About an hour later, recovering from the crash, the full text ‘LOGIN’ was successfully sent. After the letters ‘L’ and ‘O’ were sent, the system crashed, making the first message ever sent on the internet LO. In 1969, UCLA student, Charley Kilne, attempted to transmit the text “login” to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute over the first link on the ARPANET, which was the precursor to the modern internet. How did we get from there, to having full chat conversations in tiny boxes on our mobile phones? The first instant messages were for programmers, emergency communications, and computer chat rooms, until they entered the realm of our everyday lives. But before WhatsApp, which in 2019 had 2 billion users globally with 65 billion messages sent through the app each day, there was Talkomatic, way back in 1973, and even before that there was Party Line, in 1971, and a random message sent by a student on the first iteration of the internet, in 1969. We send dozens of these messages each day, without even thinking about it. Especially now, in our socially-distanced world, when virtual communications are more important than ever, sending brief written messages, formed from text and icons has taken over how we stay in touch, with our friends, with our colleagues, and with our family.
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