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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.

69 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What was interesting to me is that it took 2 years just to get 100 domains on-line. Why is that interesting? I'm not even sure if this 'internet' thing is going to catch on ...
    1. Re:Why? by somersault · · Score: 4, Funny

      I noticed StarGate, and of course also the first ever (rather poorly spelled) porn site - siemens.com! Those guys obviously had great vision for the future, and from their lowly porn business beginnings, they must have managed to start a decent electronics company!

      --
      which is totally what she said
    2. 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?

    3. Re:Why? by ncc74656 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I remember downloading drivers from HP as early as 1989.

      After calling their technical support department and being given a location and temporary name and password, of course

      Odd that they'd bother with access controls. Apple allowed anonymous FTP back then, with which you could download system-software updates, tech notes, and whatever else would've been on there at the time. ftp.apple.com is still up and running and still accepting anonymous logins, but most of its contents got moved to their website long ago.

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
    4. Re:Why? by fatmal · · Score: 2, Funny

      Could be an urban legend, but I'd heard that a U.K. branch of Siemens got in trouble with the German head office people for not answering the phone correctly. The company 'standard' was "Siemens Berlin" for the berlin office - "Siemens Singapore" for Singapore etc.

      The branch office that got in trouble for not answering their phones correctly - Staines

  2. Symbolics ... by foobsr · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... here is some pictures of a symbolics (those with the first domasin) machine for those who cannot imagine ...

    http://home.hakuhale.net/rbc/symbolics/20041113/20041113.html

    CC.

    --
    TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
    1. Re:Symbolics ... by djones101 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Where's the Windows key? *ducks the inevitable smack*

    2. Re:Symbolics ... by rs79 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Symbolics wasn't actually first, DEC was. Brian Reid registered it in January (and still has the datestamped mail from the Internic) but they screwed up the dates in whois.

      Mitre.org was the fitst domain registered.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    3. Re:Symbolics ... by Sigismundo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is kind of off-topic, but I once had an old vt220 terminal with a similar keyboard. I hooked it up to my Linux workstation's serial port. I was able to get a workable console without editing too many files, but what really surprised me was that many of the special keys along the top of the keyboard mapped to quite sensible emacs commands. There was "Do" key that mapped to M-x, "Find" mapped to C-s, "Remove" was C-d. I remember thinking that it was pretty cool so much of the legacy support is still there and works out of the box.

    4. Re:Symbolics ... by 5pp000 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Symbolics was basically out of business in about 1988. (A very small, as in no more than 2 full time people, company of that name existed until a year or two ago, but all they did with hardware was to maintain what had been manufactured by the original Symbolics.) 2004 is simply the year these photos were taken.

      You're right that the very first models -- the LM-2 and 3600 -- were refrigerator-sized, but it wasn't long before they also started building some smaller models. The 3640 was very roughly 20"w x 30"h x 36"d, and the 3610/3620, which used gate arrays, was about 10"w x 24"h x 30"d -- this is the model pictured in the center and center-right photos on that page. Finally, there was the Ivory chip, which powered the MacIvory coprocessor card (this is what's being shown in the upper left photo) and the XL and UX series. I still have a working XL-1200; it's about the size of two Sun "pizza boxes" stacked vertically, maybe 16" x 16" x 8"h. I believe this machine was out in 1987.

      (All dimensions guesstimated from memory -- figure a 20% margin of error.)

      --
      Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
    5. Re:Symbolics ... by hey! · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Symbolics was basically out of business in about 1988


      As a hardware company. They had some serious comp sci types in their consulting practice that continued on until around the mid 90s. One of the principle consultants explained their practice this way to me: "We figure out how to do things that others have tried to do and failed at -- repeatedly." Ironically, this skillset only applied to computer science problems. They didn't know how to make a sustainable business out of having a bunch of hugely smart guys on the payroll. The problem is when one of those guys leaves, he leaves a big hole.

      If this had been a few years later, things might have been different. The Internet created a whole new set of practical problems for serious computer science firepower. But maybe not. Ironically, the whole dot com thing largely passed the academically fed Boston area informatics scene by. People were more accustomed to the world of cold war defense contracting and big, slow moving companies than the down and dirty world of e-commerce. Even Facebook, which pretty much would have been nothing without the founders' Harvard student connection, moved out to California as soon as possible so the VCs could keep an eye on them.
      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  3. 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!

