How Did David Boggs Died?

David Boggs’s cause of death was due to heart failure. His death at Stanford Hospital, according to his wife, Marcia Bush, was due to heart failure.

David Reeves Boggs was an American electrical and radio engineer who co-invented Ethernet, the most prevalent family of technologies for local area computer networks, alongside Robert Metcalfe and others.

Mr. Boggs began his internship at Xerox PARC, a Silicon Valley research facility creating a new type of personal computer, in the spring of 1973, shortly after enrolling as a graduate student at Stanford University.

He spotted another researcher messing with a long strand of cable in the lab’s basement one afternoon.

Another new hire, Bob Metcalfe, was tasked with figuring out how to transport data to and from the lab’s new computer, the Alto.

Mr. Metcalfe was attempting to send electrical pulses down the cable but was having difficulty. As a result, Mr. Boggs offered to assist.

Boggs spotted connections between Metcalfe’s theories and radio broadcasting technology and joined his project because he had substantial experience as an amateur radio operator WA3DBJ.

“The two would co-invent Ethernet,” according to The Economist, “with Mr. Metcalfe creating the concepts and Mr. Boggs finding out how to create the system.”

Several Ethernet interfaces for the Xerox Alto pioneering personal computer were produced by them throughout 1973.

On March 31, 1975, Xerox filed a patent application, listing Metcalfe, Boggs, Chuck Thacker, and Butler Lampson as inventors.