Do you know what appeared to be the first domain name in the world with the suffix .com ?
It was born in March 1985 by Symbolics, a computer manufacturer based in Massachusetts, USA. One year after the official birth of the domain name system, the company registered the domain name “Symbolics.com” for itself.
At this time, it is still 4 years before the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee officially puts forward the concept of the World Wide Web. Web page.
In fact, throughout 1985, only 6 companies registered their domain names for themselves. Thirty years later, that number has skyrocketed to 265 million.
But the halo of the Internet’s first registered domain name didn’t seem to bring some luck to its company. As Intel and IBM began accelerating the iteration of PC equipment, Symbolics failed to keep up with these competitors, and then ushered in the decline and demise.
▲ Before it was bought by XF, Symbolics had only one page. Image source: the outline < / p>
Nevertheless, the Symbolics.com website itself has not been closed. For a long time later, this website was mainly used to provide after-sales and service information related to Symbolics products, but only a very simple gray Background page with company introduction and service phone number, address, etc.
If you log in to the Wayback Machine website now, you can also see the official website of Symbolics in the 1990s.
The domain name investment company XF.com (now Napkin.com) bought the domain name from Symbolics in 2009.
So even more than thirty years later, you can still open your browser and type “ Symbolics.com in the address box “, Press enter to visit this site.
< / p>
“Welcome to the museum.”
When you open the website, you will see such a sentence on the main page.
Napkin has made Symbolics a site dedicated to the history of the Internet. It also uses a minimalist retro style design. When you slide the time slider at the bottom of the page, you can see what happened at each time node. Big event.
This includes not only the introduction of ARPANET (the predecessor of the Internet), but also the birth time of emails, emojis, and gifs, which more or less can evoke the memories of some old netizens.
▲ The best browser of the last century: Netscape
This site also has an “About Us” page, and Napkin briefly explained their original intention of buying this domain name and establishing an online museum:
“Do you remember the sound of a 56K modem? But your kids probably do n’t know, in fact, they may not even recognize the loading bar.
We not only want to tell the visitors who have come here to tell stories about the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web, but also to pass on this information to the next generation. Of course, no matter what happened in the past, the best moment has not yet come. “
Title map source: Symbolics.com