Busy times

 We're entering that incredible phase of "50th anniversaries" -- celebrating the XeroxPARC Alto last year, and now this past week, the Internet.   Yes, I know, I know, which date and which event do you pick?

My good friend Brian Berg has an answer for "which event".  Brian heads the IEEE Milestone committee, a group that honors BIG IMPACT PRODUCTS around the globe for our industry (actually, for IEEE's full industry, which is pretty broad, all things considered).   They've done something like 247 awards, going all the way back to Ben Franklin and his kite in 1751.   Ten awards for work before Maxwell's 1860 equations, 87 awards since 2016.  Here's the comprehensive list of honorees:   https://ethw.org/Milestones:List_of_Milestones

Brian has single-handedly revitalized this program, culminating with 6 awards presented in three ceremonies this past week.   SRI/PARC hosted one last Friday, and another one on Sunday, that celebrated PARC's Alto and the dawn of PC's, the Local Area Networks (Ethernet), and the Laser Pritner.

The Computer History Museum hosted the third on Monday, citing another three:  TCP/IP, IEEE 802, and Google's Page Rank system.   

Vint Cerf and Bob Metcalfe showed up, and spoke at length, both on Friday and Monday, as did many others who were involved to one degree or another.   Now, granted, these weren't all 50th anniversaries, but they are indeed all significant.   Berg is especially proud that many awardees (and these are plaques for the organization, not individuals for whom there are many other awards), choose to mount these plaques in prominent places (like the front door or the main parking entrance of "Headquarters" for Pixar, Qualcomm, and Microsoft)).   Kind of ironic that HP's Milestone (their only one, which is nuts), for the HP35A, had been misplaced some years ago.  Brian and I have been working this one for 'who was at the ceremony' and 'where did the plaque go?' for the past few weeks.  We've now solved the riddles, and Brian hopes to get the plaque properly installed at HP (which HP, and which site, we might ask?) soon.

Brian gave a summary talk each day, repeating his great talk at the 50th Asilomar meeting last month.  Oh, did I forget to report on that meeting?  Here's Brian's talk there:   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zpYnscFnp6VW_IgDT2q_m111tSalVpY5/view

And here is my talk there, during the RATS session (late at night, ten minutes max):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UldbgcTl8Pg

There are 'other milestones' of course.   The MacIntosh turned 40 this year; Jenny is still enthused.  And the first Logic State Analyzer, the HP 1601A, turned 50 last September (WESCON, remember that?).

Sigh, we're all moving along.   Kids today probably could care less.  Oops, strike probably.