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Here's the Room at UCLA Where the Internet Was Born (It Tweets)

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Image via Paleofuture

This thing that you're doing right now, reading via the Internet, all started (more or less) in a room at UCLA in 1969, when Professor Leonard Kleinrock's lab sent out the first ARPANET message ("lo," intended to be "login"). Recently, a UCLA history PhD named Brad Fidler went looking for that Internet birthplace and, according to the Daily Bruin, realized that nobody was really sure where it was. He did a little research and nailed down the location to room 3420 in Boelter Hall, which was until very recently being used as an ordinary undergrad classroom. UCLA plans to open the site to the public, and with Kleinrock's help, Fidler is restoring it to its 1969 look using historical photos, eyewitness accounts, and original furniture UCLA never threw away. The site's Twitter account (first Tweet: "lo") calls the aesthetic "#MadMen inventing the Internet in a computer lab created by the US Department of Defense." A grand opening for the Kleinrock Internet Heritage Site and Archive is scheduled for June 1, but blog Paleofuture organized a field trip this past weekend for Obscura Day and took this photo. Take a minute to appreciate what happened here, if your Internet-induced ADHD will allow it.

UCLA

405 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles, CA

Kleinrock Internet Heritage Site and Archive

3420 Boelter Hall, Los Angeles, CA