Ronald "Ron" C. Crane (June 1, 1950 - June 19, 2017) was an American electrical engineer recognized for designing the EtherLink, the first network interface controller for the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

. He has been credited as the co-founder of

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...

and the co-inventor of the

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

Biography

Crane graduated from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

for his bachelor's degree in 1972 and from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

for his master's degree in 1974, both in electrical engineering. In 1973, while pursuing his doctorate degree at Stanford, Crane joined the TCP/IP protocol research team, headed by Vint Cerf. Subsequently, when a " Birth of the Internet" plaque was installed on Stanford grounds in 2005, Ron Crane was mentioned as well as his colleague Bob Metcalfe as being fundamental contributors to the birth of the Internet. Crane left Stanford in 1974, accepting a master's instead of his planned doctorate degree, and worked at the Xerox Systems Development Division, a spinoff of

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

, where he was responsible for enhancing the original Ethernet transmission system. Crane joined

Robert Metcalfe Robert Melancton Metcalfe (born April 7, 1946) is an engineer and entrepreneur from the United States who helped pioneer the Internet starting in 1970. He co-invented Ethernet, co-founded 3Com and formulated Metcalfe's law, which describes the e ...

as the fourth employee and co-founder in 1979. It was here at 3Com that Crane developed the 3C100, the first Thick Ethernet transceiver for the IBM PC, which went on to be the first major product offered by 3Com. Crane founded LAN Media Corporation in 1992. It was later acquired by SBE Incorporated in 2000, which was in turn acquired by Neonode in 2007. In 2006, Crane endowed a professorship at MIT to support energy-related research. Crane died on June 19, 2017, from complications of an aggressive form of prostate cancer. A memorial event was held at The Computer History Museum and attended by over 100 esteemed colleagues, friends, and family. Bob Metcalfe gave the closing speech. In 2019 a book entitled "The 3Com story" was published, that in part documents Crane's contributions to networking and 3Com. Ron Crane

For more information of Ron C. Crane's technical accomplishments please visit: https://www.ithistory.org/honor-roll/mr-ron-c-crane https://www.sigcis.org/node/627 https://ethernethistory.typepad.com/my_weblog/2017/08/in-memory-of-ron-crane.html#comments

References

American electrical engineers Internet pioneers MIT School of Engineering alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Scientists at PARC (company) 1950 births 2017 deaths {{US-electrical-engineer-stub