You Don’t Know Why Internet Cookies Are Called Cookies
“Cookie” as in internet cookie has become a fairly common word. So isn’t it weird that nobody really seems to know its exact etymology? If you look into it, you’ll find that Lou Montulli invented HTTP cookies in 1995 and based the name on an older computing term from a 1970s UNIX manual, “magic cookies.”
But the etymology of “magic cookies” has been lost to time. So I went searching for it. And excitingly, I actually managed to get in touch with computing legends Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan and Douglas McIlroy, who gave me some very interesting crumbs to follow…
Image credit: “M209B-IMG 0553-black.jpg” by Rama, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under [CC BY-SA 2.0 France].
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Image modified from the original (resized)
Sources:
Lou Montulli's Blog - montulli.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-reasoning-behind-web-cookies
V7 Unix Manual - archive.org/details/bitsavers_attunix7thersManualSeventhEditionJanuary1979Volume_30031831/page/n311/
Wikipedia Talk Page for Magic Cookies - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Magic_cookie
HTML Goodies Ben Buckner (you need to put this link in the Way Back Machine) - htmlgoodies.com/beyond/reference/article.php/3472661
Origin of the Cookie Monster by C.D. Tavares - multicians.org/cookie
David Korn Cookie Prank - www.networkworld.com/article/677976/servers-in-their-own-words-unix-pioneers-remember-the-good-times.html#:~:text=David%20Korn%20tells,he%20had%20done.%E2%80%9D
Lou Montulli AMA - www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/wg4x4c/i_am_lou_montulli_and_i_invented_website_cookies/
Dabbling in the Cryptographic World--A Story by Dennis Ritchie - www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/crypt
The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll - goodreads.com/en/book/show/18154.The_Cuckoo_s_Egg
Crypto by Steven Levy - goodreads.com/en/book/show/984428.Crypto
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:08 Title Screen
02:20 Context on UNIX
03:00 fseek and ftell
05:17 Theories on Etymology
07:07 Cookie Monster Virus
08:35 Colossal Cave Adventure/Video Games
10:15 Ken Thompson
11:58 Brian Kernighan
13:10 Douglas McIlroy
14:59 A Second Look at The Cookie Monster Theory
16:32 A Second Look at the Game Theory
17:40 The Fortune Cookie
18:41 Robert Morris and Dennis Ritchie's Cryptographic Story
20:21 The Cuckoo's Egg
21:29 The Cryptology Convention
22:46 Conclusion
23:27 Outro