Monday, February 11, 2013

The Inventor and "His Wife"

From a computer networking book I've been reading:
"Len Bosak and his wife Sandy Lerner were working at Stanford University when they had the idea to build and sell Internet routers to research and academic institutions, the primary adopters of the Internet at the time. Sandy Lerner came up with the name Cisco (an abbreviation for San Francisco), and she also designed the company's bridge logo."
And Len, we are to presume, took care of all the technical mumbo-jumbo?

But seriously, that paragraph stuck in my craw. Notice how it centers Len, with Sandy being referenced only by her relationship to him, as "his wife." A less male-centric way to phrase it would have been, "Len Bosak and Sandy Lerner were working at Stanford University when they had the idea to..." Or, if they felt the pressing need to mention their personal relationship, they could have said, "Married couple Len and Sandy were working..."

In actuality, these events took place in the early 1980s and Sandy had multiple Master's degrees, including one in Computer Science from Stanford University. She was working as the Director of Computer Facilities at Stanford when she and Len purportedly developed the concept of the router.

Although, other sources say that the development was actually more of a group effort.

But whatever.

America loves its Great Man and his Little Assistant stories, doesn't it?

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