<p>In the last 30 years, Stanford has made most technology inventions in the world, far more than MIT, Berkeley, and Caltech. If you want to change the world in technology, no place in this planet is better than Stanford.</p>
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<p>Well I think it is more accurate to say that Stanford has made the most popular technologies, that is, well known to the general public. However, MIT has changed the world in technology as much as Stanford, it’s just MIT’s products are more “hidden.” (eg. Applied Materials, Genentech, 3com, etc.) Furthermore, many of the famous Stanford products such as Intel, HP, etc. has ties with MIT people. At the end of the day we can say MIT and Stanford are two great engineering schools. Enough with the inequalities.</p>
<p>Genetech is more of a UCSF company. Both founders went to UCSF for graduate school. The birth of genetic engineering ties to Stanford more than to MIT. Stanford professor Cohen Stanley and UCSF professor Boyer are fathers of genetic engineering. They both won the national medal of science and the national medal of technology.</p>
<p>3COM’s ethernet technology ties to Stanford as well, as much as to MIT, if not more.</p>
<p>That’s the point. If you look at any major company, it’s going to have ties to both MIT and Stanford (and others). So let’s just agree that they’re both great schools.</p>
<p>I agree with you that both Stanford and MIT are great universities. But in terms of the roles played by them in breeding new technologies and high tech companies, Stanford is the obvious winner. For instance, Yahoo, Google, SUN, and CYSCO tie to Stanford, and have little to do with MIT (I believe).</p>
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<p>Uh, no, they didn’t. UCSF has 2 founders - Robert Swanson and Herbert Boyer. Neither of them went to UCSF for graduate school. Swanson’s undergrad and graduate degrees are both from MIT. Boyer’s undergrad degree is from St. Vincent College, and his PhD is from the University of Pittsburgh. The connection to UCSF is that Boyer was an assistant prof at UCSF. </p>
<p>The point is, I don’t see that Genentech has any ‘more’ of a connection to UCSF than it does to MIT, and certainly it has more of a connection to MIT than it does to Stanford. </p>
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<p>I don’t know about it being an ‘obvious’ winner. MIT has a strong founding connection to Intel (as co-founder and first CEO, Robert Noyce, got his PhD from MIT, but none of the founders came from Stanford). MIT alumni also founded Texas Instruments. It was those 2 companies - Intel and TI - that invented the integrated circuit and therefore launched the microelectronics era, the so-called ‘Silicon Era’, and are to this day the 2 most powerful microchip firms in the country. That’s why Silicon Valley is not called ‘Transistor Valley’. MIT alumni also founded Qualcomm, which, with TI, are the arguably the strongest US companies of the mobile phone technology industries. </p>
<p>I would also point out that if you’re talking about breeding new technologies and high-tech, the truth of the matter is, in the history of technology, a great deal of high technology, in fact arguably most of it, is rooted in the military. For example, during the early days of Silicon Valley, by far the largest customer of microchips and microelectronics was the US military, or more accurately, Silicon Valley microchip companies would sell to defense contractors and integrators, who would use implement microchips in weapons systems and then sell those systems to the military. The most important single university that participated in the creation of the military-industrial complex is MIT, certainly more so than Stanford. For example, huge defense contractors such as Raytheon, EG&G, Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, and many others were founded by MIT graduates. It’s just that regular people have never heard of these companies because regular people, I hope, don’t go around buying cruise missiles or smart bombs. In fact, the evolution of the modern US military-industrial complex , and especially the US military use of technology, can be largely attributed to one man - MIT graduate and former Dean, Vannevar Bush. Heck, Frederick Terman - the former Provost of Stanford who turned Stanford from a regional backwater no-name school into an elite program - was Vannevar Bush’s student at MIT. </p>
<p>But the point is, there is no need to get into a ****ing contest. MIT does some things well, Stanford does other things well. Both are great schools. I don’t think there is any need to place one above the other.</p>
<p>Genetech: Sorry, I didn’t remember it correctly where Swanson and Boyer went for education. But the birth of genetec engineering has nothing to do with MIT. It happend at UCSF and at Stanford, where Stanford professor Stanley Cohen’s and UCSF’s Herbert Boyer’s basic science discovery of recombinant DNA technology in 1973 sparked a revolution in biology and spurred development of the biotechnology industry. MIT graduate Swanson helped commercialize this technology. </p>
<p>Intel: The current CEO Andy Grove is a lecturer at Stanford Bussiness School. He was a founder too. The current Chairman of Intel Craig Barret got his master degree and ph.d degree from Stanford and taught there as well. Intell’s most notable invention, microprocessor, was made by Ted Hoff, another Stanford Ph.D.</p>
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<p>how is it that going to stanford will make you able to to change the world in technology more than MIT, Cal, or caltech? I thought creating technological inventions has more things to do with one’s own creativity and abilities rather than where one goes to school.</p>