    1. Re:I remember when.... by Selfbain · · Score: 5, Funny

      You know the problem with people who have been around technology for a long time is when they go senile, their babble will change but most people probably won't be able to tell the difference.

      --
      Well, it has never been successfully tested.
    2. Re:I remember when.... by rucs_hack · · Score: 3, Funny

      You know the problem with people who have been around technology for a long time is when they go senile, their babble will change but most people probably won't be able to tell the difference

      Why you young insensitive clod, I'm gonna sma.....ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz whut?

  4. 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
    1. Re:Internet connections by jcorno · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It looks like they went in groups, too. IBM, Sun, Intel, and TI all in one day. 3Com, Tandy, Unisys, and AMD on another. It probably wasn't an individual decision for each company. It'd be too much of a coincidence.

    2. Re:Internet connections by jcorno · · Score: 2, Informative

      That wasn't entirely true. It was IBM-Sun, then Intel-TI. That actually still makes sense. AMD was on a different day from the other three, though. That's what I get for not double-checking before posting.

    3. Re:Internet connections by raju1kabir · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not like they went to the Yahoo! Small Business website and registered the domains on their credit cards for $7.99.

      Whoever was maintaining the canonical copy of the hosts file had plenty of other stuff to do, this was just a minor chore for them. So it's reasonable to think that updates would get bunched up and made whenever he happened to have some free time.

      --
      "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
    4. Re:Internet connections by raju1kabir · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was free for a long time. Then they started charging a one-time administration fee (the amount of which I've long since forgotten). And finally we came to the annual-fee arrangement in place now.

      --
      "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
  5. First virtual real-estate goldrush by lobiusmoop · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The registering and selling-on of domain names in the mid-to-late 90's made some serious money for a few brave entrepreneurs. sex.com is the classic case, although early domain-name squatting on big business names brought in easy bucks for some.

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
  6. 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 tverbeek · · Score: 2, Informative

      Back in those days there was a widespread belief (correct or not) that the internet could not be use for commercial purposes (the main argument being the US government's funding of the backbone). Sure, there was a "COM" TLD, but that was really just a basket for outfits that didn't fall into one of the main TLDs: GOV (government agencies), NET (infrastructure providers), EDU (colleges), ORG (non-profits), and MIL (military). If a commercial entity wanted on the net, they were welcome, but the assumption among most netizens at the time was that they were doing it to participate in the net's non-commercial activities.

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    2. 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.

    3. 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. Re:This was the 80s by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 2, Informative

      Back in those days there was a widespread belief (correct or not) that the internet could not be use for commercial purposes (the main argument being the US government's funding of the backbone). Sure, there was a "COM" TLD, but that was really just a basket for outfits that didn't fall into one of the main TLDs: GOV (government agencies), NET (infrastructure providers), EDU (colleges), ORG (non-profits), and MIL (military). If a commercial entity wanted on the net, they were welcome, but the assumption among most netizens at the time was that they were doing it to participate in the net's non-commercial activities.

      Yep. The first time I connected to the Internet (through Delphi - anybody else old enough to remember that one?) I had to sign a usage agreement. It basically stated that commercial activity was strictly prohibited. The only allowed activity was education, research, government, and "incidental personal use".

      At the time, the entire thing was government funded.

      This was way before HTML and NCSA Mosaic. The "cool" browsing application was gopher. Direct connections! Links from one site to another! Wow!

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    5. Re:This was the 80s by encoderer · · Score: 5, Funny

      "back in those days it wasn't really a place that flower shops could have gotten anything from."

      That was until FTP was discovered.

      The Flower Transfer Protocol changed the internet forever.

  7. What? by DurendalMac · · Score: 3, Funny

    No ASCIIPORN.COM?

  8. SCO before Microsoft by UnanimousCoward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wonder when Microsoft finally got on board? Damn, I shoulda squatted!!!

