The date was November 22, 1977, and no one seems to remember what message was sent — or even who was in the van. But they do remember how it was sent. This marked the first time the TCP/IP protocol — the same protocol that underpins today’s Internet — was used to send information across not one, not two, but three independent computer networks.
“It wasn’t just a transmission,” says Bob Kahn, one of the key figures behind that moment. “It was a whole system of network protocols being demonstrated over three different networks.”
You can certainly argue that the first Internet transmission happened much earlier. The world generally agrees it happened in 1969, when researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles sent the inaugural message across the ARPAnet, the government-funded network that eventually evolved into the Internet as we know it. But...