<p>Stanford has done more (arguably much more) than any other place in technology, at least in the last 30 years. Again, I can come up with a long list of inventions or critical technology advancement with ties to Stanford. If you want to question that, I challenge you to come up with your list from MIT, Berkeley, or Caltech. See whose list is longer and better known.</p>
<p>Microprocessor: Stanford Ph.d Ted Hoff
gene cloning: Stanford professor Cohen Stanley
GPS: Stanford ph.d and professor Bradley Parkinson
Internet protocol: Stanford graduate and former professor Vinton Cerf
Multiprotocol internet router: Stanford researcher Bill Yeager
DSL: broad band internet connection: Stanford ph.d and professor John Cioffi
TEX: Stanford professor Don Knuth
LISP and time sharing: Stanford professor John McCarthy, who also coined the term “artificial intelligence”
digital music synthesis: Stanford ph.d and professor John Chowning
Klystron: invented by Stanford graduates and Stanford professor, which was crutial in Radar.
Micro-array: Stanford professor Patric Brown
first computer controlled robot arm (Stanford ARM): Stanford ph.d Victor Scheinman
first computer controlled robot cart: Stanford CART
first UNIX workstation: Stanford ph.d student Andy Bechtosheim
RISC: Stanford president John Henessi
MATLAB: created by Stanford graduates
Laser: Stanford professor Art Schawlow
transistor: Stanford professor William Shockley
Yahoo: Stanford ph.d students
Google search engine: Stanford ph.d students.
Atomic clock: Stanford ph.d and professor.
Spy Sattelite: Stanford graduate Sam Araki</p>
<p>The list can go on and on if you want. All these technologies have changed our world significantly. So historically, Stanford has been proved to be the world’s technology locomotive. There is no sign so far another university has taken over or is taking over Stanford’s leading role in technology innovations. Of course I would admit that before 1970’s, MIT had played the leading role before Stanford took it over. But MIT’s innovations mostly happened before 1970’s. I beleieve Berkeley has reached to MIT’s level in engineering fields and now it is comparable to MIT. Caltech is great. But its impact in technology is not at the level of the other 3 due to its small size. And Caltech is more theory oriented.</p>
<p>Since lots of invention and hitech companies have ties to Stanford, I suspect Stanford must be very unique in breading new ideas and training a sort of forward thinking, risk taking, and ‘can do’ mindset.</p>
<p>BTW, 56k modem, microsoft Word were created by Stanford graduates.</p>
<p>Ethernet technology also have ties to Stanford.</p>
<p>Guess which driverless car won the 2006 DARAP GRAND Challenge? It is Stanford’s Stanley.</p>
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<p>nah, I know this for a fact. I can’t argue against this. </p>
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<p>It’s hard for me to correlate your data with your hypothesis. </p>
<p>It may just be some random flukes that all the “successful and famous” entrepreneurs went to stanford. </p>
<p>I think your theory of
“because I go to stanford I will become a successful entrepreneurs”
is wrong. </p>
<p>I think it should be
“I want to become entrepreneur and I know stanford has strong connections to entrepeneurial communities particularly since it’s located in the silicon valley so I will go to stanford” </p>
<p>hence Stanford has larger applicants who want to be entrepreneurs which in turn increases the number of technological startups and thus created more “successful” companies that you can quote in your list.</p>
<p>So I’d argue stanford, MIT, cal and caltech are relatively equal in terms of academic strength. It’s just that many Stanford students are aiming to become entrepreneurs in the first place so that many companies startups are created and thus making stanford more reputable. </p>
<p>It’s not the school that creates it, it’s the people.</p>
<p>Datalook, you want a list of MIT inventions in the last 30 years? Here you are:</p>
<p>GNU Project and FSF - MIT student and researcher Richard Stallman
W3C (the main standards body of the WWW) - MIT researcher Tim Berners-Lee (who is also the father of the WWW)
XWindows - Many MIT people as a general MIT project
The Kerberos computer security project - Many MIT people
First Instant Messaging (Zephyr) - Many MIT people
SCHEME programming language - Alumni Gary Sussman and Guy Steele
CDMA (the 2nd most popular mobile phone standard in the world, and #1 in the US) - MIT alumni Andrew Viterbi and Irwin Jacobs
Nearly the entire minicomputer market of the 70’s and 80’s (DEC, Prime, Computervision, etc.)- MIT graduates, professors or researchers
Apollo, the first workstation vendor (yes, before Sun) - founded by MIT graduate William Poduska
first PC spreadsheet (visicalc) - MIT graduates Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston
first truly popular spreadsheet (Lotus 1-2-3) and first PC ‘killer app’ - Designer and Lotus founder Mitch Kapor is an MIT graduate
The $100 laptop initiative, arguably the most important social computing initiative today - MIT professor Negroponte
Diffie-Hellman cryptographic key exchange (the basis of modern computer security)- Whitfield Diffie is an MIT graduate
The ‘small molecules’ biological probing technique - Stuart Schreiber is a researcher at the Broad Institute, which is jointly operated by MIT
Real options theory - invented by MIT prof Stewart Myers
The so-called “Grand Alliance” HDTV standard (which is now the US HDTV standard) - Jae Lim is an MIT graduate and professor.
