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Ethernet Creator Makes the Inventors Hall of Fame
An anonymous reader wrote in with a Network World story that opens, "Ethernet is right up there with magnetic resonance imaging, the LP record, air bags, and soft contact lenses. So says the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which included Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the ubiquitous LAN technology, in its latest round of inductees."
insert ASCII goatse here
The technology center that gave birth to so many of the corner stones of modern computing ... the mouse GUI, the laser printer (yeah, xerox ...), ethernet and if I may say so - object oriented programming.
I'm not sure what it proves, but it does prove that when you're not thinking about immediate profit, there's so much you can do - but if you don't somebody'll pull the funding on you (and kick themselves years later).
What were they working in the nineties ? IPV6 ?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/99/06/21/ 990621opmetcalfe.html
enjoy...
Glad to see him getting the recognition he deserves.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Ethernet is available for years now.
I can hardly believe that it has any meaning to be chosen by a "Inventors Hall of Fame" that is so disconnected and lagging behind the Zeitgeist.
He might have got it right decades ago, but these days, he's just another clueless pundit troll.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The paper was written by two people, not one. Whatever happened to poor David Boggs, who seems never to be mentioned. Punditry has its place, I guess, if you want to be famous.
Yes they did.
aw crap...right when I post it I see it's "ethernet" instead of "internet"...guess I should read a little before posting, eh?
'reduced to trolling the Internet by making up terms like "Open Sores Movement"'
..
It sure is, a bad taste pun that does nothing for his reputation. I wonder how his other prediction is coming along. It is 2007 after all. Maybe Bob is suffering from the halo effect, wherein both he and others assume he is authoritative on all things.
was Re:Kinda spoilt (Score:4, Insightful)
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...the Hall of Fame for Great Americans... is a huge colonnade (630 feet long) with actual bronze busts, located at Bronx Community College (formerly NYU).
I found this out on the umpteenth watching of "The Wizard of Oz" when I suddenly wondered what the Munchkins were singing about when they sang "You will have a bust, have a bust, have a bust/In the Hall of Fame." I had to look it up because nobody I knew had any idea what the heck the "Hall of Fame" was, apart from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, of course.
By the way, it has a number of open slots. #19, #47, #49. I think someone should propose putting Metcalfe's bust in one of them. So he will be as well remembered as Rufus Choate, Charlotte Saunders Cushman, and John Lothrop Motley.
It really says something when an entire Hall of Fame can be forgotten, doesn't it? If a brick-and-mortar Hall of Fame is forgotten in less than one short century, I don't think the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, which apparently has no physical existence, will be much more durable.
Ozymandias, anyone?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
What is this "inventor"? To me it brings to mind images of Professor Branestawm. Where's the Engineering Hall of Fame? (And who designed it? ;)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
"I don't think the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, which apparently has no physical existence, will be much more durable."
Umm, the Inventor's Hall of Fame is a real museum in Akron, OH. I've been there, it's a fairly interesting place (beats the Football Hall of Fame (Canton, OH) hands down). The museum has no busts, it trys to present inventions and the science behind them in a very understandable way with many hands-on exhibits.
Their website is http://www.invent.org/
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Cool! I'm trying to think of how one would do an exhibit on Ethernet... little talking mannequins that stop whenever they interrupt each other...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
if as a prize he got a "token ring" of appriciation? Sorry.... I had too.....
"Gentlemen, You cannot fight in here, this is the War Room...." - Dr Strangelove
No, you're incredibly boring and should stop posting at all.
He coined the term "open sores" software, and whenever you hear someone call the GPL communist, you can look to Bob and smile, knowing he was the first to promote that meme.
Dude hasn't been born yet. What the heck are you talking about?
Property is theft.
Yay Bob.
Shelly Winters or Shelley Berman?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!