Lunch & Learn: The First Internet Message
Learn about the day the internet came into existence   |   Fowler Museum at UCLA

 
Thursday, January 13, 2022 (12:00–12:30 p.m.)
– A virtual event –

 
ABOUT THIS EVENT

The Fowler Museum at UCLA is proud to have UCLA Samueli School of Engineering professor Leonard Kleinrock as our guest host of a Lunch & Learn online program this Thursday at 12 p.m. about the birth of the first internet message in support our current exhibition featuring the Interface Message Processor log entry for the first message sent over the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET.

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Few cultural revolutions can trace their origins as precisely as the one that took place in 3420 Boelter Hall at UCLA on October 29, 1969, the day the internet came into existence. Professor Leonard Kleinrock developed the mathematical theory of packet networks, the technology that underpins the internet. The first node of the ARPANET was established at Kleinrock’s UCLA lab, and a new era of connectivity was born.

The Interface Message Processor log entry for the first message sent over the ARPANET is currently on view in the Fowler Museum’s “Communications Systems in a Global Context” exhibition. Join the Fowler Museum in welcoming Kleinrock, who will share the events surrounding that seminal moment at Boelter Hall, which has since been redesigned by Sebastian Clough, Fowler’s director of exhibitions, as the Kleinrock Internet History Center.

Leonard Kleinrock is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. He is considered a father of the internet, having developed its foundational technology as an MIT graduate student in 1962. Kleinrock has served as a professor of computer science at UCLA since 1963 and as its department chair from 1991–1995. He has received eight honorary degrees, published more than 250 papers, authored six books, and has supervised the research of 50 Ph.D. students. In 2007, Kleinrock received the National Medal of Science, the highest honor for achievement in science bestowed by the President of the United States.

Lunch & Learn: The Fowler’s Lunch & Learn series offers easily digestible explorations of charismatic objects from around the world. Join us to chew on some sustenance and feed your mind and soul.

Image: Charley S. Kline (b. 1949, USA) and Leonard Kleinrock (b. 1934, New York, USA), Interface Message Processor Log entry for the first message sent over ARPANET, 1969; NCR carbon paper, staple bound on short top edge; UCLA Library Special Collections, Leonard Kleinrock Papers