The First Ever Registered Domain Names – Domain History Part 2

The rise of domains began in the mid-1980s. The first domain in the world was nordu.net. It was registered on 01.01.1985 by the Scandinavian network provider of the same name.

You can find out more about nordu.net and other pioneering domains in this article.

The history of the first domains

This article is part 2 of our series on the history of domains. Below is a brief historical outline of the most important developments:

• 1968 – Launch of the ARPANET
• 1971 – Introduction of e-mail
• 1983-85 – The DNS and the first top-level domains are introduced (Part 1)
• 1985 – The first domains are registered (Part 2)
• 1991 – The first websites are created (Part 3)

The first ever registered domain name: nordu.net

Nordu.net was the first ever registered domain name on the internet.

On January 1, 1985, the world's very first domain, nordu.net, was registered. The domain was created as part of a collaboration between the national research and education networks of the five Nordic countries – Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

NORDU stands for Nordic Infrastructure for Research & Education. The ending .net was chosen because it was a network provider.

The second registered domain: symbolics.com

On March 15, 1985, symbolics.com became the second domain ever registered – and at the same time the first and therefore oldest .COM domain on the Internet.

Symbolics was a computer company from the USA that was founded in 1980 as an offshoot of the AI Labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It developed and sold so-called Lisp machines, which were controlled using the Lisp programming language.

The fate of the highly specialized Lisp computers was sealed by the rapid increase in the computing power of conventional microprocessors, among other things. The company went bankrupt in 1996.

In 2009, the domain was acquired by a domain investor.

The first domains at a glance

The first registered domains all contained the domain extensions .com, .org, .edu, .gov, .mil and .net, as these were the first domain extensions to be released in January 1985.

As stated in Part 1 of our domain history, these generic extensions were introduced before the country-specific ones such as .us and .uk.

Here is a list of the first ten entries of domains that still exist today:

• 01.01.1985 – nordu.net – Nordic Infrastructure for Research and Education
• 15.03.1985 – symbolics.com – Symbolics
• 24.04.1985 – bbn.com – BBN Technologies
• 24.04.1985 – berkeley.edu – University of California – Berkeley
• 24.04.1985 – cmu.edu – Carnegie Mellon University
• 24.04.1985 – purdue.edu – Purdue University
• 24.04.1985 – rice.edu – Rice University
• 24.04.1985 – ucla.edu – University of California – Los Angeles
• 25.04.1985 – rutgers.edu – Rutgers University
• 23.05.1985 – mit.edu – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 24.05.1985 – think.com – Thinking Machines
• 27.06.1985 – harvard.edu – Harvard University
• 05.07.1985 – columbia.edu – Columbia University
• 11.07.1985 – mcc.com – Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation
• 15.07.1985 – cornell.edu – Cornell University

As you can see, the first registered domains were mainly universities. However, individual IT companies were also involved.

Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to determine exactly when the first country-specific domains were registered alongside these generic domains.

However, it is possible that a few .us domains were among the first domains, as these could be registered from February 15, 1985. However, they were less popular overall as, among other things, only registrations on the fourth level were possible at the beginning (e.g. under .new-york.ny.us).

What was the first .DE domain?

The oldest German domain is uni-dortmund.de, registered on November 5, 1986. As the university took over the administration of the .de name server at that time, it is assumed that its domain was also the first.

However, a few other domains were also registered on November 5, which can therefore also be counted among the oldest .de domains:

• uni-paderborn.de
• uka.de
• dbp.de
• rmi.de
• telenet.de

The first companies register their domains

Many large companies also secured their domains as soon as it became possible. These included the following:

• hp.com (on 03.03.1986)
• ibm.com (on 19.03.1986)
• intel.com (on 25.03.1986)
• siemens.com (on 29.09.1986)
• adobe.com (on 17.11.1986)
• apple.com (on 19.02.1987)
• philips.com (on 04.04.1987)