Cade Metz, The New York Times; David Boggs, Co-Inventor of Ethernet, Dies at 71
Thanks to the invention he helped create in the 1970s, people can send email over an office network or visit a website through a coffee shop hot spot.
"David Boggs, an electrical engineer and computer scientist who helped create Ethernet, the computer networking technology that connects PCs to printers, other devices and the internet in offices and homes, died on Feb. 19 in Palo Alto, Calif...
Before becoming the dominant networking protocol, Ethernet was challenged by several other technologies. In the early 1980s, Mr. Metcalfe said, when Mr. Boggs took the stage at a California computing conference, at the San Jose Convention Center, to discuss the future of networking, a rival technologist questioned the mathematical theory behind Ethernet, telling Mr. Boggs that it would never work with large numbers of machines.
His response was unequivocal. “Seems Ethernet does not work in theory,” he said, “only in practice.”"
