Thirty years of 'talking' computers

BBC News ^ | Saturday, 24 May, 2003, 06:49 GMT 07:49 UK | Staff and news service reports

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thirty years of 'talking' computers

The original diagram laying out ethernet's basic form

Some of the computer technology that lets you read this story is 30 years old this weekend.

In 1973 data was passed over a computer networking technology known as ethernet for the first time.

The feat was accomplished by Bob Metcalfe and David Boggs who at the time were researchers at the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

Three decades on and ethernet is used to connect millions of computers together and to link those machines to the internet.

Ether flyer

Bob Metcalfe began working on ways to swap data between computers after reading about work carried out by Norman Abramson at the University of Hawaii.

Abramson had created a radio data network, that he dubbed AlohaNet, that split data into small chunks called packets.

Bob Metcalfe drew on work done in Hawaii

AlohaNet let any computer on the network transmit data at any time. As a result it was very inefficient and used less than 20% of its potential bandwidth.

Packets of data that collided because they were transmitted at the same time were discarded.

To distinguish it from the Aloha system Mr Metcalfe dubbed it "ethernet". The name draws on old ideas about a supposedly ubiquitous, invisible medium that helped light propagate.

By improving the way that a computer network handled collisions, Mr Metcalfe believed he could vastly improve the speed with which data was passed around.

Research work by Mr Metcalfe and his co-worker established that they could swap far more data far faster than over the Hawaiian network.

Three years after sending those first packets of data, the network created by Metcalfe and Boggs had 100 machines on it.

The network ran at a stately speed of 2.94 megabits.

Mr Metcalfe founded a company called 3Com to start making and selling components that allowed others to create ethernet networks.

When it first appeared ethernet shuffled data between machines at 10megabits per second.

Since then the technology has been improved several times and now can work at gigabit speeds.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST

I always thought the token ring would replace ethernet!

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

Al Gore must have been too busy to comment on his role.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

LOL!

[sourcery]

Robert Tinny's Balloon Limited Edition Print

www.smalltalk.org? "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." ? Alan Kay

---

The Full Alan Kay Quote
"Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do? The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws!"
? Alan Kay in 1971,
inventor of Smalltalk which was the inspiration and technical basis for the MacIntosh and subsequent windowing based systems (NextStep, Microsoft Windows 3.1/95/98/NT, X-Windows, Motif, etc...).

Alan on Alan
"The origin of the quote came from an early meeting in 1971 of PARC, Palo Alto Research Center, folks and the Xerox planners. In a fit of passion I uttered the quote!".
? Alan Kay, in an email on Sept 17, 1998 to Peter W. Lount

Smalltalk Invention Overview
"Smalltalk was developed in the Learning Research Group at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the early 70s. The major ideas in Smalltalk are generally credited to Alan Kay with many roots in Simula, LISP and SketchPad. Dan Engalls wrote the first overlapping windows, opaque pop-up menus and BitBlt. Guess where Apple's OS and Microsoft Windows "found" their roots? Right, Smalltalk! Adele Goldberg and Dave Robson wrote the reference manuals for Smalltalk and were key development team members."
? Randy Best, STIC Director
(For the full article follow the above link and select "Details about Smalltak, the Language."

Steve Jobs on Smalltalk
Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976. The first popular personal computer, the Apple 2, was a hit - and made Steve Jobs one of the biggest names of a brand-new industry. At the height of Apple's early success in December 1979, Jobs, then all of 24, had a privileged invitation to visit Xerox Parc. This is what Steve had to say about his visit to Xerox Parc.

"And they showed me really three things. But I was so blinded by the first one I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming they showed me that but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system...they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day."

It was a turning-point. Jobs decided that this was the way forward for Apple.
? Steve Jobs, from "Triumph of The Nerds, Part 3, PBS"

Steve Jobs Tours Xerox
In 1979, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center developed the first prototype for a GUI. A young man named Steve Jobs, looking for new ideas to work into future iterations of the Apple computer, traded US $1 million in stock options to Xerox for a detailed tour of their facilities and current projects. One of the things Xerox showed Jobs was the Alto, which sported a GUI and a three-button mouse. When Jobs saw this prototype, he had an epiphany and set out to bring the GUI to the public.
? Adam Powell, Wired

Alan Kay Biographical Info
"By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. School is basically about one point of view -- the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice." - from Alan Kay by Scott Gasch

Alan Kay Biographical Info Request
If you have any information, bits of history, interesting stories about Alan please send them to us at Alan Kay biographical information. This includes information on the web that we can link to.

