Congratulations: Web expertise is one thing that many individuals take with no consideration. Plugging a PC right into a router to hook up with the knowledge superhighway is feasible, so we can’t give it some thought an excessive amount of. But that wire we plugged in is the spine of the entire thing, and also you would not be studying this with out the work of Bob Metcalfe.
The Turing Award is broadly thought of essentially the most prestigious award in pc science and is typically known as the “Nobel Prize of computing.” It is called after the well-known pc scientist Alan Turing. It is awarded yearly by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person who has made vital contributions to the sector of pc science.
This yr’s winner is Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet expertise. Metcalfe is a professor emeritus {of electrical} and pc engineering on the University of Texas at Austin and is at the moment a analysis assistant in computational engineering at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
Ethernet is a networking expertise that has revolutionized the best way computer systems talk with one another. It permits gadgets to hook up with an area space community and share assets similar to printers and information. Today, Ethernet gadgets and their protocols are essentially the most broadly used networking expertise on this planet, forming the spine of the Internet.
Metcalf’s work on Ethernet started within the early Nineteen Seventies as a researcher at Xerox PARC. At that point, a brand new community expertise was required to attach the corporate’s ever-increasing variety of pc terminals. The drawback Metcalfe and his staff confronted was one we regularly take with no consideration — bandwidth.
In early networks, every pc had a devoted communication channel. As a end result, connections are costly and sophisticated, particularly because the variety of computer systems within the community grows. Ethernet permits a number of computer systems to share the identical communication channel, decreasing prices and simplifying community administration.
Initially, the staff deployed the expertise internally at Xerox. In 1980, Metcalfe commercialized the expertise, and different firms quickly started adopting it. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers then standardized Ethernet in 1983, ushering within the linked world we all know at present.
Interestingly, Ethernet will get its identify from a now-famous memo Metcalfe wrote in 1973.In it, he describes a “broadcast communication community” during which data travels “by means of the ether” [sky or air], so one might argue that he foresaw WiFi many years earlier than it was invented. Of course, the introduction of Ethernet introduced quite a few communication advances past WiFi, together with “conventional phone twisted pair, fiber optic … and even electrical networks to exchange coax as ‘Ethernet’.”
Congratulations to Robert Metcalfe for receiving the distinguished Turing Award for his pioneering contributions to the event of pc networking and Ethernet expertise. His revolutionary work revolutionized the best way computer systems talk and laid the muse for contemporary pc networking.
Image credit score: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
