Earliest .co.uk registrations

[jasman]

I knew I had this list somewhere but mislaid it for many years and just found it again today!

This is a list of the earliest registered .co.uk domains, veritable antiques in the .co.uk namespace. In fact this list is exactly 30 years old, give or take a couple of days! It comes from a RIPE post with details of the RIPE DNS hostcount as of end of July 1993, so the domains were in existence at that time at least.

It is possible that other .co.uk domains had also been registered by that point but were not on the list for one reason or another (e.g. not in use or registered then cancelled prior to that date etc). But we can say that these domains were certainly registered and in use at that time.

Of course some of these domains have since expired and been re-registered, indeed some are owned by Acorn regulars and a fair few are even available to reg.

Searching for some of the content of the post I managed to find a copy of the original post again on the web. Here it is:

https://lists.ripe.net/pipermail/ripe-org-closed/1993/msg00157.html

124 Earliest .co.uk Registrations

acorn.co.uk
aleph1.co.uk
almac.co.uk
ansa.co.uk
ara.co.uk
asmec.co.uk
barclays.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
biosis.co.uk
bis.co.uk
biss.co.uk
bj.co.uk
blackwell.co.uk
bnr.co.uk
bnsuk.co.uk
bt.co.uk
bull.co.uk
cam-orl.co.uk
cambustion.co.uk
canon.co.uk
chernikeeff.co.uk
churchill.co.uk
compnews.co.uk
compulink.co.uk
concurrent.co.uk
cppuk.co.uk
crosfield.co.uk
cse.co.uk
cursci.co.uk
cv.co.uk
datastream.co.uk
datcon.co.uk
datlog.co.uk
demon.co.uk
derwent.co.uk
devon.co.uk
devteq.co.uk
digicon-egr.co.uk
dircon.co.uk
dlbsys.co.uk
dps.co.uk
dsl-cam.co.uk
eaglestar.co.uk
ecmwf.co.uk
eoe.co.uk
eos.co.uk
ernsty.co.uk
eurobrok.co.uk
fdgroup.co.uk
fegs.co.uk
firefox.co.uk
fulcrum.co.uk
gms.co.uk
gradyn.co.uk
gre.co.uk
habia.co.uk
harlequin.co.uk
harlqn.co.uk
hewlett-packard.co.uk
hillside.co.uk
hp.co.uk
hydro.co.uk
ibm.co.uk
ibmpcug.co.uk
icl.co.uk
ingres.co.uk
inmos.co.uk
insignia.co.uk
intera.co.uk
leaf.co.uk
leica.co.uk
level-7.co.uk
logica.co.uk
loot.co.uk
ltgroup.co.uk
mantis.co.uk
mdis.co.uk
meiko.co.uk
mfltd.co.uk
microvitec.co.uk
mpread.co.uk
msicam.co.uk
nag.co.uk
nan.co.uk
natpower.co.uk
ncd.co.uk
ndc.co.uk
ndl.co.uk
netcomm.co.uk
netmgrs.co.uk
nexor.co.uk
num-alg-grp.co.uk
omv.co.uk
on-line.co.uk
oup.co.uk
philips.co.uk
pipex.co.uk
protek.co.uk
quantime.co.uk
retixuk.co.uk
s-and-s-international.co.uk
sast.co.uk
sbc.co.uk
scicon.co.uk
shape-data.co.uk
sls.co.uk
smallworld.co.uk
softimage.co.uk
specialix.co.uk
speedware.co.uk
ssilon.co.uk
sun.co.uk
tadtec.co.uk
tecc.co.uk
tmse.co.uk
toshiba.co.uk
unipalm.co.uk
visionware.co.uk
vmark.co.uk
x.co.uk
xopen.co.uk
xtel.co.uk
xylint.co.uk
xyplex.co.uk

 

[BG]

* Commerce.co.uk was also a pre nom name too.

 

[ELIFE-MZ]

compulink.co.uk .. my first email address provider - text based email client ..

 

[jasman]

* Commerce.co.uk was also a pre nom name too.

There were thousands of pre nom domains by the time Nominet took over in July 1996. They say "before Aug-1996" as the registration date in the whois, but the lookup tool on Nominet's website now gives you a firm registration date:

https://www.nominet.uk/lookup/?query=bbc.co.uk#whois-results

However it appears this date cannot be relied on as the real registration date. bbc.co.uk was created on 1994-12-13 according to the lookup tool, however we know from the above list from July 1993 that it existed then. Same with other ones in the above list. For example ibm.co.uk is claimed to have been created in June 1996:

https://www.nominet.uk/lookup/?query=ibm.co.uk#whois-results

But it is also in the July 1993 list above, so the date must be years out! When you consider that the .uk delegation was created in 1985 so .co.uk names could have been created from that point on, and by mid 1993 we had ~124 .co.uk domains, some of those may well have been created in the 1980s. We can imagine the likes of IBM, BT etc being very early adopters. But Nominet is showing spurious dates in the whois. It is a pity. It would be interesting to know which was the first ever .co.uk domain, or the first 10.

Also interesting is the preponderance of what now appear to be second-rate domain names. For example we have cppuk.co.uk rather than cpp.co.uk, digicon-egr.co.uk rather than digicon.co.uk and s-and-s-international.co.uk when they could have opted for ss.co.uk or sands.co.uk. Back then you could have whatever you wanted as long as it had not been taken. This reflects how people viewed domain names back then - as a means of communication, like a phone number or an address. Later, as the Internet grew exponentially, the importance of a succint and memorable domain became much more apparent and domains became synonymous with brands. But some early adopters were a bit more prescient, for example Hewlett Packard registered hewlett-packard.co.uk and hp.co.uk.

 

[cloud]

I have earliest .co.uk