First Domain Registered: Symbolics.com Launches the Web
Symbolics Inc., a Massachusetts computer company specializing in Lisp machines, registered symbolics.com on March 15, 1985, making it the first dot-com domain name ever registered. The Domain Name System had been introduced just a year earlier, replacing the cumbersome HOSTS.TXT file that had previously mapped names to internet addresses. Symbolics had no particular strategic vision for its domain; it was simply among the earliest companies to adopt the new naming convention. Only five more dot-com domains were registered in all of 1985. By 1987, there were only 100. The explosion came later: by 2000, over 20 million dot-com names had been claimed, and the domain extension had become synonymous with the internet itself. Symbolics went bankrupt in the 1990s, and its historic domain was eventually sold to a small investment group. The first dot-com registration is now a footnote to a digital revolution that Symbolics itself did not survive to participate in.
March 15, 1985
41 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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