    --
    Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
  9. the meaning of TLDS by cliffski · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sure when the net was young that .orgs had to be non profit, and .nets were ISPs, but all of that seems to have totally disappeared. I also think its a bit sad that we have .co.uk and so on, but nobody used any .us or .usa names. .com became the default URL that you had to have, with everything else being cheap and forgettable. People can tell my site is UK site and that I'm a UK company, but US companies are completely invisible, with the rush for everyone to be dotcom. I'm sure a lot of UK customers are automatically pleasantly disposed towards my company when they realise I'm a bit 'local' to them, but the same thing isn't an option in the US.
    Given the ubiquity of bookmarks, hyperlinks and google, do we even need catchy domain names any more? I might have paid over the odds many years ago to get an easily remembered one, but now? who cares, people will find you with google anyway right?

    --
    DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
    1. Re:the meaning of TLDS by dtobias · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They allowed other registrations at hierarchical levels of .us, like yourname.yourcity.yourstate.us (e.g., yourname.miami.fl.us).

      --
      --Dan
      Web Tips
  10. Be glad you didn't. by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    MS doesn't buy. MS litigates.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  11. How much did it cost? by suso · · Score: 2

    Just curious, anyone know how much it cost to register a domain back at the beginning?

    1. Re:How much did it cost? by Salamander · · Score: 2, Informative
      Read it again; that was 1995, not 1985. Domains were free for a long time.

      In 1995 the NSF authorized NSI to begin charging registrants (of .org and .net as well as .com) an annual fee, for the first-time since its inception.
      (The grammar error is the responsibility of the wikidork who made the entry.) I wasn't in early enough to get a domain for free, but I do have one for which I paid a one-time fee.
      --
      Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
    2. Re:How much did it cost? by ThreeGigs · · Score: 2, Informative

      It was free at the very beginning. Mostly because it was all handwritten on paper then typed into a text file. Registering went something like "Hey Jack, can ya write me into the hosts file?"

    3. Re:How much did it cost? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      There was an electronic form, a text file you'd download from sri-nic.arpa (later nic.ddn.mil), fill in the blanks and email back to sri-nic.

      For all that, it wasn't all that far removed from "Hey Jack".

    4. Re:How much did it cost? by RevWaldo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not so much a cost issue but up until the mid-90's the PITA factor was a major hit in setting up a domain. No hosting services, so you'd need your own server. Private lines were way expensive and difficult to get set up with the phone company. No DSL so you'd need ISDN (56k! Wicked fast!) or bone up for a T1 or partial T1 which could run you $1000/month easy. Not to mention all the paperwork you'd have to submit to interNIC, etc. The best revenge on all the domain squatting is that all the "now a household word" domains use words no one would think were valuable - yahoo, google, etc ad infinitum. Have you had a need to visit computer.com? telephone.com? television.com?

      --
      Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
  12. Where's the last bunch? by cerberusss · · Score: 4, Funny

    This 'first 100 .com' stuff is all nice and dandy, but what I want to see is the LAST one hundred .com domains.

    --
    8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
    1. Re:Where's the last bunch? by NoSuchGuy · · Score: 2, Funny

      but what I want to see is the LAST one hundred .com domains.

      Why? Do you need more V1@grA?
      --
      Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
  13. Checklist... by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Funny

    Excerpt from checklist for when I get my time machine working:

    #10: Visit 1985 and buy up all 18,252 .COM domain names consisting of 2 and 3 letters.

    Dan East

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Checklist... by SilentBob0727 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Is that before or after you become your own grandfather?

      --
      Life would be easier if I had the source code.
  14. Ugh, my eyes. by glindsey · · Score: 4, Funny

    I believe that website was made in 1985, and hasn't been updated since.

  15. Fanboyism by Yvanhoe · · Score: 4, Funny

    Apple is there
    Microsoft is not

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  16. wiki by tofupup · · Score: 5, Informative

    here is a nice linked list of the *.com list
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com

  17. And some sites still have 80's design by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 3, Informative
    Like John Gilmore's site.

    Simple and to the point.

    BTW this is the guy who can't fly because he refuses to get a government issued ID. Interesting stuff.

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  18. More Interesting.... by JeremyGNJ · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think it would be more interesting to see the "First 100 dot com's that were sold for big money"

  19. .org was always a catch-all by Cadre · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm sure when the net was young that .orgs had to be non profit

    .org was not created for non-profit organizations, it was originally created as a catch-all for organizations that didn't meet the requirements for the other gTLDs. PIR's History Page, RFC 920, RFC 1591

    --
    All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
    1. Re:.org was always a catch-all by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Now, what kind of of organization isn't governmental, educational, commercial, or military? A non-profit.

