John Murphy (engineer)

John A. Murphy is an American inventor and computer engineer credited with inventing ARCNET, the first commercial networking system, in 1976.[1] He was working for Datapoint Corporation at the time.[2] His biography appeared in the IT History Society website.[3]

John Murphy
Born
John Anthony Murphy

1943
Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
NationalityUnited States
Alma materUniversity of Notre Dame
OccupationInventor, Engineer, Computer Scientist
EmployerDatapoint, Telex, Performance Technologies
Known forDeveloper of ARCNET, the first commercial local area network

Background and career

Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Murphy graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1965 with an B.S. degree in electrical engineering.[4][3] He first worked at IBM, then Motorola and Telex before joining Datapoint, where he led design of the computer networking system ARCNET.[5] Victor Poor had established the R&D function at Datapoint as industry leading: with Harry Pyle, Poor co-created the architecture that was ultimately implemented in the first successful computer microprocessor, the Intel 8008.

ARCNET

Developed in 1976, ARCNET (Attached Resource Computer NETwork) was the first widely available networking system for microcomputers.[1]

Datapoint had pioneered microprocessors; the challenge ARCNET addressed was how to facilitate the efficient transmission of information between different machines.[6] In an interview with Len Shustek for the Computer History Museum, Murphy notes that Datapoint took ARCNET from concept to reality in "under a year and probably very much under a year."[7] As the first commercial local area network, ARCNET found early success, but corporate struggles at Datapoint led to slower adoption in the 1980s, relative to other commercial alternatives like Ethernet.[8] According to Techopedia, "ARCnet was the first simple networking based solution that provided for all kinds of transmission regardless of the transmission medium or the type of computer."[9]

References
  1. Horak, Ray (2008). Webster's New World Telecom Dictionary. John Wiley & Sons. p. 37. ISBN 047177457X.
  2. Bhattacharyya, Siddhartha (30 April 2015). Handbook of Research on Swarm Intelligence in Engineering. IGI Global. pp. 508–. ISBN 978-1-4666-8292-4.
  3. "1965 University of Notre Dame Graduates in the News: John A. Murphy – Inventor of ARCnet, the first LAN". notredamestoriesandstuff.blogspot.com. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  4. Len Shustek; Harry J. Saal (3 June 2004). "John Murphy Oral History". The Computer History Museum. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  5. "John Murphy". IT History Society Honor Roll. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  6. Wood, Lamont (2013). Datapoint: The Lost Story of the Texans Who Invented the Personal Computer Revolution. Hugo House Publishers. ISBN 1936449366.
  7. "Transcript- John Murphy" (PDF). Computer History Museum. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  8. von Burg, Urs. The Triumph of Ethernet: Technological Communities and the Battle for the LAN Standard. Stanford University Press. p. 158. ISBN 080474095X.
  9. "Attached Resource Computer Network (ARCNET)". Techopedia. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
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