Ethernet Is Named After Something Really Dumb (and other tech stories)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 มิ.ย. 2024
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Learn about the origins of the terms "Ethernet," "Pentium," and "bug."
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Well, Grace Hooper wrote: "First case of ACTUAL bug". Which means she made a small joke in that science diary, as they most likely had normal electronic bugs beforehand, but now first time a REAL bug caused a problem :D
Exactly! 👍 She wrote "actual" because she was amused that it was a _literal_ bug. It's clear they had already been using the term.
@@I.____.....__...__ it's clear now. But at the first time of reading about Grace Hopper I'd assumed she had invented the term.
It’s strange to think that “Celeron” and “Pentium” are now below-budget names that are being phased out. I remembered when “Pentium” was basically the thing to have.
Nah, the cool kids had K6-2's or Athlon T-birds, only the middle class had Pentiums, and the welfare kids had Cyrix....
Yes indeed. And if you kind of collect old (and cheap) computers, it's sometimes a bit confusing when you don't immediately recognise whether Pentium is state of the art for the '90s, or some modern econochip. What came after Pentium? Was Pentium Pro the 686 generation?
@@michaelwright2986 I actually don’t know what came after Pentium. I know there was the Pentium 2, 3, and 4, and I vaguely recall a Pentium Pro in the lineup, but I’m not actually sure.
That's just the life of marketing, as Intel now needed something better than "the Pentium" to convince people to upgrade, and then something better than that and so on, which has gradually made Pentium obsolete. It is what it is.
@@leonro Oh, I understand that. It’s just weird to think about.
Next video - LTT name history: How Linus' predecessors came to Canada
In his youth, he clubbed with baby seals. Fur sure, eh?
@@sativagirl1885 I hate myself for laughing at that....! 😂✌️
This would actually be interesting.
They arrived by segue, to our sponsor: Tunnel Bear!
the TechTips family
[Please read edit!] Just fyi, you are attributing the theory that light can travel through a vacuum to the wrong person. It was maxwell who proposed the laws that allowed it. Einstein merely built special relativity from Maxwell's laws, but Einstein was not the first to state that light could propograte through a vacuum
Edit: Okay, looks like I need to do research instead of going off what I thought I knew and had been taught in formal education. My fault.
As some of the comments have pointed out, it was not Maxwell. Maxwell did actually still believe there was some ether that light traveled through, rather than being able to travel through a vacuum. The Michelson-Morley experiment was the first to provide strong evidence against an ether in 1887. Idk if Einstein can really be credited for suggesting the lack of an ether, BUT his paper on special relativity is considered to have done away with the ether for good. So LTT was at least close, if not correct, depending on your interpretation and perspective, and I was pretty unequivocally wrong.
Tl;dr: LTT is at least mostly right, I was wrong. Look up the Michelson-Morley experiment.
Faraday had the vision to propose it, but not the mathamatical prowess. Maxwell proved it.
@@rohansampat1995oh yeah? Well... Uh. Carlos also said light is pretty cool.
@@rohansampat1995 the Faraday effect is bending light with a magnetic field, it becomes polarized light
@@rohansampat1995James Clerk Maxwell, born in Edinburgh 🏴 : "Ye cannae change the laws o' physics!" The most amusing, fascinating and entertaining TH-cam video on modern computing that I've yet seen. Well done.
The higgs field kinda works like an ether if you squint the eyes a bit and ignore that physicist screaming in the corner.
"Where there's smoke, there's a Pentium" - Thats the phrase I will forever remember about the Pentium.
The magic smoke?
@@Diabhork it's HIGHLYTECHNICAL
Especially the later Pentium 4 chips.
18 hour warranty as the socket is melted by then
Also true for any AMD Thunderbird CPU (no thermal protection so the CPU will get itself if you remove the heatsink off the CPU when running).
I'm glad that there's finally a major channel debunking the "bug" story
Knowing that it's a cognate with "Boo!" and "Bogeyman" is way more interesting lol
Sounds like it’s something they were already saying and they thought it was funny when it was an insect and taped it in the log book.
Pretty sure bug comes from bugger, and follows that back to the Catholic Church making stuff up about Bulgarians
Finally taking down Big Moth.
