Ethernet names...

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Eric Smith

    > I think the account given in the book may be a bit confused on this
    > point. ... That sequence of events is contradicted by Pelkey ...
    > describes the name change from Alto Aloha to Ether as happening in May
    > 1973 in agreement with WWSUL, except that in the Pelkey account the
    > Alto network wasn't designed and built until June, _after_ the name
    > change.

It's quite possible that in Metcalfe's interview (which is what the WWSUL
account seems to be pretty much wholly based on), N years after it all
happened, his memory flaked and he got the sequence wrong.

I've had the same thing happen to me, trying to recall the sequence/timing of
early IP work at MIT. I was sure X happened before Y, and then Jerry Saltzer
dug up an old progress report... There's a reason that the gold standard for
historians is contemporary documentation.


Along those lines, here:

  http://www.chiappa.net/~jnc/nontech/tmlotus.html

is an amusing story of my encounters with this effect on some Lotus Indycar
research I did.

	Noel