The Steve Jobs crystal ball was working overtime on 18 February 1987. That’s when Apple registered the apple.com domain name. It was the 64th domain name registered.
The company had introduced the Apple Macintosh on 24 January 1984.
Tim Berners-Lee would not invent the World Wide Web until 1989. Microsoft registered microsoft.com on 01 May 1991.
However, the domain name system had launched in 1984.
The domain name system was important in that it made addresses on the Internet more human-friendly compared to its numerical IP address counterparts. DNS servers allowed Internet users to type in an easy-to-remember domain name and then converted it to the IP address automatically.
Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant started the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) in 1985, symbolic of the Bay Area environment in which Jobs and Steve Wozniak lived and worked.
Since long before the public Internet was unleashed, it has quietly captivated some accomplished and imaginative people. Over the last three decades, it’s been described as “the world’s most influential online community” in a Wired Magazine cover story, and ” the Park Place of email addresses” by John Perry Barlow. It’s won Dvorak and Webby Awards, inspired songs and novels, and almost invisibly influences modern culture.
The domain name system rested on the predecessor of the Internet, the ARPANET project of 1966 which became operational in 1971.