@@zpodfjaoij4 Pretty certainly not related to "bugger"; that seems to be first used in the sexual sense in 16th century, whereas "bug" as a frightening thing is recorded a hundred years or more before that. Does a bugbear fix computers in the woods?
the fact that the note said first case of an ACTUAL bug being found, heavily implied this was a joke about literally finding one. the joke would make zero sense if the expression bug was not already in heavy use.
The use of the word "actual" in the log book definitely suggests to me that those writing in it were previously using the term "bug".
From concept to reality.
Pentium peaked when Weird Al released "It's All About the Pentiums."
I recall running across an article a number of years back trying to figure out what Al's computer might actually have been. Can't remember what the verdict was, but his mention of multitasking suggested that he was running Windows NT.
surely it's all about the pentia
I figured bug originated from a term to describe an annoyance. "quit bugging me".
The term probably came much later after "bug" was established as something not wanted.
you use the ETHERNET to catch the ETHER BUNNY!
Slow down on the mushrooms there Mike Tyson.
Some of the equipment I work on uses EtherCAT. So we need an Ethermouse.
I think the name is cool rather than dumb. A bit weird, but cool.
Yes, the way it was referred to as the first actual computer bug, means the term bug already existed.
WiFi and ethernet should change names. Ether for space, Wi for wired.
@@toolbaggersso WiNet EtherFi?
Around 1970 I worked at a printing company and the company was contracted to produce a 30-page-high quality booklet honoring Grace Hopper.
Wow you must be old, just curious how old you are?
@@GamerByNature 75, I was 21 then.
back then she would have been around too, right?
That journal was a classified document for a few years. I remember the day when I heard the first time about Hopper's joke. There was so much excitement, and chatter whenever we heard something. Those were some amazing days, except the headache, thrill, and distrust amongs friends all caused by espionage.
Grace Hopper discovering a bug is kinda funny as it is
Underrrated comment 😂
Also, username checks out 😂😂
It's fun how the current use of the term bug comes also from a lady called "Grasshopper", oh, wait, sorry, "Grace Hopper"
The sentence „Intel is phasing out Pentium“ had me so startled that I had to check whether this video was uploaded 25 years ago.
Seems like Ethernet was given a really smart name.
if intel kept the x86 naming formula, what would we be up to? 1786?
More like 2286
We're up to not enough competition -x86
1. 8086
2. 80186
3. 80286
4. 80386
5. 80486
6. Pentium
7. Pentium II
8. Pentium III
9. Pentium 4
10. Core
11. Core 2
12. Core i 1st gen
13. Core i 2nd gen
14. Core i 3rd gen
15. Core i 4th gen
16. Core i 5th gen
17. Core i 6th gen
18. Core i 7th gen
19. Core i 8th gen
20. Core i 9th gen
21. Core i 10th gen
22. Core i 11th gen
23. Core i 12th gen
24. Core i 13th gen
25. Core i 14th gen
26. Core Ultra 1st gen (Meteor Lake / Arrow Lake) aka what would be the 802586 or the Eicosipenteum!
@@Mr.Morden catchy
Then the Pentium descendant could then be the Decaeptium.
And to "patch" a program came from the old punch cards or paper tape, where in order to change a program without having to completely remake the card or tape, one would apply a patch to cover the holes where needed. You literally had to patch the programs.
Ethernet is a good name, given we often use ether today to refer to "the beyond" in general, rather than the original definition of the upper atmosphere. Its very fitting for a network connection.
The repeated use of "Pentium" only reminded me of the "division bug" in early batches of that processor, and the reporting thereof. Tom Brokaw pronounced it "Penchum."
With the warning label, "Intel Inside"
There was some good fallout from that: Intel got big on formal methods to make sure future chips would work correctly.
I think I recall hearing about them laying off people in that department, though, so if the number of microcode updates for Intel chips has gone up in recent years, that's probably why.
Do robot spies have intel inside?
I guess the nearest to "luminiferous" ethernet today would be using fibre?
WiFi and ethernet should change names. Ether for space, Wi for wired.
