Symbolics.com (est. 1985): Cambridge, MA - Oldest Domain Name In America

Symbolics.com is the oldest domain name in America. The domain name has the distinction of being the very first commercial domain registered on the internet and since the website is currently active, it’s also the oldest still functioning website. In fact, it is the world’s first, and oldest, registered .com on the Internet. 

This first .com domain name was registered on the 15th of March 1985 by the now defunct Massachusetts-based computer manufacturer Symbolics. Symbolics, Inc (a computer manufacturer founded by Russel Noftsker) was a spinoff from the MIT AI Lab – was a computer manufacturer headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts and later in Concord, Massachusetts, that designed and manufactured a line of Lisp machines, single-user computers optimized to run the Lisp programming language. The machines became the first commercially available “general-purpose computers” or “workstations” way before those terms were coined.

Symbolics was a member of the Route 128 corridor of high-tech firms that contributed to the “Massachusetts Miracle” period of economic growth. The company still exists today as a privately held company that sells and maintains its products, but has a new address: symbolics-dks.com.  In 1951, the first segment of Route 128 was opened. By 1956, the expressway stretched 65 miles from Gloucester to Braintree. The proximity to university labs and to expanding suburban communities drew so many high tech companies to the area that Route 128 was dubbed "America's Technology Highway."  

Route 128 (which now overlaps in some areas with Interstate 95) still comprises Boston's inner "beltway." Although the businesses have changed since the era of the "Technology Highway," other business have located in the many office parks visible from the roadway. Today Silicon Valley in California is now the global capital of the tech world.

While the first that was created in January of that same year was Nordu.net (used to serve as the identifier of the first root server, nic.nordu.net), symbolics.com was the first domain name to actually be registered through the appropriate DNS process a few months later. At that time the Internet was a noncommercial medium used more as a military and academic tool. It would be years before the World Wide Web and web browsers allowed just about everything and everyone to be represented with a .com address. 

In August 2009, it was sold to XF.com, a domain-aggregation company. XF.com founder Aron Meystedt said on the site: “For me, personally, I am excited (and honored) to hold the first .com ever registered. Since domain names are my business, I am happy to be the owner of this fantastic piece of Internet history.” 

Symbolics.com domain name now hosts The Big Internet Museum. Each year several hundred thousand people visit this piece of Internet history. Today there are over 360 million domain names in existence, and more than 137 million are .com extensions.