> 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