You missed the best part about the name Pentium: it is also the systematic name for Boron (the fifth element) which, along with Phosphorus, is used for "doping" silicon to make transistors!
Lies. The fifth element is love. Just ask Bruce Willis.
I thought pentium would be an isotope of hydrogen with an atomic mass of 5, since tritium has a mass of 3.
The pentium FDIV bug also spawned the famous PENTIUM backronym "Produces Enourmous Numbers Through Incorrect Understanding of Mathmatics"
I still remember when everyone was talking about the Pentium 4. There were ads in every magazine, etc.
It's all about the pentiums... Weird Al.
And the start of cutting back on R&D and bloating the marketing division which set new industry standards.
They had to. P4 was inferior to Athlon 64 is every way, so they used any tool in their hands, be it legal or illegal, to hinder AMD sales. AdoredTV on yt has good videos about it.
Ah, you youngn's make me laugh... I remember (as in I used one) the IBM PC XT(8086), the Commodore 64 and the "original" no letters Apple II.
@@RicardoMorenoAlmeida I started with command line MS-DOS in the 80’s and hated computers until Windows 95.
"Sending something thru the aether" was not an expression unique to computers in the 70s and 80s. It just happened to come up frequently because that's how computers work.
It was also common to hear "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon loaded with 9-track tapes."
between literal bugs and just being annoying.... i can see how we got to use the term bug to describe an issue with code and the programs that code builds.
2:30 I still can't believe Intel started their own competitor! 😂
They had to license to other companies, so they wouldn't be a sole source, should they go under. The government, especially the military is fussy about that sort of thing. There have been a few companies licensed to make Intel chips. AMD, Siemens & NEC come to mind.
And good for them (and all of us) that they did. AMD were the ones to develop x86_64, which was a far better solution than Itanium, and they licensed the spec back to Intel.
@@GSBarlev AMD made a lot of innovations and then failed to capitalize on them due to bad management. AMD had the first on CPU x86 L3 cache, first 1Ghz x86, implemented first DDR Front Side Bus, First true dual and quad core in addition to the x86_64 that you mentioned. The thing is that AMD didn't work on what mattered most like power consumption, or performance.
@@LionWithTheLamb Exactly my point-Intel benefitted just as much from AMD's improvements to the spec as AMD benefitted from having the base license.
Pentium name could also be related to the name of the Russian CPU developer Vladimir Pentkovski who moved to the U.S. to work for Intel back in the day.
He did not get a prominent role until Pentium 3, so this is probably false.
actual tech quickies
Wifi signals are electromagnetic waves, same as light. So wifi is indeed lumeniferous.
LU-FI 😅
WiFi and ethernet should change names. Ether for space, Wi for wired.
The name WiFi comes from "Wireless Fidelity".
@@Roxor128 It actually doesn't. The WiFi standard claims that it doesn't mean anything despite the fact that it was inpired by the words wireless and HiFi.
@@gljames24 What in Sam do you think HiFi is then?
Winet and EtherFi sounds terrible so no.
Etherfinet
Einstein with no mention of AlohaNet? You missed on Ethernet.
That's why I'm here in the comments too! ALOHAnet an origin, and it was over the air. I thought they would go there after the mention of Wifi
@@ChristopherHailey Wireless Ethernet? That’s redundant! 😀
Fun fact : WiFi is light
I remember reading that the protocol that would become Ethernet was first developed in Hawaii to link the University of Hawaii’s campuses via radio, undersea cables being too expensive, and it was called Alohanet.
Since the protocol COULD be used on radio links, it was called Ethernet, even when cables were used.
To be fair, radio waves (wifi) are photons so I think it works as luminiferous. :)
Ethernet predecesor was the Aloha Network. It was actually wireless. The important part of the protocol was developed there. CSMA/CD Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detect.
Today in WiFi we use a variation that uses Collision Avoidance.
So the I think the name fits well.
A lot of technical equipment had problem with literal bugs getting in it. So it very well might be the same term. It was actually frustratingly common for moths to get stuck inside machinery.
However, the word could have also come from "Bug Out" which means to do something in a panic.
Xerox Park was such fertile ground for IT innovation and creativity.
