[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 171 (Tuesday, October 29, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     CELEBRATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST INTERNET MESSAGE

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                             HON. TED LIEU

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 29, 2019

  Mr. TED LIEU of California. Madam Speaker, today I rise to mark the 
50th anniversary of the first message sent over the early internet and 
the important role played by the University of California, Los Angeles.


 =========================== NOTE =========================== 

  
  October 29, 2019, on page E1363, the following appeared: Mr. 
LIEU of California. Madam Speaker,today I rise to mark the 50th 
anniversary of the first message sent over the early internet and 
the important role played by the University of California, Los 
Angeles.
  
  The online version has been corrected to read: Mr. TED LIEU of 
California. Madam Speaker, today I rise to mark the 50th 
anniversary of the first message sent over the early internet and 
the important role played by the University of California, Los 
Angeles.


 ========================= END NOTE ========================= 


  On this day in 1969, the team working on the Advanced Research 
Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, led by Professor Leonard 
Kleinrock, attempted to send a login command to the Stanford Research 
Institute in Menlo Park, California. After sending and confirming 
receipt of the first two letters, ``l'' and ``o'', the attempt to send 
a ``g'' crashed Stanford's computer.
  And so, the first message sent over a computer network turned out to 
be unintentionally meaningful: ``LO'' as in ``Lo and behold.'' As 
Kleinrock said, ``We didn't plan it, but we couldn't have come up with 
a better message: short and prophetic.''
  Kleinrock developed the mathematical theory that would facilitate 
packet switching as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology. The ability of a network to transmit signals in discrete 
bundles of information instead of through a single burst underpinned 
much of the way the world communicates today. One erratic connection 
from one end of California to the other gave way to trillions of bytes 
of data flowing around the world every second.
  As one of four Members of Congress who majored in computer science, I 
would like to recognize the contributions of Dr. Kleinrock and the UCLA 
Samueli School of Engineering for laying the foundations for 
information sharing and communication in the 21st century and the years 
to come.

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