UK's 'Nobel prize for engineering' given to 'inventors of the interwebs' The would-be British based "Nobel Prize of engineering" - aka the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, whose recipients can be of any nationality - has been awarded for the first time. The winners are described as the "five engineers who created the internet and the World Wide Web". According to the official announcement: …
I'd nominate whoever invented the shop doorway and the late-night kebab shop! Both essential public infrastructure if you ask me!
If only someone would create a vomit repellent road surface we'd almost be civilised! Still some work to be done here, so very important we start cranking out more boffins in this country so that such essential inventions can be created before we lose all relevance on the global engineering stage!
"If only someone would create a vomit repellent road surface"
Be careful what you wish for - a vomit repellent road surface would bounce the stuff right back at your face. Of course, if one wasn't inclined to go puking in the street, one could have fun watching others do this...
> a vomit repellent road surface would bounce the stuff right back at your face
Or it might just float there, a few mm above the surface, being blown around at the whim of any passing breeze (and no doubt being chased by a dog).
Would there be a market for artificial vomit, which could be attached under a vehicle, to get a "maglev" effect? The possibilities are endlessly revolting...
These "revolutionary" developments in fact sat upon existing networking technologies. We already had global networks of computers, global networks of message switching systems, and global airline booking networks, for example. I was already giving network programming courses in the mid-70s for front office terminal systems connected by PSTN and leased lines to corporate mainframes. It wasn't so clever to write a comms protocol, others have done the same before and after without all the fuss.
What about a prize for the real revolutionaries, those engineers who made primitive 60s telephone lines carry our networks in the first place and laid the groundwork for the Internet and the Web? Now that was the real achievement.
Indeed. As a linesman, CCITT5 was magic. Who knew they could do that? In comparison, SS7 is fun :-)
As a civilian, I was using "Community Memory" in late 1973 ... ARPAnet's NCP (Cerf & a bunch of un-named Grad students, self included) was in the labs, not general use, in the same time frame.
The WWW & Mosaic? Complete newbies. And still acting like it.
Don't altogether disagree, there were plenty of networks around. However, the PTTs as they were collectively known, dragged their collecitve feet, and defended, in Europe anyway, their monopolies. They tried to impose the CCITT solution, the infamous X-series of standards and the ISDN concept.
OTOH whom would you suggest as the recipients from the telecommunications professionala??
Not to be too unchivalerous. Berners-Lee fits strangely with Cerf et al, true telecomm people. Of course, he is British, had to be at least one.
"OTOH whom would you suggest as the recipients from the telecommunications professionala?"
Honestly? I was there, in the trenches, in the late '60s & all of the '70s & the early '80s. The only answer I can come up with is "First, tell me who invented fire, learned to move water, domesticated animals, and figured out how to save seeds for the coming planting season".
In other words, there is no answer. The award is a gimmick. An attempt at "look at us, we have clues!". Hopefully the recipients will make a show of giving it away to charity, whilst blasting The Crown for wasting time, money & energy with their cluelessness.
That old ignorant saw again?
Al Gore actually did push the Bill through Congress that liberated NSFnet to commercial use, thus allowing our ignorant commentardary here on ElReg. Please, look it up before regurgitating crap. And I don't even like Al Gore!
HTH, HAND.
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