?

  7. McDonalds by sharp-bang · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wired Magazine famously squatted mcdonalds.com in 1994. Worth a read for those wondering what the pre-dot-com corporate mentality was like.

    --
    #!