[TUHS] Happy birthday, symbolics.com!

[Michael Kjörling]

On 15 Mar 2018 08:14 +1100, from dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall):
> The first Internet domain, symbolics.com,

What qualifies as an "Internet domain" in this context? I'm honestly
curious about the definition you're using.

Poking at RFCs at random, RFC 820 mentions mailboxes with SMTP-style
(as opposed to e.g. UUCP) addresses, but with only a single label as
the hostname (for example, "KLH at NIC" or "Hinden at BBN-Unix"). That one
is dated January 1983.

The August 1982 (!?) RFC 821 has example SMTP conversations that use
addresses on the form foo at bar.ARPA. So the concept of domain names
similar to today certainly existed before 1985, and the DNS RFCs
(initially 1034, 1035) were only published in 1987...

So by what definition would symbolics.com in 1985 be the first
Internet domain registered?

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
  “The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person
              is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor)