Did you know the Internet began as an experiment funded by the United States Department of Defense called the ARPANET in 1969, the same year humans first landed on the moon? Most people don’t! The World Wide Web is a funny thing; while the term “Internet” wasn’t coined until 1982, it has now become an indispensable integration into our everyday lives — yet we know very little of how it all began.

A recent infographic provided by Evevo.co.uk highlights ome of the first ways in which the internet has evolved into the global networking phenomenon it is today, and some of the figures may surprise you!

World Wide Firsts

The first email was sent by U.S. programmer Ray Tomlinson to himself in 1971, admitting that “the test messages were entirely forgettable. Most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP xor something similar.”

The first spam email was sent out to 393 recipients on ARPANET on May 3, 1978. The message was sent by Gary Thuerk and advertised the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computers.

The first domain name that was ever registered was www.Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985, and the first image uploaded to the web was when Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) uploaded an image for a comedy band known as Les Horrible Cernettes.

The first World Wide Web software was released by CERN on August 6, 1991, and the first web browser was ‘Mosaic’ in 1993.

The first ecommerce website: an online retailer NetMarket on August 11, 1994. Also in ‘94 was the first banner ad that ever appeared on HotWired.com in October, which promoted seven art museums, and was sponsored by AT&T. The first item ever sold online was a copy of Sting’s, Ten Summoner’s Tales for $12.48 plus shipping, along with the first search engine (WebCrawler), also back in ‘94.

The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer, sold for $14.83 in 1995. The enthused buyer is quoted to have said, “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.” The first book sold on Amazon was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter (also in 1995).

The first mobile phone to have Internet connectivity was the Nokia 9000 Communicator, launched in Finland in 1996.

The first Wikipedia edit was the classic, “Hello World!” — but the oldest surviving edit on Wikipedia is from January 16, 2001, which added data to a list of countries.

The first ever YouTube video was posted by co-founder Jawed Karim on April 23, 2005. It was footage of him at the San Diego Zoo and it now has around 10,000,000 views.

The first tweet sent on Twitter was written by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006 and simply said: “just setting up my twttr”.

**As milestones are made everyday, only time and retrospect can tell what they’ll be in the future! Enhance your internet presence to achieve the “firsts” of search ranking pages. Visit Evevo.co.uk, today!**

sources:

http://www.businessinsider.com/every-first-on-the-internet-2013-2#

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-first-ever-email–the-first-tweet–and-12-other-famous-internet-firsts-181209886.html

http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/08/15-fantastic-firsts-on-the-internet/

http://www.originami.com/sp/milestones.htm

http://phys.org/news170931367.html

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-08-31-internet-40_N.htm