On October 29 the connection was ready to be made. The event was appropriately casual. It had none of the drama of the "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" that had occurred on the moon a few weeks earlier, with a half billion people watching on television. Instead it was an undergraduate named Charley Kline, under the eye of Crocker and Cerf, who put on a telephone headset to coordinate with a researcher at SRI while typing in a login sequence that he hoped would allow his terminal at UCLA to connect through the network to the computer 354 miles away in Palo Alto.
On October 29, a significant yet low-key moment in technological history unfolded. Unlike the monumental moon landing that had captivated millions, the event involved an undergraduate named Charley Kline trying to connect his terminal at UCLA to a computer in Palo Alto. His efforts were overseen by notable figures, Crocker and Cerf, emphasizing the collaborative nature of innovation in the early phases of computer networking.
This moment marked the first attempt at network communication over a distance, showcasing the practical application of ideas that would shape the digital revolution. Kline, equipped with a telephone headset, typed in a login sequence with the hope of successfully establishing a connection, illustrating the hands-on experimentation that defined this transformative era.
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Other quotes in The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
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All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.
Race of Cain, ascend to heaven, And cast God down upon the earth!