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[MonroeDNA]

Great read!!!!

[gwmoore]

Bookmarked and Bumped.

Great Read

Keep the Faith For Freedom

Greg

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks for the ping. I still have the first issue of Byte magazine on my shelf. :-)

[longshadow]

I still have the first issue of Byte magazine on my shelf.

Yeah; well you're not a certified Nerd unless you have a plastic pocket protector and still carry a slide rule, too.

[RadioAstronomer]

Yeah; well you're not a certified Nerd unless you have a plastic pocket protector and still carry a slide rule, too.

LOL you got me! I have my Goddard Space Flight Center NASA Pocket protector (in the desk drawer) and am holding a K&E Log Log Duplex Decitrig slide rule in my hot little fist right now. (keep it here in my lab as a memento) :-)

[longshadow]

LOL you got me! I have my Goddard Space Flight Center NASA Pocket protector (in the desk drawer) and am holding a K&E Log Log Duplex Decitrig slide rule in my hot little fist right now. (keep it here in my lab as a memento) :-)

Oh, my.... your Official Nerd Certificate should be in the mail any day now.....

;-)

[RadioAstronomer]

Oh, my.... your Official Nerd Certificate should be in the mail any day now.....

Certificate? Heck, already recieved the gold "Nerd of the Year" medal which came with a 14" wall plaque and crystal (plastic resin LOL) trophy already. :-)

[lainde]

Thanks you all...Great read and good links!

[LibKill]

No pocket protector, but I still have a slide rule, which I have forgotten how to use.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

It's like riding a bicycle , you never forget how!

I still have a slide rule somewhere packed away, and even a good size circular slide rule! Ha -- Got you all beat with that! No first copy of Byte though, but I did subscribe!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the historical info!

[roadcat]

"It's like riding a bicycle , you never forget how!"

Exactly! But electronic calculators are a bit handier. Still have a wooden as well as plastic slide rules. Unfortunately I miss my first computer, discarded in the late sixties. It was an analog computer, used several dials with needles. Very similar to using a slide rule to do calculations.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Heh, great read, source...

While these guys were changing the world I was struggling to program Ataris in Kyan Pascal, which I thought was incredibly cool. (If you are a programmer of a certain age who worked on 6502 machines, you will recall the joys of writing your own bank-swopping routines. There was 64 or 128K [yes, K kids] in the machine but the proc would only address 48 at a time....)

Damme, but I'm spoiled these days (finally got me some of Steve's computers with some of Alan's ideas in 'em).

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[RadioAstronomer]

Unfortunately I miss my first computer, discarded in the late sixties.

I became kinda a vintage computer packrat. Some of them include a:

DEC PDP-8 with an ASR-33 Teletype
Heathkit H8/H9
MITS Altair 8800
Imsai 8080 with 8" drives and a DEC Writer terminal
Home built S-100 with a Hazeltine 2400 color terminal (set up as a VT-220)
Digital Group computer
1962 Minivac 6010
Sinclair ZX81
Radio Shack Model 1
Radio Shack Model 100 (some claim this is the first true laptop)
Cosmac Elf
Bell Labs cardiac "computer"
Hp-85
Commodore 64
Data General Nova 16K Core memory board
Core Stack from an old Univac computer
Front plate from an IBM-360 Mainframe
Tube logic gate from the "Whirlwind" era

I started collecting vintage computers before it became vogue. Most of these I picked up at thrift shops or garage sales for about 5 to 10$.

I also collect vintage caculators and slide rules (have about 30 of each) LOL!

Now all this "stuff" is sitting in boxes in my storage area! Am thinking of donating this entire bunch of "junk" to a computer museum.

[RadioAstronomer]

There was 64 or 128K [yes, K kids] in the machine but the proc would only address 48 at a time

Thats HUGE. My first personal computer had 4k of real core memory (and NO microprocessor). :-)