The 100 Oldest Websites On The Internet. Guess How Many Of Them Still Exist?

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The Internet, in some form or another, has been around since the 1960s. But you couldn’t register domain names until the mid-1980s. Here’s a list of the oldest websites on the Internet and the oldest domain names registered.

The First Website On The Internet

Have you ever wondered what the first website on the internet was? The first registered domain on the Internet was symbolics.com. Symbolics, Inc. was a software development firm that obviously had someone on staff who kept their finger on the pulse of the events leading up to the birth of our modern Internet. The company Symbolics doesn’t exist anymore, but they will forever hold a place in history as the oldest domain name on the Internet.

The Oldest Domains On The Internet: .COM List

Symbolics was just one of many companies that secured domain names in the mid-1980s. Here’s a list of the 100 oldest domain names with a .com extension. Most of the companies aren’t around anymore, but some big names like Apple, GE, Cisco, and Adobe round out the top 100.

 

The Oldest Domains On The Internet: .ORG List

Oldest .ORG domains:
01	mitre.org	07/10/85	54846
02	src.org	03/25/86	n/a
03	super.org	07/10/86	n/a
05	aero.org	01/07/87	555226
06	mcnc.org	01/15/87	n/a
07	rand.org	04/02/87	61186
08	mn.org	04/04/87	n/a
09	rti.org	05/01/87	248138
10	n/a	??	??
11	usenix.org	07/14/87	98286
12	n/a	??	??
13	software.org	10/03/87	n/a

The Oldest Websites On The Internet: .EDU List

The Ivy League and large private and State schools were the first to register .edu domain names.

Oldest .EDU domains:
01	berkeley.edu	04/24/85	1580
02	purdue.edu	04/24/85	2776
03	ucla.edu	04/24/85	2629
04	mit.edu	05/23/85	1158
05	harvard.edu	06/27/85	1487
06	columbia.edu	07/05/85	2775
07	cornell.edu	07/15/85	2441
08	uiuc.edu	07/18/85	2651
09	udel.edu	07/24/85	11999
10	umd.edu	07/31/85	4062
11	utexas.edu	08/13/85	2179
12	usc.edu	08/20/85	4480
13	wisc.edu	09/30/85	2743
14	uci.edu	09/30/85	5377
15	stanford.edu	10/04/85	1276
16	umich.edu	10/07/85	2242
17	ucsd.edu	12/09/85	5036
18	arizona.edu	01/23/86	4151
19	ucsf.edu	02/21/86	14279
20	indiana.edu	03/03/86	4832
21	ucdavis.edu	03/19/86	6016
22	virginia.edu	03/19/86	3227
23	ufl.edu	03/25/86	3200
24	bu.edu	03/25/86	5945
25	gatech.edu	05/08/86	7101
26	duke.edu	06/02/86	4582
27	upenn.edu	06/02/86	2451
28	emory.edu	06/02/86	11327
29	unc.edu	06/17/86	4359
30	brown.edu	08/27/86	11759
31	unm.edu	08/27/86	11735
32	washington.edu	09/04/86	2336
33	nyu.edu	10/08/86	3214
34	umn.edu	01/21/87	2602
35	clemson.edu	02/19/87	17235
36	yale.edu	03/17/87	4504
37	princeton.edu	04/03/87	4286
38	uvm.edu	04/14/87	14612
39	ncsu.edu	04/16/87	4912
40	ucop.edu	04/30/87	45277
41	colostate.edu	05/27/87	7860
42	iastate.edu	06/22/87	7616
43	miami.edu	07/23/87	15798
44	uconn.edu	08/18/87	14286
45	fsu.edu	11/24/87	7400

The Oldest Domains On The Internet: .NET List

The oldest websites with .net domains aren’t very well known. Try them for yourself. None of them even exist anymore.

Oldest .NET domains:
01	nsf.net	11/05/86	n/a
02	uu.net	05/20/87	165772
03	sesqui.net	07/21/87	n/a

In The Early Days, Registering Premium Domain Names Was Easy

For the decade that followed, it was still very easy to secure premium domain names. For example, Weather.com wasn’t registered until 1994. Why? People didn’t understand the Internet yet.

As you can see in this infamous clip from the TODAY Show, in the mid-1990s, people still didn’t understand the difference between email and websites. And TV personalities, in general, struggled to explain the “World Wide Web” to their viewers.

Just imagine if you had a time machine and could travel back to the 1980s-1990s and secure domain names. What domains would you register? How many of the oldest websites on the Internet would you own today? Let us know in the comments or tweet us @methodshop.

The 100 Oldest Websites On The Internet. Guess How Many Of Them Still Exist? Share on X

Source: TG Daily