If 'Pentium' is the fifthe generation then Intel should have called sixth generation the 'Sextium', which would have been a lot more fun...
Fun fact: "bug" is also used in aviation to refer to dials on the mode control panel, example: heading bug (meaning the dial used to select a heading/direction you want to go). I'm not sure if it used officially or only colloquially
If you want speed, you'll get
Moore. Noyce.
Bro, you almost got it right with the term ethernet at the end there by saying that wifi would be better described as "going through the ether" because ethernet and its name came from the wireless ALOHA network in Hawaii. It was the first communication technology to use Carrier Detection/Multiple Access with Collison Detection(CS/MA-CD), which was the foundation of ethernet's appeal, because the signal has to be shared in the same airspace or "ether". That concept was translated to wires to create the first ethernet network with hubs and is still available for backwards compatibility even though modern switches don't need it anymore.
And in radio, we have a type of morse code paddle called a bug. Its called that because the logo for the manufacturer vibroplex had a bug on it.
In the seventies, the University of Hawaii invented an internet protocol named ALOHA. The goal was to link the different institutes on the various islands - by radio. Years later, that protocol was used for what we know as ethernet. Maybe the origin - based on experimental UHF radio - is an obvious inspiration for the name ethernet.
if pentium is a cooking ingredient like sodium, then celeron is supposed to be like celery?
I remember speculation that the successor to the pentium would be called the hexium or the sexium.
The fact that the note with the moth said "actual bug" should have given it away that it wasn't the origin of the term.
Ethernet would absolutely be a better name for cellular because that is the one with the most widespread coverage.
This was different and interesting. You should do more origin stories like Tech Quickie.
"Ethernet is common as dirt" and yet my 20 year old house isn't wired up with this luminiferous aether
Bug derives from BUGABOO, as in an irksome problem.
I always figured that “Bug” came from the verb “to bug” as in to annoy, as they are very annoying
Actually, wifi is LITERALLY luminiferous! As wifi is LITERALLY light!
I had a neighbor in FL who was Grace Hopper's assistant, she told me the story as presented here.
When I worked in a computer store in the mid-2010s I got a couple people over the years looking to buy a new computer and wanting to make sure it was a "Pentium"
I had to explain to them that in the intervening years "Pentium" came to mean "bad computer"
What a fantastic episode! Many of these i did not know or even contemplate .
This is why the side channels are good
You should make a video on why cords you buy are never completely straight and always have annoying bends in them. Like you rotate a cord to try and straighten it, but it always has that annoying curly bend no matter which way it's rotated
Techquickie is named after quickie
3:13 You forget to mention that if Intel would take continue the name we would have Hexium, Heptium and the Pentium 4 would be the Octium.
Core would be Enneum and the current gen would be Icosidium and the next Icositrium,, etcetera.
I like this kind of videos. I feel smarter afterwards :)
1:24 Except for the fact that Wi-Fi uses the same Electromagnetic Spectrum (aka light), just not the visible part
You get the basic luminescent ether story basically right but there's a tad more to the story. I was next to Bob in class in May 1973 when he first presented his project. We had just studied AlohaNET in Hawaii which was the inspiration for the approach. The big difference was to use a coaxial cable as a contained radio medium so as to avoid the FCC rules. This was well before the Internet which is based on the same principles. It's worthy of a story in its own right since we still stuck in the 1934 model of telecommunications that has constrained our ability to take advantage of these powerful ideas.
I designed your home network based on what I learned in that class -- another story worth telling.
I like the name! So many products are named after mythical-ish things, so it fits well.
Ethernet with glass fibers would actually a pretty good name.
Ethernet is a nice name. Better than Feethernet
I had one of the founding members of IEEE 801.1.x protocols say that nobody actually knows why they had chosen that name & 2 guesses are hotel room they stayed before was 5th room at 8th floor OR it was drafted first on 8th of 1st (but day or month first, idk)
The net would want to hear this one
It's not a "bug", It's called a "feature" !!
in the philippines, we got a nickname for crappy pc builds with INTEL INSIDE logo on it named "Inutil Inside" which is also used in the past by the gaming community when opponents got serious gaming skill issues, when someone failed at a class subject so easy that you just answer common questions to pass, etc.
