Sci-Tech

Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe won the Turing Award, claiming that humans are now tightly connected

2023-03-23   

Fifty years ago, Bob Metcalfe and another researcher jointly invented Ethernet. With this innovative technology, he laid the foundation for the development of modern computer communication and the Internet. Metcalfe has promoted the popularization of an important idea that the value of the network will rapidly increase with the increase of the number of users, which is now known as the Metcalfe Law. On March 22, Bob Metcalfe, the 76-year-old inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, won the Turing Award. This is the highest honor in computer science, recognizing his contribution to leading the public into the era of superconnection. Metcalfe was born in 1946 in New York, USA, and is a world-renowned computer scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur. Fifty years ago, Metcalfe and another researcher jointly invented Ethernet, a local networking technology that connects personal computers around the world to the global Internet. He also played a central role in the standardization and commercialization of Ethernet. With this innovative technology, he laid the foundation for the development of modern computer communication and the Internet. Metcalfe has always believed in the power of social networks. In the 1980s and 1990s, he promoted the popularization of an important viewpoint, namely, the value of the network will rapidly increase with the increase of the number of users. This viewpoint is now known as "Metcalfe's Law", which has important reference value for understanding the network effect and the development of the Internet economy. Nowadays, with the ubiquity of the Internet, Metcalfe's scope of thinking has further expanded. "The most important new fact about the human condition is that we are suddenly intimately connected," he said. On March 22, Bob Metcalfe, the 76-year-old inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, won the Turing Award. "Career is a history of the development of the Internet. Metcalfe's career can be described as developing simultaneously with the Internet.". Metcalfe's research career began with studying electrical engineering and industrial management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After that, he went to Harvard University to pursue a graduate degree. At that time, the US Department of Defense was increasing investment in the Internet's predecessor, Arpanet. Metcalfe proposed establishing an interface between the network and the host computer of Harvard University, but the university refused. He turned to MIT and made the same suggestion. Although he was still a graduate student at Harvard University at the time, he was hired as a researcher at MIT. When he submitted a paper describing the work to the Harvard University Thesis Committee in 1972, he failed to pass the defense. The Committee stated that the topic lacked theoretical relevance. At that time, Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) threw an olive branch at Metcalfe. Bob Taylor, the laboratory director, told Metcalfe to come to PARC anyway and allow him to complete his thesis in Palo Alto. Metcalfe began building an ARPANET interface for a new computer at the Palo Alto Research Center while searching for

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