HISTORY OF ETHERNET  In 1973, Robert (Bob) Metcalfe was a recent Harvard Ph.D. graduate working at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).  In the course of his work training US military personnel to use the world’s first operational packet switching network--known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET)--he often traveled to Washington D.C.  While staying at a friend’s apartment in the nation’s capitol, the young engineer came across a book of conference proceedings from the 1970 American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) conference.  In the proceedings was a hidden gem--a paper written by Norman Abramson entitled “The Aloha System--Another Alternative for Computer Communications.”  It described the development of an innovative radio-based network of computers that came to be known as ALOHAnet.  And although he disagreed with some aspects of the technology model, the paper quickly caught Metcalfe’s attention.  Inspired by the ALOHAnet paper, upon his return to PARC and with the help of David R. Boggs, he began putting his thoughts to paper. Using an IBM Selectric Typewriter with an Orator ball, Metcalfe typed a memo and sketched a quick schematic that would forever change both networking and the world at large.  And so on May 22, 1973 Ethernet was born.  After months of effort built on Metcalfe’s ideas and Boggs’ help in designing and debugging the necessary network hardware, the first working Ethernet prototype, a 2.94 Mbps CSMA/CD system connecting more than 100 workstations on a 1 Km cable, went live on November 11, 1973.  Based on its demonstrated success, Xerox would go on to patent Ethernet in 1975.  In August 2012, IEEE joined other leading global organizations, including the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Society and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), to announce its support of OpenStand, a jointly developed set of principles establishing a modern paradigm for global, open standards.  Under OpenStand, the economics of global markets in conjunction with technology innovation help facilitate continued worldwide open standards development and deployment, including standards for the next generation of Ethernet speeds of 100G, 400G, and beyond.  http://standards.ieee.org/events/ethernet/history.html

America’s Quirky Rest Stops Are Vanishing by Jordan G. Teicher   Before national chains like McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts largely supplanted them as destinations for relaxation and amusement, publicly funded rest stops were an integral part of driving for interstate travelers.  Ryann Ford started paying attention to rest areas while on assignment for Texas Monthly.  After doing some research online, she learned how rest stops developed alongside the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s, but were being closed or demolished as the recession shrunk state budgets.  See beautiful pictures at http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/12/12/ryann_ford_photographs_america_s_rest_stops_in_her_series_the_last_stop.html

Around the country, libraries are slashing their print collections in favor of e-books, prompting battles between library systems and print purists, including not only the pre-pixel generation but digital natives who represent a sizable portion of the 1.5 billion library visits a year and prefer print for serious reading.  Millennials prefer reading in print.    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/why-digital-natives-prefer-reading-in-print-yes-you-read-that-right/2015/02/22/8596ca86-b871-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html  Some of the clashes have been heated.  In New York, protesters outside the city’s main branch have shouted:  “Save the stacks! Save the stacks!”  In Northern Virginia, the Fairfax County library system chief recently mused that the Friends of the Library were no longer friends—a feud fueled by outrage over a print collection that has shrunk by more than 300,000 books since 2009.  The drop in the District of Columbia is even more dramatic:  Nearly 1 million books have vanished since 2009.  “To say Gutenberg’s days are over is a terrible mistake,” said Dennis Hays, a former U.S. ambassador and chairman of Fairfax Library Advocates, a group of residents at war with library officials.  “Nothing can take the place of a book.”  Librarians are feeling the heat.  “We’re caught between two worlds,” said Darrell Batson, director of the Frederick County Public Libraries system in Maryland, where the print collection has fallen 20 percent since 2009.  “But libraries have to evolve or die.  We’re probably the classic example of Darwinism.”  The evolution of information flow has forced their hands, librarians say.  Just as books advanced from slabs of parchment to paperbacks, they are transforming again, from paper to pixels.  With Plato only a download away, libraries have lost their monopoly on knowledge.  In evolving, librarians are steering tight acquisition budgets to e-books, which are more expensive than print because, among other reasons, publishers fear large databases of free e-books will hurt their business.  E-book spending has grown from 1 percent of library budgets to 7 percent, according to a Library Journal survey.  One library in San Antonio went much further, opening a bookless, all-digital branch called BiblioTech.  Meanwhile, print book budgets are slipping fast—from 67 percent of acquisitions in 2008 to 59 percent in 2015—with reference titles bearing the biggest cuts so far.  Asked why, Batson turned to his computer, opened his browser and typed www.google.com.  “That’s why,” he said.  With the newfound physical space, libraries are adding rooms for community meetings, hacker spaces with 3-D printers, and entrepreneur centers to help small businesses.  Michael S. Rosenwald  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/where-are-the-books-libraries-under-fire-as-they-shift-from-print-to-digital/2015/07/07/eb265752-1525-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html

For centuries, artists have reclaimed items to turn them into their art:  whether it’s reusing canvases (as X-rays demonstrate almost all the old masters did) or incorporating found items into sculptures, such as pop artist Robert Rauschenberg’s creative way of reusing items ranging from bicycles to roosters.   

