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."

Re:Ah, Xerox PARC ...

[MECC]

Douglas Engelbart [wikipedia.org] 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.

Kinda spoilt...

[Bogtha]

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

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.

The original Hall of Fame, and hubris...

[dpbsmith]

...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?

Umm, it is a real place ...

[Tranvisor]

"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/ [invent.org]

Re:They forgot one

[mqduck]

I can't wait until they induct Professor Farnsworth. Dude's been inventing stuff for centuries.

Dude hasn't been born yet. What the heck are you talking about?