      It all depends on what you mean by "non-profit". How about just a simple personal domain? Although most of these are de facto non-profits, common usage reserves the term non-profit for organizations that explicitly fall under IRS code section 503. So there are potential entities that fall under .org that do not fall under the rubric of "non-profit" organizations.

      --
      That is all.
    2. Re:.org was always a catch-all by fm6 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How about just a simple personal domain?
      Not an organization.

      I probably should stop myself from counter-nitpicking this particular nitpick. The important fact here is that RFC920 has never been enforced and wasn't all the realistic to begin with. To argue about the precise meaning of rules that have never been enforced (Does Slashdot violate the RFC by being commercial or by being not a non-profit?) is kind of silly.

  20. .com-to-.com email forbidden by dpbsmith · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Keep in mind that in those days the Internet was not supposed to be used for commercial purposes.

    In those days, .com's were only supposed to be on the net as a convenience for fostering research collaboration between them and their .edu partners.

    In theory, it was OK to send email from a .edu to a .edu, from a .edu to a .com it had a research relationship with, or from a .com to a .edu it had a research relationship, but .com's were not supposed to exchange email directly.

    --

    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!

    1. Re:.com-to-.com email forbidden by afidel · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sort of, the AUP for NSFNet did not allow for commercial use of the network, there could be communications between .com's but not for commercial purposes, ie if two defense contractors needed to work on a joint project that would be ok but not for one contractor to solicit business from another. That changed in 1988 which MCI Mail was experimentally hooked to the network, so not too long after the .com TLD.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  21. Re:Rough X-mas Shopping by poormanjoe · · Score: 2, Informative

    From the wiki:
    An estimated US$23 billion were secretly spent for research and development on the B-2 in the 1980s. An additional expense was caused by changing its role in 1985 from a high-altitude bomber to a low-altitude bomber, which required a major redesign. B-2 in flight over the Mississippi River (St. Louis, Missouri) with the Gateway Arch and Busch Stadium in the background.The first B-2 was publicly displayed on 22 November 1988, when it was rolled out of its hangar at Air Force Plant 42, Palmdale, California, where it was built. Its first public flight was on 17 July 1989.

    So after 23 billion secretly spent dollers you think the American public was the first to see what had been built the day before? Unless you worked on the project, you cannot say when it was "ready" It's probly wasnt ready until the communists figured out what we had built, and it was then obsolete.

    --
    I want to be retired when I grow up.
  22. 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
  23. Re:Stargate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not the movie. Stargate was a project that transmitted a USENET feed via satellite (in the vertical blanking interval on WTBS, actually - ah, Night Tracks, we hardly knew ye).

    Pyramid was a hardware manufacturer, Vortex was (is) Lauren Weinstein's consulting company (I believe), Portal was an early (arguably the first) commercial USENET provider, and Rosetta was (is) Scott Warren's consulting company.

  24. Conspiracy by kryten_nl · · Score: 3, Funny
    This confirms our theories:

    STARGATE.COM August 5 1986

    --
    For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
  25. Let's keep things in context by north.coaster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Remember that this took place during the time frame of the transition from a research oriented network (the ARPANET) to a larger, more production oriented network. The World Wide Web in it's current form had not even been invented yet. The creation of the .com domain was driven by a technical requirement to switch to a hierarchical based system, replacing a flat name space. The first step was to adopt the temporary .arpa domain name. Most companies then switched from the .arpa domain to the .com domain when their technical staff was ready to make the transition.

    In other words, registering for a .com domain was an administrative necessity for the relatively small number of companies that were connected to the DARPA Internet at that time. It was not a business decision.

    Putting this in context, during this same time frame lot of universities were connected to a different network, called CSNET. BITNET was also very active during this period. Although there were interconnections between the DARPA Internet, CSNET, and BITNET, each was a truly independent network. A lot of companies with Unix installations were on UUCP (which did not use a domain based name system).

