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."

Comments

How did we invent napkins?

[Tr3vin]

How did we invent napkins without napkins on which to sketch? Inventing things in the old days must have been really hard.

Re:How did we invent napkins?

[decipher_saint]

Rough notes were flogged into the backs of peasants

B-52

[Wyatt Earp]

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

Re:B-52

[PPH]

I'm pretty sure the 747-400 preliminary design was done on cocktail napkins from the Jet Deck lounge at Paine Field.

Napkin stuff I've done

[spaceyhackerlady]

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

The most important device sketched on a napkin

[smooth wombat]

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.

Re:Have you ever tried actually writing on a napki

[afidel]

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).