What was the first domain name ever registered, in March 1985?

symbolics.com was the first domain name ever registered, in March 1985.

The domain was registered for Symbolics, Inc., a computer company based in Massachusetts that produced Lisp machines. It became the first entry in the commercial Domain Name System, which was then still a small and experimental naming system.

The Domain Name System translates human-readable names into numerical network addresses. Before the DNS became widely commercial, internet hosts were often recorded in centrally maintained files. Domain registration created a more scalable way to organize names.

Symbolics.com later changed ownership and became a historical internet landmark. It is not the same as example.com, which is reserved for documentation and illustrative use. The first registration also predates the explosive public growth of the World Wide Web.