On this day in engineering history, the first computer-to-computer message was sent when SDS Sigma 7 Host computer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) transmitted a one-word message to an SDS 940 Host computer at the Stanford Research Institute (SRS). The transmission medium, the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency network (ARPANET), was the world's first packet-switching network and the precursor to the modern Internet.

On October 29, 1969 at 10:30 PM, UCLA Professor Leonard Kleinrock and graduate student Charley Klein tried to send a message with the word "log" to SRI's Augmentation Research Center. Although programmers at SRI received the letters "lo", the ARPANET connection crashed before the "g" arrived. A second attempt at sending the word "log" was successful.

"As of now," Kleinrock said at the time, "computer networks are still in their infancy. But as they grow up and become more sophisticated, we will probably see the spread of 'computer utilities' which, like present electric and telephone utilities, will service individual homes and offices across the country."