Re: Internet still reshaping history ( with comment by the editor)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Gordon Peterson <gep2 () terabites com>
Date: September 10, 2009 12:41:50 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Internet still reshaping history

Perhaps this was your point, but just to clarify the record:

  1.  The first spreadsheet program worthy of being called that  
really was Visicalc, which was a revolutionary concept (although I  
have to confess I'm among those who really didn't realize its  
significance at the time...!  My reaction was "it's easy to write the  
expressions for each of those cells/variables.")  Even from the  
Microsoft stable, their Multiplan spreadsheet software preceded Excel.

  2.  The first "personal computer" worthy of the term really was the  
Datapoint 2200.  That machine was the machine for which the Intel 8008  
(the first one-chip general purpose 8-bit microprocessor) was created,  
the architecture whose evolutionary descendants still power PCs to  
this day.  It was the first totally self-contained desktop computer  
system, looking like a piece of office equipment, designed for use by  
one user, integrating a keyboard and CRT display (and magnetic digital  
storage) in the package, with an operating system, utilities, higher- 
level business-oriented programming languages, general editor, text  
formatting package, communications programs, and more.

The Apple II was principally notable, at the time, by the fact that it  
had a more finished packaging than most of the other hobbyist/home- 
oriented machines then available.  (Its packaging, though, was  
certainly no more finished than that of the Datapoint 2200... much  
less so, in fact).  It's undeniable that the Apple II was less  
expensive than the Datapoint 2200, but then again the 2200 did a whole  
lot more than the Apple II did, too.

But anyhow, Microsoft didn't invent the spreadsheet (even as the  
"architects") and Steve Jobs (and Apple) didn't invent the personal  
computer (even as "the architect").  Both of those companies were  
latecomers to the party, even as "architects".

(By the same token, Ethernet wasn't the first LAN, and Bob Metcalfe  
didn't invent it either... Ethernet was not much more than a wired  
implementation of the University of Hawaii's "Project Aloha", which  
was an RF-wireless local area network... and the origins even made  
more clear by the bizarrely inappropriate name "Ethernet" for a CABLED  
network, where Project Aloha, being wireless, transmitted through "the  
ether"...!)
 [editor's note:  its interesting historically and the DCS  token  
ring was contemporary with the ethernet. The design of the token ring  
was read by IBM with minor deletions and became a commercial token  
ring. (For those who would debate that I have a note from a very  
senior IBMer  acknowledging that fact. I got rather annoyed with IBM  
for publishing their design as if it  was their idea and wrote to them  
asking them to be  "professional".

Metcalfe and I outlined a proposed joint paper showing how in many  
ways ethernet and the token ring were very similar. For  number of  
reasons it never got completed.

I never found that worthwhile to go around demanding priority on  
innovations I made. I was happy, maybe naïvely, to look at what it  
contributed to the field and more importantly what graduate students  
got their thesis based on the  working on the projects.]


It is strange how some fictions about "who created what" get fixated  
in popular culture.



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com