Which came first, the internet (ARPANET) or the Macintosh?
the internet (ARPANET) came first, by 15 years. The first message was sent between two networked computers.
Side by side
| the internet (ARPANET) | the Macintosh | |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1969 | 1984 |
| Date | 1969-10-29 | 1984-01-24 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | The first message was sent between two networked computers. | Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert. |
the internet (ARPANET)
On 29 October 1969 a team at UCLA tried to send the word "login" to Stanford. The system crashed after two characters, so the first message ever sent over the internet's ancestor was "lo". By the end of that year the network had four nodes. The internet is twenty years older than the Web, and confusing the two is the single most common error in this whole subject.
the Macintosh
The Macintosh launched in January 1984 with a graphical interface and a mouse, and beat Windows to market by almost two years. Neither invented the idea — Xerox PARC had built the Alto in 1973, and both Apple and Microsoft were working from what they had seen there. Mac OS X, the ancestor of today's macOS, arrived much later in 2001 and is Unix underneath.
Common questions
- Which came first, the internet (ARPANET) or the Macintosh?
- the internet (ARPANET), by 15 years — 1969 against 1984.
- When did the internet (ARPANET) start?
- 1969. The first message was sent between two networked computers.
- When did the Macintosh start?
- 1984. Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert.
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Sources
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)