Were A record domain names ever limited to 23 characters?

[steve at pirk.com (steve pirk [egrep])]

I seem to recollect back the 1999 or 2000 times that I was unable to
register a domain name that was 24 characters long. Shortly after that, I
heard that the character limit had been increased to like 128 characters,
and we were able to register the name.

Can anyone offer some input, or is this a memory of a bad dream?
;-]

-- Steve Pirk
Yensid