Surfing the World Wide Web in 1985

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on


Most people were not browsing the world wide web back in 1985 & 1986, but people were buying up domain names.

I came across this list of the first 100 domains ever registered on the internet. Some, like Xerox, are no surprise, but symbolics.com at #1? That site is still there - and it looks like it was made in 1986!

Some have no doubt been transferred to new owners or uses since then. Think.com is Oracle's Education Foundation site which is connected now to thinkquest.org. I coached a bunch of students with their websites back in the 1990's for the Thinkquest competition, and they actually won a few times. That's what really got me into creating websites - first with this movie site in 1997 that took first place, and later this site on Endangered New Jersey that took home the gold in 1999 in the Thinkquest Junior competition. Ah, yes - high school students playing with Perl & video in the former, sixth graders using Claris HomePage for the latter. Has it been 10 years since that motion picture site was done?

Here are the first ten registrants:

1. 15-Mar-1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
2. 24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM
3. 24-May-1985 THINK.COM
4. 11-Jul-1985 MCC.COM
5. 30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM
6. 07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM
7. 09-Jan-1986 XEROX.COM
8. 17-Jan-1986 SRI.COM
10. 05-Mar-1986 BELLCORE.COM

and you can read the full list here

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