The first .com domains ever?

[dtobias]

In another thread, somebody posted a link to a document that supposedly lists all the active domains as of 1987:

http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/reference/net-directory/domain-info/domain-info.txt

And another one from around that time that gives WHOIS info:

http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/reference/net-directory/net-dir/net.directory.part5

I'm not sure these are actually complete lists; lots of country code domains are shown as having no known domains in them, and .uk isn't shown at all (but I think it existed then), and nothing is shown in .arpa on the first list although the second list shows lots of military sites still there, and also the reverse-lookup in-addr.arpa was in use.

But it's interesting that there were more .edu domains registered than .com.

It does appear from a cursory glance that stargate.com was the first "individual vanity domain", with no company or organization shown as its registrant, just a person. I didn't even know they let individuals register domains for themselves back then.

 

[timechange.com]

Stargate History

from http://web.archive.org/web/19981203103811/www.stargate.com/history.html

The online community of the early 1980s was made up of several separate topological networks. The ARPANET had military grants and elite connectivity, providing e-mail and mailing lists at high speeds and quality. BITNET provided connectivity for IBM systems. CSNET connected Computer Science departments that did not have ARPANET access. The UUCP net connected organizations that could not get on the ARPANET. FIDONET connected hobby bulletin board systems. The ARPANET had user@host e-mail syntax, which had become [email protected] for the ARPANET. Other networks used local routing technologies. The UUCP net routed mail with bang paths: host!next!host!user.
In January 1985, on the day the Challenger blew up, a meeting of representatives from the ARPANET, BITNET, CSNET, and UUCP net agreed to permit all four networks to register domains in the COM, EDU, GOV, MIL, NET, and ORG domains. This was the organizational foundation of the current Internet domain naming system.

The UUCP Project
Prior to 1984, several people announced that they were going to build a UUCP map, and that everyone should send their connectivity data in. They were each buried under a huge pile of data and never heard from again.
In January 1984, a birds-of-a-feather session at the USENIX conference in Washington DC enlisted over 30 volunteers to build and maintain a UUCP map. A system was put into place to distributed this map on Usenet in the newsgroup comp.mail.maps. This group adopted the name "The UUCP Project" and received initial funding from USENIX. The project continued on a volunteer basis after the funding ran out. The UUCP Project was run by Mark Horton with significant contributions by Mel Pleasant, Tim Thompson, Berry Kercheval, and Steve Morenberg and a cast of hundreds of regional volunteer coordinators. Domains were registered for $150, generating an outcry that has not been repeated since the INTERNIC began charging for domains.

The UUCP Project continues today under the capable direction of Stan Barber at http://web.archive.org/web/19981203103811/http://www.uucp.org/.

The Stargate Project
One of the most expensive parts of Usenet was the telephone bills to send Netnews around the world. A few companies, notably AT&T, DEC, and Philips, accumulated huge telephone bills, largely because their system administrators set up the links first and asked forgiveness later.
In 1985, Lauren Weinstein conceived of an idea to broadcast Netnews via satellite. He worked a deal with Tempo Television, the company that uplinked WTBS-TV to satellite and national cable TV distribution, to include Netnews in the vertical interval of WTBS, so that anyone with the proper decoding box could collect the Netnews and feed it into their system. A 4800 baud link was set up, feeding all moderated newsgroups (mod.*) through the satellite.

A Joint Venture
For economy of scale, the UUCP Project and the Stargate Project joined forces to form Stargate Information Systems. Both projects succeeded in their goals. Stargate registered the second UUCP Internet domains as stargate.com. (The first was att.com, Mark Horton's employer.) Stargate Information Systems continued to provide community service until 1988. Neither activity was intended to generate a profit.
The Stargate project terminated for business reasons when WTBS changed their uplink carrier to a company with ideas for a competing technology. The UUCP project continued until 1988 when UUNET offered to take on its work at a lower cost to registered domains. Eventually, the cost of Internet technology became low enough that UUCP was replaced with TCP/IP, SMTP, and NNTP, and everyone had access to ARPANET-class Internet service.

 

[timechange.com]

BTW, the old Stargate logo looked much sharper than the one they have now:

http://web.archive.org/web/19981203103815/http://www.stargate.com/images/sgibanner.gif

Also, this snippet displays the asking price for Stargate.com at that point in time:

"Domain Name for sale
The stargate.com domain name is for sale. This domain name is one of the oldest and most respected domains on the Internet. The name and all rights associated with it can be yours for a one-time payment of US $90,000. Contact us with serious inquiries only, please. "

 

[TurNIC.com]

Originally posted by -RJ-
Here are the first 10 domain registered. Not all .com's though.


SYMBOLICS.COM SYMBOLICS TECHNOLOGY, INC 3/15/85
BBN.COM BBN CORPORATION 4/24/85
CMU.EDU CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY 4/24/85
PURDUE.EDU PURDUE UNIVERSITY 4/24/85
RICE.EDU RICE UNIVERSITY 4/24/85
BERKELEY.EDU UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY 4/24/85
UCLA.EDU UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES 4/24/85
RUTGERS.EDU RUTGERS UNIVERSITY 4/24/85
MIT.EDU MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 5/23/85
THINK.COM THINKING MACHINES CORPORATION 5/24/85

Cal Rocks !!!

 

[dtobias]

Originally posted by 2003
For economy of scale, the UUCP Project and the Stargate Project joined forces to form Stargate Information Systems. Both projects succeeded in their goals. Stargate registered the second UUCP Internet domains as stargate.com. (The first was att.com, Mark Horton's employer.) Stargate Information Systems continued to provide community service until 1988. Neither activity was intended to generate a profit.
[/B]

It was not intended to generate a profit, but yet they used a .com domain... I guess abuse of the TLD categories really does have a longer history than I thought.

 

[izopod]

Originally posted by 2003
In January 1985, on the day the Challenger blew up, a meeting of representatives from the ARPANET, BITNET, CSNET, and UUCP net agreed to permit all four networks to register domains in the COM, EDU, GOV, MIL, NET, and ORG domains. This was the organizational foundation of the current Internet domain naming system.

Just for historical correctness (HC) I believe the Challenger blew up in Janurary of 1986....the 25th to be exact. I remember that because it is just one of those "Where were you..." type moments. Interesting though that those groups met on that date to make the decision they did.

izopod

 

[timechange.com]

Originally posted by izopod


Just for historical correctness (HC) I believe the Challenger blew up in Janurary of 1986....the 25th to be exact. I remember that because it is just one of those "Where were you..." type moments. Interesting though that those groups met on that date to make the decision they did.

izopod

Speaking of which, on 9/11/01 I closed on my home, watched the whole damn WTC thing live on TV at the mortgage co. How spooky is that?