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Which came first, the internet (ARPANET) or Pakistan?

Which came first, the internet (ARPANET) or Pakistan?
Pakistan
1947 — 22 years before the internet (ARPANET)

Pakistan came first, by 22 years. Pakistan became independent at midnight, one day before India.

Side by side

the internet (ARPANET) Pakistan
Year 1969 1947
Date 1969-10-29 1947-08-14
Category technology country
What happened The first message was sent between two networked computers. Pakistan became independent at midnight, one day before India.

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.

Pakistan

Pakistan and India were created by the same act of parliament, but Mountbatten had to attend both ceremonies, so he took the Pakistani one in Karachi on 14 August and the Indian one in Delhi on the 15th. Pakistan is therefore one day older than India in the sense the question means. Independence in both cases took effect at the same instant: midnight between the two dates.

Common questions

Which came first, the internet (ARPANET) or Pakistan?
Pakistan, by 22 years — 1947 against 1969.
When did the internet (ARPANET) start?
1969. The first message was sent between two networked computers.
When did Pakistan start?
1947. Pakistan became independent at midnight, one day before India.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked