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Napkins and the History of Ethernet, Compaq, Facebook
alphadogg writes "Napkins don't really stack up well against hard drives or even floppy disks for preserving data over time. But some of the technology and business world's most enduring ideas are said to have at least gotten their starts as sketches on dinner or cocktail napkins (which in fact were inspiration for the 5 ¼ floppy disk's size). Robert Metcalfe's early Ethernet diagrams from his days at Xerox PARC back in the early 1970s might be the most famous napkin sketches in the technology industry, but there are napkin stories involving Compaq, Facebook, @home and more."
My understanding is that the original hi-bit encoding scheme of UTF-8 was on a napkin.
Obviously the best way to advance the world's technology is to improve napkin design. Let's get on that folks!
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
(which in fact were inspiration for the 5 ¼ floppy disk's size)
Napkins were probably also the inspiration for agile programming's "user-stories on index cards"...
(which in fact were inspiration for the 5 ¼ floppy disk's size)
citation needed
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
How did we invent napkins without napkins on which to sketch? Inventing things in the old days must have been really hard.
This is why my startup is focusing on improving cocktail napkin storage, beginning with our upcoming release of a 3 meter x 3 meter napkin and a pen smaller than a human hair. We passionately innovate in innovating to enable innovators' innovation!
The B-52 was designed in a hotel over a weekend with sketches on the notepad in the room and calculations done on a roll of toilet paper.
I've seen designers comment on it in documentaries, but the official Boeing history of it's design weekend leaves that bit out.
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/b52-strat/b52_50th/design.htm
Have you ever tried actually writing on a cheap paper napkin using a common ballpoint? It's difficult as hell without tearing it. I have no idea how these people do it.
I think they are missing the real story that the best ideas are often had when you are business drunk. I know I solve all of the worlds problems when I am hammered, although I can never remember them the next day. I really need to put some napkins around my house so I can write some of this shit down.
-Xoltri
I wonder if this is because of the alcohol consumed they feel inspired, or at lest more open to new ideas. I know a professional artist ( yes he actually makes a living off of painting ) who claims that his best inspirations come while intoxicated.
Time to offend someone
I've done real work on napkins. Examples:
When a colleague was at her wits end on a geometry problem relating to a graphical program, we went out for coffee, drew diagrams and equations on napkins, and solved the problem.
When a colleague asked me for advice on a presentation, we went for coffee and outlined it, complete with important diagrams, on napkins.
At a trade show I got talking to some people at the hotel who were attending the same show, and when I drew a map on a napkin showing how to get from the hotel to the show location, they thought it was a work of art and asked me to sign it.
...laura
Oppenheimer and the other trinity scientists used to go to this little bar called the Owl Bar in San Antonio, New Mexico (about 20 miles from the Trinity site) and draw the bomb schematics on napkins. There were a few still on display a few years back, but I heard they removed them recently. Still, I'd say this takes the cake.
I can't believe no one has mentioned the most important device ever sketched on a napkin. Its importance cannot be stressed enough.
I am speaking of the Smelloscope, a device which allows one to smell the odors of distant objects in the universe.
It also comes in handy for detecting large balls of garbage which have been floating around in space for a few hundred years and which is about to crash into Earth.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
No one in the wider world knows about advanced Australian research, because they keeps asking to see our napkin archives, whereupon they should be asking to see our serviette archives. And boy do they think things are really screwed up in Oz when they do see napkins.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
If only the Winklevoss' couldve found that damn napkin...
Don't use a ballpoint, duh. Rollerballs work fine on napkins (I just tested mine on 3 different types of napkins I have at my desk and it wrote just fine with no tearing or bleeding).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
...I'd bet a lot of money that napkins hold up BETTER than hard drives and floppy drives for data retention. It's hard to beat ink on paper for longevity.
Reminds me of the bootable CD standard, which was actually named "El Torito" after the Mexican restaurant it was invented in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Torito_(CD-ROM_standard)
> The sketches featuring boxes labeled PDP-11 and pointers to "The Ether" would eventually be translated into a big-time business for 3Com, Digital Equipment Corp, and now, just about anybody in the computer, telecom and networking businesses ..
How did this happen without patent protection for "The Ether"?
GE Corporate R&D had placemats in their executive dining room printed with sections for text, drawing, graph paper and signature lines for patent disclosure witnessing.
Original concept for Kill Bill was also written out on napkins.
The Pilot Razorpoint pens would work quite well on anything.
I want to shoot the messenger!
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/napkins-where-ethernet-compaq-and-facebookâ(TM)s- (apostrophe seems to have broken the URL/link) shows "Page not found" error. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/napkins-where-ethernet-compaq-and-facebook
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this napkin is too folded and greasy to contain.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Churchill and Stalin did write down the partition of East Europe in a napkin.
Why can't
"Napkins don't really stack up well against hard drives or even floppy disks for preserving data over time." Really! We know that Gudea of Lagash reigned from 2144 - 2124 B.C., four thousand one hundred and fifty-five years ago, because clay cuneiform tablets from that time are in the Library of Congress. In China, we have paper records two thousand, two hundred years old. Land records in England can be traced from the Doomsday Book of 1086 until today, and the 925 year-old book can be read today. Some puffed up salesman tells me “Napkins don't really stack up well against hard drives or even floppy disks for preserving data over time.” How much time have floppies saved data for. How old is the oldest harddrive? (If we still have the first one, fifty-two years.) Napkins can last for centuries, please spare me the “paperless” propaganda.
Let's not forget, this is the same asshat who called free software "open sores".
Funny that no one (at least that I saw) noted that the link is bad. Here's the correct link: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/napkins-where-ethernet-compaq-and-facebook
Duke Nukem Forever was originally envisioned on a napkin as well. Mind you, that being so long ago I would assume napkins were all we had to put our designs down back then.....
I guess the problem is the staff wrote their deadlines for the project on that napkin as well, and it was clearly lost to time.
Hummm... I wonder how the ideas on the napkin survived so intact when one has to 'suck it up' to get an idea to market.
Anybody old enough to remember the 1980s might remember the Video Toaster. It was designed on the back of a napkin as well.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
site mentioned id off line. napkins can't go off line. off bar off table maybe but off line? no.
Since Tux Paint is basically the only thing I ever talk about... yeah... Tux Paint was first designed on a napkin at lunch. And I've also heard it's been used as a "quick, virtual 'back of a napkin'" for some engineering designs, since most other drawing programs are too clunky for quick sketches. :)