On August 30, 1969, the countdown to the first Internet experiment. At the University of California at Los Angeles, Professor Leonard Kleinrock received the first Interface Message Processor.
The IMP was a computer that served a connect and communicate with other computers. In fact, it is the one that receives the data packets of Internet traffic and routes them to the recipient. We would soon be calling them routers. The idea that it was necessary to use a computer with a specific task to create computer networks was first put forward in 1966 in the United Kingdom, when scientist Donald Davies used the expression “Interface Computer”. The following year, a similar idea emerged at a meeting of the working group that was trying to create a computer network under the leadership of the Department of Defense in the United States.
The task of creating the 4 IMPs necessary to form the first network with 4 nodes it was entrusted to a highly successful Boston company, Bolt Baraneck & Newman. The IMPs were delivered a month apart starting that August 30th. And on October 29, 1969, the first two Arpanet nodes, Los Angeles and Stanford, were successfully connected.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Internet, Professor Kleinrock showed everyone the first Imp, the size of a closet and still working, kept in his office.
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