Mark Loosmore: And lo, electronic data began 50 years ago

'Lo'

clock • 4 min read

In a bid to commemorate 50 years to the day since the first electronic message was sent and received, Mark Loosmore looks at how much business data has improved since

It was with a brief ‘Lo' that 50 years ago to the day on Tuesday (29 October) we set off on a journey to a time where billions of messages are now sent around the world each day. The two letters - Lo - were the content of the first electronic message ever sent, the system crashing as it tried to transmit the word ‘login'. Professor Leonard Kleinrock and a programmer named Charley Kline sent the famous message from their host computer at UCLA to a programmer at Stanford University. They were using a system called ARPANET, a network connecting different universities and research centres, w...

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