From: Dave Horsfall
The Internet ... was born on this day in 1969, when
RFC-1 got published
I have this vague memory that the Internet-History list decided that the
appropriate day was actually the day the format of the v4 headers was set,
i.e. 16 June, 1978. (See IEN-68, pg. 12, top.)
Picking the date of RFC-1 seems a little odd. Why not the day the first packet
was send over a deployed IMP, or the day the RFP was sent out, or the contract
let? And the ARPANet was just one predecessor; one might equally have picked a
CYCLADES date...
(spelled with a capital "I", please, as it
is a proper noun) ... As I
said at a club lecture once, there are many internets, but only one
Internet.
I myself prefer the formulation 'there are many white houses, but only one
White House'! :-)
Noel