This Day in History

May 22, 1973

Xerox Researcher Proposes "Ethernet."

Robert Metcalfe, a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California, wrote his original memo proposing an "Ethernet." Metcalfe described the document, typed out on a Selectric typewriter, as follows: "Ether Acquisition" ... heavy with handwritten annotations -- one of which was "ETHER!" -- and with hand-drawn diagrams -- one of which showed `boosters' interconnecting branched cable, telephone, and ratio ethers in what we now call an internet.... I If Ethernet was invented in any one memo, by any one person, or on any one day, this was it."