I reckon “bug” originated from the British word “Bugger” which commonly said to something/someone who causes frustration.
Wow I didn't know they're actually wanted to trademark that, but I'm not surprised, corporations will always be greedy.
Huh... Did not know that ether in the Ethernet was a way of representing aethear! :D
Thanks for the video!
Fun fact: in Ancient Rome (pente is Greek word for 5, but -um is Latin suffix) only first four oldest sons got their own personal name. Others usually were just "numbered" Quintus, Sextus, Septimus... So Pentium is just "fifth" regular brother, nothing extraordinary
So ethernet is named after something like the cloud but before it was cool
Special relativity? C'mon Riley
Uhh.. Yeah..?
I don't see what's wrong here
Ethernet and the origin is awesome and probably the most fitting name of any protocol/cable/whatever connection of physical medium. Today some get all caught up in things like how the word sounds or appears not necessarily what it functions as (not all - some). Pentium or 586 (yup I remember that challenge and that people still referred to it as 586 (in my circle, the name Pentium took a bit to take hold - I worked at Packard Bell..lol). Company names (some), product models, etc I assume are named by us more logical thinkers and the more artistic or right brained get the creative names (I know it's a myth but fun to think about)?
Well Pentium may sound like five but celery I mean seller on sounds like something else
If I hear those names nowadays I always assume they're the lowest of the low when it comes to how performant they are.
Learned new stuff today...THANKS!
I always thought it was cool that Ethernet was named after the luminiferous ether :(
And here I thought ethernet was named after the Sub-Etha Net from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 😂
Bug is an acronym. Broken unknown glitch
Actual model names after 8086 were 80186 80286 80386 etc (hence x86 for short).
Bug could come from the term bugging me meaning annoying you which bugs often do when you're trying to code something & just something keeps going wrong & instead of doing what you want it doesn't. Also maybe due to the word bug being associated with sickness & thus bug would be like the computer is ill.
Two of my favourite (inaccurate definitions of) acronyms were "ISDN - It Still Does Nothing" and "IBM - I Blame Microsoft" heh 🙂
My friends and I called them Pandemonium chips.
Stuff I always wanted to know. Good show lads
Funny. I would've expected "bug" as in malfunction to come from "bug" as in listening device. Even today the ambiguity between the two still exists. "Is my computer running slowly because of bad programming or because of spyware?"
Also I never made the "pent" connection with Pentium because it lacks the 'a'.
In another reality somewhere they were called Pentanium processors. :P
I need more of these.
Every day is a school day. I thought the word bug originated with Grace Hopper!
Then there was the infamous “Pentium Bug”.
For those that don’t remember there was a big kerfuffle back in the mid 90’s where it was found Pentiums could have floating point errors under some circumstances.
At the time IBM was also pushing OS/2 Warp, and, as I recall, the Power PC chips. I heard an IBM spokesman solemnly proclaiming that IBM would no longer be building PCs with Intel processors or Windows.
This was long before I got involved in the computer industry, but even then I thought it was hilarious BS.
And… the future proved me right. Hmm… an expanded version of this story might make for a good LTT Techquickie.
You forgot TWAIN (driver), technology without an interesting name 😁.
5:37 I was into subscribe button when you said that 😂
Don't put sodium in your food Riley! I had a 386, and a 486, good times, then premium 50, Pentium 133, etc. Simpler world.
I always thought of the term Ethernet being something akin to External = the opposite of an intranet/LAN-that is local to a building only. The term Ether was however indeed used in the early days of radio and TV transmission like "sending/listening/watching through the Ether". In this case it is however a true wireless transmission and so the term ether suits better here. This is also why I never thought of the word Ethernet being linked to the Radio/TV term "ether". because network communication is mostly through cables and not the "ether" and wireless networking/WLAN did not even exist when the term Ethernet was coined.
"Bug" also means a snooping device.
I remember hearing kids from school claiming to have “586,” “686,” “786” etc at home.
Dang did I just carbon dated myself.
I feel old. I remember when 486 became Pentium.
Can't wait to start callling my coding errors as "monsters"
I'm more inclined to think that "bug" comes from "buggered".