
In 1985, only 6 .com domains existed in the world.
The first was symbolics.com, registered March 15, 1985 by a Cambridge AI hardware company spun out of MIT's AI Lab.
Registration meant FTPing a plain-text template from SRI-NIC, filling it out and emailing it to HOSTMASTER@SRI-NIC.ARPA. A human reviewed it. Approval took days or weeks.
The other five that year were: bbn.com, think.com, mcc.com, dec.com and northrop.com.
Symbolics, Inc. went bankrupt in 1996, they held onto the domain.
In 2009, @FirstDomain (Aron Meystedt) acquired it. Not to flip, not to park, but to preserve it as a digital museum.
41 years later, symbolics.com is still resolving. The first commercial domain on the internet still points somewhere.
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