On October 1, 1969, the ARPANET went online. A researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles tried to send a message to the Stanford Research Institute. In one of history’s little ironies, the network crashed, but the Pentagon persisted. Within months, the ARPANET was delivering messages between UCLA, Stanford, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Eventually, the network was expanded to other universities across the country.
