Hm, well, at least I get my information right.
Emeagwali was not a “Father of the Internet”. In fact, that’s a title he put upon himself.
“ Significantly, he did not win the highest award in computing, the Turing Award. But he can be proud of his accomplishment without attempting to exaggerate it. However, linking computers over an already existing Internet to simulate a problem in oil exploration does not make Philip Emeagwali a father of the Internet. “
In fact, most of what comes up when I search this man’s name is that he has consistently lied about his contributions, though he did make some good ones and did win some awards. I mean, christ - just a simple google of his name and every other link it found was talking about how he lied or faked his way through fame. And before you say “That’s because they’re just racist!”, every other black inventor I looked up in the past to read about were not followed with a trail of accusations of lying or faking shit.
Most of his claim about being the “Father of the Internet” seems to come through the assisting on the further development of newer “Super Computers”. But again, he did not invent the super computer. He was born in 1954 and the first “established” super computer was created in 1964. The first real case of networking was the ARPANET, which was made in 1969.
Did he expand upon inventions and studies? Yes, yes he did. Should he get credit for their entire conception? No. Things like networking, the internet, computers – teams of people, lots of people - designers, engineers - are responsible for putting them together. Through out history, many people have constantly taken up other’s work or inventions and honed them. It’s great progress, but still does not constitute for their initial conceptions.
Here is what he actually did:
(And these facts were all taken out of books, mind you, not wikipedia.)
He programmed faster computers, making the fastest of it’s time, the “Connection Machine”.
“ Philip Emeagwali’s greatest achievement, that warranted him the most praise, was The Connection Machine. The Connection Machine utilizes 65,000 computers linked in parallel to form the fastest computer on Earth. This computer can perform 3.1 billion calculations per second. This is faster than the theoretical top speed of the Cray Supercomputer. Though he did not “invent” The Connection Machine, his work on it won Philip Emeagwali the Gordon Bell Prize of 1989. The parallel computer was twice as fast as the previous year’s computer. The Connection Machine was a great advancement over previous designs built by IBM’s design teams of Thomas J. Watson, Jr. and Fred Brook. “
He linked computers using the already made NSFnet.a pre-existing network.
He utilized parallel processing to assist oil companies and their engineers in predicting where to get the most oil.
His help to create faster computers helped to spur the refinement of more systems utilizing parallel processing. It also gave a wide range of progress and utilization to science, medical, and technical applications.
One of the things that inspired him to work on parallel processing and faster computing was the already-existing ARPANET, which he learned about while in school.
His emergence into his invention was because he was making a weather forecast network (Again, at this point, networks already existed, just not as fast due to no parallel processing) because he wanted to be able to predict more accurate weather patterns.
Sourced Books:
- Making it in America: A Sourcebook on Eminent Ethnic Americans [They sourced an interview with the inventor himself.]
- African Americans in Science: An Encyclopedia of People and Progress
- African Americans in Science, Math, and Invention
So, I digress - perhaps you see me as “Fragile and entitled and ‘whitewashing history”, but I get my facts from actual history. As social media infects educational material it gets more difficult to find unbiased information, but it’s not that hard if you really try.
The funny thing is that I don’t have to bend history to fit any cookie mold I want for it, because I only care about history as it is - pure, cold history.
The truly harmful one between the two of us are people like you, who try to give credit where it is not due and discredit where it IS due. That breeds hostility and hatred and also makes more and more people disinclined to believe anything you say.
But then, you are 17. I’m sure you know everything.
Enjoy your history lesson.
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