The Kicker

06:49 AM - March 15, 2013

And that’s the way it was: March 15, 1985

The first Internet domain name is registered

The Internet domain symbolics.com was registered on March 15, 1985, making it the first domain name in history. The domain was registered by Symbolics Computer Corporation of Massachusetts, a now-defunct computer manufacturer.

For the curious, here’s a list of the first 100 .com domain names. For the curiouser, our domain—cjr.org—was created on June 7, 1995. Here’s what the site looked like way back when John Paul was pope, journalists made a living wage, and “traffic” was not a thing to be desired.

TAGS: cjr.org, domain name, Internet, Symbolics

Sang Ngo is a congressional enterprise reporter for McClatchy Newspapers. He received the 2012 National Press Club Award for Regional Washington Reporting. A former Miscow correspondent, he is a 1986 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Comments Post a Comment

Actually you can now post your own link on a piece of the Internet history at Symbolics.com, you would have to go to the site to check it out though.

#1 Posted by John Daly, CJR on Thu 25 Apr 2013 at 06:27 AM

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