    Considering the market segments that companies like Microsoft were involved with in the mid 1980's, it should not surprise anyone that they were not among the first to register for .com domains. It would not have made any sense for them to do so.

    1. Re:Let's keep things in context by raju1kabir · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Considering the market segments that companies like Microsoft were involved with in the mid 1980's, it should not surprise anyone that they were not among the first to register for .com domains. It would not have made any sense for them to do so.

      As compared to Apple, a massive old-school defense contractor that's only recently transitioned from nuclear guidance systems to MP3 players.

      --
      "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
    2. Re:Let's keep things in context by dtobias · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And once the Marketing Types found out about domain names, they were determined to turn it back into a flat namespace, ignoring subdomains and top-level domains other than .com.

      --
      --Dan
      Web Tips
    3. Re:Let's keep things in context by bitt3n · · Score: 4, Funny

      As compared to Apple, a massive old-school defense contractor that's only recently transitioned from nuclear guidance systems to MP3 players.
      "Hi, I'm a 900 megaton thermonuclear device capable of turning the entire Soviet Union into a glass parking lot at the push of a button."
      "And I'm a PC!"
      --
      how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
  26. Re:What about .ARPA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Before the domain name system was invented, there were just hostnames. ARPANET hosts had single, flat hostnames like SRI-NIC or UCBVAX (at Berkeley) or SU-TAC (Stanford) or MIT-EDDIE (which had a sibling, MIT-DEEP-THOUGHT). These were all kept in a single flat text file, maintained centrally by SRI-NIC (the Network Information Center at Stanford Research International).

    When the ARPANET started implementing the DNS, .ARPA was invented as a temporary transitional measure. All those existing flat hostnames gained a .ARPA suffix, so they could be made to fit into the DNS while each institution managed a transition to "real" domains.

    Today, as already mentioned, .arpa contains only certain low-level infrastructure like in-addr.arpa.

  27. Siemens, a bit of history by David+Off · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > 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.

    At the time we (I speak as a Siemens employee about the time) were developing a Unix based minicomputer systes based around National Semiconductor chips - the MX range of computers which were widely used by the German State (post, trains, work service etc). We then moved onto an i386 architecture, first with a port of SCO Unix then we did the actual Intel port of Unix 5.4 for AT&T. Our customers were pretty heavy users of TCP/IP - for network printing and file sharing.

    I don't know who registered siemens.com, we also had siesoft.co.uk for the UK. However the Unix visionary was Hans Strack Zimmermann. I don't recall the research headquarters in Munich having great connectivity at the time. I seem to recall most traffic went via UUCP via Dusseldorf university and was charged by the kilobyte but we did have ftp access by about 1988. I ran up a 70,000 DM bill with a colleague downloading stuff like the King James Bible!!!

    Siemens was a founder member of the OSF so has pretty good credentials.

  28. 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.

  29. What surprises me... by Mesa+MIke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...is that an old-line mining and manufacturing corporation like ALCOA was on that list.

  30. Re:The First Post Registered by somersault · · Score: 3, Funny

    Spam boy: Do not try and post the first. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. Neo: What truth? Spam boy: There is no first. Neo: There is no first? Spam boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the first that is posted, it is only yourself, being a fucktard.

    --
    which is totally what she said
  31. And archived screen cap of Symbolics.com by JoshuaB86 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://geekandhumor.blogspot.com/2007/12/first-dot-com-com-ever-in-world.html

  32. Nasty site.. by popeydotcom · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.whoisd.com/oldestcom.php is the list I have had in my bookmark for a good few years..

  33. 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.

    --
    #!
  34. 1985 - that late ? by Alain+Williams · · Score: 2, Informative
    I thought that I was late when I registered my name in early 1988. NRS registration in the UK started in 1983.

    We had names the other way round in those days, most significant bit first: uk.co.phcomp

  35. 3COM broke the rules for DNS names by nuckfuts · · Score: 2, Informative

    You might have noticed 3COM.COM on that list, about half way down. Strictly speaking it was not allowed to use a number as the first letter in a DNS name. To quote from RFC 1035:

    "The labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names. They must start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior characters only letters, digits, and hyphen. There are also some restrictions on the length. Labels must be 63 characters or less."

    I remember wondering how 3COM got away with it.