
35 years ago today: the first domain name symbolics.com was registered - macittuna
https://dofo.com/symbolics.com
======
greenyoda
RFC 882, which defined domain-style addressing, was released in 1983:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882)

There was domain-style addressing that predated domains like ".com" and
".edu". The original top-level domains were ".arpa" (for ARPANET) and ".mil"
(for MILNET).

Symbolics was "symbolics.arpa" before it was "symbolics.com".

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
If anyone knows: How were RFCs distributed before the modern Internet as we
know it existed?

~~~
CarlRJ
Before the Internet there was Usenet and a world-wide network network of
machines connected together via UUCP, doing email and such over point-to-point
dialup (modem) links. Sending mail was a matter of knowing a complete path
through the network from your source machine to the recipient's destination
machine (and Usenet news implemented public discussion groups over this
network). If I recall correctly, you could send specially formatted email
messages to the server where the RFCs lived, and an autoresponder program
would read your message and email back the requested RFCs.

~~~
ForHackernews
That was still the Internet, it just wasn't the World Wide Web or modern
(SMTP/POP3/IMAP) email.

~~~
CarlRJ
No, that was a network, but it was very much _not_ the Internet. Different
technologies.

Per Wikipedia, "The Internet (portmanteau of interconnected network) is the
global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet
protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide."

The network of UUCP-connected machines (also called UUCPNET) did not use
TCP/IP and had no inbuilt notion of how to get packets from one place to
another. One had to specifically list a set of instructions, a path, from
source to destination hosts. UUCPNET was entirely store-and-forward, and sent
entire messages, not packets. And it was in wide use throughout the 80's
before the Internet became a thing (which happened once researchers started
interconnecting networks that used TCP/IP).

To say that UUCPNET was the Internet just without the web, is like saying that
radio _is_ TV, just without the pictures.

~~~
ForHackernews
This is quickly going to devolve into semantics, but just because the Internet
_today_ is built on TCP/IP doesn't mean that's a requirement to be considered
"internet". _An_ internet is just a WAN between LANs, and I don't think it
matters what specific Layer 3/4 protocol you choose. ARPANET is widely
acknowledged as the predecessor of what we today call "the Internet" and it
predates TCP/IP.

~~~
Brian_K_White
Then fidonet and every other bbs network was also the internet. No.

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cayblood
What was the process of registering a domain name at that time? I've often
dreamed about going back in time to when I was a kid and registering a bunch
of domains before 1995. What would have been involved?

~~~
mrunkel
You sent in a text document to an email address of an actual person if I
remember correctly.

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sonofgod
Hope someone's remembered to renew it. :P

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WarOnPrivacy
Yeah - it expires tomorrow

~~~
nirui

        Domain Name: SYMBOLICS.COM
        Registry Domain ID: 57551_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
        Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.networksolutions.com
        Registrar URL: http://networksolutions.com
        Updated Date: 2020-01-16T08:51:05Z
        Creation Date: 1985-03-15T05:00:00Z
        Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-03-16T04:00:00Z
        Registrar: Network Solutions, LLC
    

Probably renewed by an automatic system. Don't even think about it :D

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ck2
This made me go look up when Musk bought x.com, turns out only 1999, thought
it was older

~~~
Jaruzel
What does he do with it? The page you get is a simple 'x' only.

I am hoping he has loads of stuff on hidden urls, and uses it for personal
email or something. If he's just sitting on it doing nothing, then that's just
plain wrong.

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CountSessine
Is this the same Symbolics that came out of the MIT AI lab? With the LISP
machines?

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Also creators of the crazy Space Cadet keyboard.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-
cadet_keyboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard)

~~~
steveeq1
I wish they still made keyboards like that. I'm curious to know the "feel"

~~~
cpr
As gumby says, the Space Cadet keyboards, being Microswitch Hall effect-based,
were a bit spongy due to the big plastic case, but the switches themselves
were dreamy.

But the whole experience was still not as satisfying as the original Knight
keyboards, I suspect because the Knight boards used the original, larger
switches, while the Space Cadets used the smaller. Chyrosran22 on Youtube
explains all this
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcdN4Vzg6_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcdN4Vzg6_g)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDozftThFMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDozftThFMw)).

By the way, after 40 years of despairing over the loss of Hall effect switches
(I nursed a Space Cadet Livermore Labs clone from a group buy for some years
into the mid-80's), there are now two keyboards using this technology, and I'm
loving the one that's actually available.

Steelseries Apex Pro is what's now shipping, and it's a dream.
([https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Apex-Mechanical-Gaming-
Ke...](https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Apex-Mechanical-Gaming-
Keyboard/dp/B07SVJJCP3))

The Input Club Keystone is still coming, slowly
([https://kono.store/products/keystone-analog-mechanical-
keybo...](https://kono.store/products/keystone-analog-mechanical-keyboard)),
but I'm also really looking forward to trying it.

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KingOfCoders
I remember when we exchanged text files with long lists of IPs for FTP servers
at the university before most servers had domain names.

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thought_alarm
I wonder what the first UUCP nodes were named.

~~~
wolfgang42
Not sure about UUCP specifically, but a persistent problem until the
introduction of DNS seems to have been that various places in the network
sometimes had _different_ names for a single host. Check out the discussion
referenced from RFC 298, “What we hope is an official list of host names”:
[http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc289.html](http://www.rfc-
editor.org/rfc/rfc289.html)

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macittuna
First-ever domain was registered in 1985. Many others were kept being
registered since then. But what are the first used domains up to these days?

100 Oldest Domain Names & Their Current Status: [https://dofo.com/blog/oldest-
domain-names/](https://dofo.com/blog/oldest-domain-names/)

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
Thank you, interesting link. I had for a long time thought symbolics.com was
the first "modern style" domain to have been registered, but it looks like it
was actually nordu.net, even if the intention was to use it for a root server.

