The inventor of Ethernet once poo-pooed wireless LANs as being the equivalent of porta-potties.

Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet along with David Boggs, and subsequently Metcalfe founded the influential LAN company 3Com. As the inventor of the archetype of a wired network, perhaps it’s not surprising he might have been biased against the new wireless competition. “This isn’t to say there won’t be any wireless computing” he wrote in 1993. “Wireless mobile computers will eventually be as common as today’s pipeless mobile bathrooms. Portapotties are found on planes and boats, on construction sites, rock concerts, and other places where it is very inconvenient to run pipes. But bathrooms are still predominantly plumbed. For more or less the same reasons, computers will stay wired.”

Despite Metcalfe’s reservations, 3Com would come to play a major role in the creation of Wi-Fi as one of the founders of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Read more about the history of Wi-Fi in Beyond Everywhere.