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Ethernet Creator Makes the Inventors Hall of Fame

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the making-the-grade dept.

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."

7 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Ah, Xerox PARC ... by Gopal.V · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Ah, Xerox PARC ... by MECC · · Score: 5, Informative

      Douglas Engelbart gets credit for the mouse, the gui, and a whole host of related technology, if not the modern PC as we know it. Not Xerox Parc.

      One could argue that he didn't popularize them, but that's not necessarily what invention is about. Besides, neither did Xerox parc.

      --
      "We are all geniuses when we dream"
      - E.M. Cioran
  2. Kinda spoilt... by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...by the fact that in recent years he's reduced to trolling the Internet by making up terms like "Open Sores Movement". From Wikipedia:

    The Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash [... that] reminds me of communism. [...] Linux [is like] organic software grown in utopia by spiritualists [...] When they bring organic fruit to market, you pay extra for small apples with open sores -- the Open Sores Movement. When [Windows 2000] gets here, goodbye Linux.

    He might have got it right decades ago, but these days, he's just another clueless pundit troll.

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    1. Re:Kinda spoilt... by WS+Tu · · Score: 4, Funny

      Anyway, it is an article in 1999. IMHO, I like this story more... Metcalf ate his column http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/1997-04/m sg00192.html

    2. Re:Kinda spoilt... by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Part of Metcalfe's problem is that - despite his technical qualifications, and the good fortune of having the right idea at the right time (ethernet) - he's an ideologue. Everything he looks at is filtered through his philosophical dogma, and he uses his columns as a bully pulpit to promote that ideology, rather than as an opportunity to explore and consider new ideas. He's got an agenda that gives him the same sort of tunnel vision and myopia that the worst fawning Apple fanboy, snotty Microsoft apologist, or strident BSD partisan has.

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  3. The original Hall of Fame, and hubris... by dpbsmith · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...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!

  4. Umm, it is a real place ... by Tranvisor · · Score: 4, Informative

    "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/