It’s the most famous program. Known as the first example in nearly every programming language for every programmer, where did this message come from?

As a function, the computer program simply tells the computer to display the words “Hello, World!” Traditionally, it’s the first program developers use to test systems. For programmers, seeing the two words on the screen means their code can compile, load, run and they can see the output.

It’s a test, signifying a start to a program. Over the past several decades, it’s grown to become a time-honored tradition. All programmers that have come before you have, at some point, felt the same rush of adrenaline after realizing they successfully communicated through the computer. Here’s how the two most famous words in the history of programming first began:

Where does ‘Hello World’ come from?

Brian Kernighan, author of one of the most widely read programming books, “C Programming Language”, also created “Hello, World”. He first referenced ‘Hello World’ in the C Programming Language book’s predecessor: A Tutorial Introduction to the Programming Language B published in 1973.

Unfortunately, the legend himself can’t definitely pinpoint when or why he chose the words “Hello, World.” When asked what sparked the idea for the name “Hello, World” in interview with Forbes India, he said his memory’s dim.

“What I do remember is that I had seen a cartoon that showed an egg and a chick and the chick was saying, “Hello, World.”

At the time, neither Kernighan nor his colleague Dennis Ritchie, the late author of the C language, could imagine just how monumental the language and the tutorial book would be in the field of programming today. These ideas were nothing but a research project inside Bell Labs, the research and development branch of AT&T. Although no one can scientifically explain why “Hello, World,” grew to become wildly popular, the “Hello, World” program marks a major change in the historical rhetoric of programming. Let’s look at its historical context.