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

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...