03/15/1985 • 6 views
Symbolics.com: the first registered internet domain name
On March 15, 1985, Symbolics, a Massachusetts computer company, registered symbolics.com—the first commercial domain name registered in the .com top-level domain, marking a key step in the development of the Domain Name System.
Background: Before the modern commercial internet, hostnames and network addresses were managed by a variety of centralized lists and hosts files. In 1983–84 the Domain Name System (DNS) was developed to replace cumbersome hostname files with a scalable, hierarchical naming system, and in 1985 organizations began formally registering names within top-level domains such as .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .org and country codes.
The Registration: Symbolics, founded in 1980 to build Lisp machines, sought an internet identity consistent with its corporate name and obtained symbolics.com through the registration processes available at the time. Records preserved by historians of the early internet and by organizations that later tracked domain registrations show symbolics.com with a registration date of March 15, 1985. Other early registrations followed quickly—mcc.com, dec.com (Digital Equipment Corporation), and others—illustrating how commercial, academic and governmental entities began using DNS names.
Significance: The registration of symbolics.com is significant for several reasons. Practically, it demonstrates the transition from internally maintained host lists to a distributed, hierarchical naming system that could scale with the growing network. Symbolically, it marks the start of domain names as a commercial and organizational identifier—an element that would later underpin branding, e-commerce, and the internet’s global namespace.
Caveats and context: Some sources treat symbolics.com as the first .com registration; others emphasize that technical elements of the DNS and earlier naming systems predate 1985. For example, certain names existed in host files or as entries on early networks before the formal DNS registration process. Additionally, different organizations maintained records in the 1980s, so exact forms of documentation vary. Nonetheless, symbolics.com’s March 15, 1985 registration is the commonly cited milestone for the first modern domain registration in the .com space.
Legacy: Symbolics.com continued to exist long after the company ceased hardware operations; the domain has been preserved, transferred, and remarked upon by historians and collectors of internet history. The concept of domain names that this registration exemplified evolved into global policies and markets for domain registration, dispute resolution, and namespace governance administered by bodies such as IANA and ICANN in later decades.
Further reading: Contemporary primary records are sparse compared with later digital archives, so researchers typically rely on historical lists of domain registrations, archived WHOIS records, and retrospective accounts by early internet historians. Where details are disputed—such as the status of pre-DNS host entries—histories make clear distinctions between preexisting host lists and formal DNS registrations beginning in 1985.