On the 20th October 1969, the first Internet message was sent. Researchers at the University of California (Los Angeles) and the Stanford Research Institute (San Francisco) had connected together two large mainframe computers using 50kbps modem lines. They sent just two bytes (the letters “L” and “O”, the beginning of “LOGIN”) before the computers crashed. But the connection was made, and the Internet was born. By the end of the year, two more “nodes” were connected, at UCSB and Utah State University.

Computing power was expensive at this time—the nodes had only 12K of memory apiece—and sharing what power was available was important. The project had been funded by ARPA, the US Government's Advanced Research Project Agency, as a way of potentially connecting together military computing power, allowing calculations to be made collectively even if one computer was destroyed by nuclear attack—even then, computing power was critical for warfare.

In those days, no-one had coined the words “Internet” or “cyberspace”; the network that these researchers created was known as ARPAnet. It grew rapidly, with a further eleven nodes connecting by 1971, and twenty-two more in 1972. As the protocols that linked the computers were pushed to their full capacity, they were developed and improved into a reliable and robust means of transferring data. Efficiency was also uppermost in the designer's plans, as response speeds were critical on the new network.

In 1973 the network expanded outside the United States, into Europe. Links were established to NORSAR in Norway and to University College London. By this time, the details of the TCP/IP protocols were tried and tested, and international links were merely a case of using a satellite link rather than the usual “leased lines” over land.