See Top 10 Amazing Sculptures Made from Unusual Items at http://www.smashinglists.com/top-10-amazing-sculptures-made-from-unusual-items/

Charles Gates Dawes (1865–1951) was an American banker and politician who was the 30th Vice President of the United States (1925–1929).  For his work on the Dawes Plan for World War I reparations he was a cowinner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925.  Dawes served in the First World War, was the Comptroller of the Currency, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget, and, in later life, the Ambassador to the United Kingdom.   Dawes was born in Marietta, Ohio, the son of a Civil War officer Rufus Dawes and Mary Beman Gates Dawes.  He graduated from Marietta College in 1884, and from the Cincinnati Law School in 1886.  Dawes was admitted to the bar in Nebraska, and he practiced in Lincoln, Nebraska from 1887 to 1894.  Dawes was a self-taught pianist and a composer.  His composition, "Melody in A Major" in 1912 became a well-known piano and violin song, and it was played at many official functions as his signature tune.  It was transformed into the pop song "It's All in the Game" in 1951 when Carl Sigman added lyrics.  Tommy Edwards' recording of "It's All in the Game" was a number one hit on the American Billboard record chart for six weeks in the fall of 1958.  Edwards' version of the song also hit number one on the United Kingdom chart that year.  Since then, it has since become a pop standard, recorded hundreds of times by artists including Cliff Richard, The Four Tops, Isaac Hayes, Jackie DeShannon, Van Morrison, Nat "King" Cole, Brook Benton, Elton John, Mel Carter, Donny and Marie Osmond, Barry Manilow, and Keith Jarrett.  Dawes is the only Vice-President or winner of the Nobel Peace Prize to be credited with a No. 1 pop hit.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_G._Dawes

Alphabetical list of Vice Presidents of the United States  https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/059_vp_alpha.html

When Walter Farley published The Black Stallion in 1941, he was an unknown college journalism student.  However, more than 60 years and 20 Black Stallion stories later, people around the world know him as the person behind the most famous fictional horse of the 20th century.  Growing up in New York City, Walter Farley dreamed of having a horse of his own.  He sought out books about horses and spent as much time as he could with his Uncle Bill, a professional horseman.  Walter’s sons, Tim and Steven Farley, recall him later saying he decided to write The Black Stallion because he was often disappointed by the quality of horse stories he read.  Walter Farley began working on The Black Stallion as a high school student.  Walter Farley finished the book while majoring in Journalism at Columbia University.  World War II prevented Farley from working on a sequel immediately. When he returned from the war, Farley resumed the adventures of Alec and the Black in The Black Stallion Returns and The Son of the Black Stallion.  Farley then delighted his readers with the introduction of a new boy and wild stallion, Steve Duncan and Flame, in The Island Stallion.  He continued to write books about horses and he wrote several books for his own children, who were too young to read the Black Stallion novels.  Additionally, he wrote a biography of the great racehorse, Man O’War.  In all, Walter Farley authored 34 books, which were translated and printed in more than 20 countries. 

http://horsetalesliteracy.org/?page_id=47  See also http://theblackstallion.com/web/books/the-series/ and https://www.goodreads.com/series/49696-the-black-stallion

Summer Reads:  Our Editors' Picks for the Summer  http://www.thriftbooks.com/  Thank you, Muse reader!

On July 14, 2015, New Horizons, a piano-sized spacecraft that was launched in January of 2006, became the first space probe to make a close flyby of Pluto.  Using its seven instruments, the probe is expected to deliver the first detailed scientific information about the rocky and icy dwarf planet.  Starting at 5:50 a.m. ET on July 15, the spacecraft is expected to begin sending the most detailed images of the dwarf planet that scientists have ever seen, along with mapping and measurements about the planet, its atmosphere and moons.  The new images are expected to be 10 times higher in resolution than previous images the probe has sent back as it approached Pluto.  Sharon Gaudin  http://www.computerworld.com/article/2948203/space-technology/nasa-spacecraft-to-be-full-of-dazzling-data-after-pluto-flyby.html

Clyde William Tombaugh (1906–1997) was an American astronomer.  Although he is best known for discovering the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper belt, Tombaugh also discovered many asteroids; he also called for the serious scientific research of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.  Tombaugh was born in Streator, Illinois.  After his family moved to Burdett, Kansas in 1922, Tombaugh's plans for attending college were frustrated when a hailstorm ruined his family's farm crops.  Starting in 1926, he built several telescopes with lenses and mirrors by himself.  He sent drawings of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory, which offered him a job.  Tombaugh worked there from 1929 to 1945.  Following his discovery of Pluto, Tombaugh earned bachelor's and master's degrees in astronomy from the University of Kansas in 1936 and 1938.  The asteroid 1604 Tombaugh, discovered in 1931, is named after him.  He discovered hundreds of asteroids, beginning with 2839 Annette in 1929, mostly as a by-product of his search for Pluto and his searches for other celestial objects.  Tombaugh named some of them after his wife, children and grandchildren.  The Royal Astronomical Society awarded him the Jackson-Gwilt Medal in 1931.  In August 1992, JPL scientist Robert Staehle called Tombaugh, requesting permission to visit his planet. "I told him he was welcome to it," Tombaugh later remembered, "though he's got to go one long, cold trip." The call eventually led to the launch of the New Horizons space probe to Pluto in 2006.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1325  July 15, 2015  On this date in 484 BC, the Temple of Castor and Pollux in ancient Rome was dedicated.  On this date in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign.