March 15, 1985 — The First .com Domain Name
March 15, 1985
On March 15, 1985, the first domain name in the .com zone was registered: symbolics.com.
This moment marked the beginning of the modern commercial internet. At the time, the Domain Name System (DNS) had only recently been introduced, replacing the earlier system where computers on the network were identified using a manually maintained HOSTS.TXT file.
The company behind the first domain
The domain symbolics.com was registered by Symbolics, Inc., a company that produced Lisp machines — specialized computers designed to run the programming language Lisp efficiently.
Symbolics was founded by former MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory researchers including Russell Noftsker, Richard Greenblatt, and others who were involved in the development of early Lisp systems.
The company was part of the early artificial intelligence industry of the 1980s.
Why domain names appeared
Before DNS, every computer connected to the ARPANET had to be listed in a central text file called HOSTS.TXT. This file was maintained by the Stanford Research Institute Network Information Center (SRI-NIC) under the leadership of Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler.
As the network grew, maintaining this file manually became impossible.
In 1983–1984, computer scientists Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel designed the Domain Name System (DNS) to solve this problem. DNS introduced hierarchical domain names such as example.com, example.edu, and example.gov.
The registration process in 1985
In 1985 there were no registrars, no automated web forms, and no ICANN.
To register a domain name, an organization had to:
- Prepare a request describing the domain name and administrative contacts
- Send the request by email to the NIC (Network Information Center)
- Wait for the request to be manually reviewed
- Have the domain entered into the DNS database by network administrators
Everything was done manually by a small group of engineers managing the early internet.
Early .com domains
At the time the .com zone was intended for commercial organizations, but the internet was still mostly academic and government-based. Only a few domains were registered during the first year:
- symbolics.com — March 15, 1985
- bbn.com — April 24, 1985
- think.com — May 24, 1985
- mcc.com — July 11, 1985
- dec.com — September 30, 1985
By the end of 1985 there were only six .com domains in existence.
From six domains to hundreds of millions
For almost ten years domain registration was free. The system was administered by government-funded research organizations until 1995, when commercial registration began and companies like Network Solutions started charging fees.
Today the .com zone contains hundreds of millions of domains and remains the most widely used top-level domain in the world.