In late 1972, Metcalfe and his Xerox PARC colleagues developed the first experimental Ethernet system to interconnect the Xerox Alto. The Alto was a personal workstation with a graphical user interface, and experimental Ethernet was used to link Altos to one another, and to servers and laser printers. The signal clock for the experimental Ethernet interfaces was derived from the Alto's system clock, which resulted in a data transmission rate on the experimental Ethernet of 2.94 Mbps.
Metcalfe's first experimental net was called the "Alto Aloha Network." In 1973 Metcalfe changed the name to "Ethernet," to make it clear that the system could support any computer, and not just Altos, and to point out that his new network mechanisms had evolved well beyond the Aloha system. He chose to base the name on the word "ether" as a way of describing an essential feature of the system: the physical medium (cable) carries bits to all stations, much the same way that the old "luminiferous ether" was once thought to propagate electromagnetic waves through space. Physicists Michelson and Morley disproved the existence of the ether in 1887, but Metcalfe decided that it was a good name for his new network system that carried signals to all computers. Thus, Ethernet was born.
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