> Ultima Online invented a significant amount of technology we use today.

Yeah, but not UUIDs. Those go back to the 80s.

I think they were invented by Apollo Computer as part of their NCS (Network Computing System). From there, they were adopted by the OSF (later Open Group) DCE RPC system, and from there, by Microsoft (who renamed them GUIDs).

In that vein, earliest mention of UUID I could find (thanks Apollo Archives):

> 2.4 Unique Identifiers

> An important aspect of NCA is its use of universal unique identifiers (UUIDs) as the most primi-

> tive means of identifying NCA entities (e.g. objects, interfaces, operations). UUIDs are an exten-

> sion of the unique identifiers (UIDs) already used throughout Apollo’s system [Leach 82]. Both

> UIDs and UUIDs are fixed length identifiers that are guaranteed to refer to just one thing for all

> time. The principal advantages of using any kind of unique identifiers over using string names at

> the lowest level of the system include: small size, ease of embedding in data structures, location

> transparency, and the ability to layer various naming strategies on top of the primitive naming

> mechanism. Also, identifiers can be generated anywhere, without first having to contact some

> other agent (e.g. a special server on the network, or a human representative of a company that

> hands out identifiers).

https://jim.rees.org/apollo-archive/papers/ncs.pdf

The paper is not dated but probably was around 1986 or later?

But shards! lol