First atom laser - Wolfgang Ketterle is an MIT prof
object-oriented programming - father and coiner of the phrase is MIT prof Alan Kay</p>
<p>That’s just what I know off the top of my head. I can do research and go on, but I think that’s sufficient for now. And that’s just what I know about - MIT continues to perform plenty of classified work for the military, reflecting MIT’s long-standing ties to the Pentagon. I suppose we won’t know about a lot of that work until the next war. </p>
<p>The point is, I don’t see any reason to try to establish clear dominance of one over the other. Both schools are very eminent schools.</p>
<p>if only colleges had their own pen ises, then we could just whip out a ruler and see.</p>
<p>but then again, that still wouldnt solve anything am i right?</p>
<p>Sakky,</p>
<p>The list you came up with is long but less impressive. Few can be compared to Stanford’s inventions at the milestone level, such as google, micrprocessor, internet protocol, etc. If one wants to list the less important inventions from Stanford, I believe one can come up with an even longer list. </p>
<p>Besides, some of them might not be called MIT’s inventions, because they might have already happened in SRI (Stanford Research Institute), or Stanford AI LAB. In addition, to include Dr. Alan Kay on MIT’s list is also questionable. He is only an adjunct professor at MIT. How much time did Alan Kay spend at MIT? I bet in total it is less than a month. Alan Kay is also an adjunct professor at UCLA. He was trained at University of Utah and was a postdoc and researcher at Stanford AI LAB (under John McCarthy) for 2 years. So Stanford can claim more credit than MIT from his objective programming and small-talk. </p>
<p>Overall, I have to point out, only a few on you list are as well-known as Stanford’s inventors. </p>
<p>MIT is not the premier or dorminate engineering school. Although lots of people on this thread assume it is, in reality it is not. It is only one of the top 3 engineering schools (the other 2 are Stanford and Berkeley). In breading new technologies, it is Stanford that has played the leading role in recent years.</p>
<p>Actually as both a Stanford and MIT engineers told me it is only one of about 10 or more! Why don’t you guys just go arm wrestle?</p>
<p>datalook, are you from the Stanford marketing school or something? Both are great schools, leave it at that.</p>
<p>I think he’s more like a Stanford fan boy (no offense)</p>
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<p>Oh, I don’t know about that. You said to talk about only inventions that occurred in the last 30 years. What that should have meant is that you should have excluded the microprocessor, which was invented in 1971. But if you want to include the microprocessor, then I should be allowed to include the integrated circuit. After all, the microprocessor is nothing more than a special kind of integrated circuit. No IC’s, no microprocessors. And the IC was invented by MIT graduate and Intel founder/first CEO Robert Noyce. Like I said before, the reason why Silicon Valley is called Silicon Valley is because of the integrated circuit, which put transistors on silicon. </p>
<p>Heck, if you take a step back in history before the IC, let’s talk about transistors. The transistor was invented by MIT graduate William Shockley. Yes, I am aware that Shockley later became a Stanford prof, but let’s face it - that was years after his important transistor work. Shockley developed the transistor in the late 1940’s, won the Nobel Prize for it in 1956, and became a Stanford professor in the 1960’s. By that time, his former employees (most notably Robert Noyce) had taken the reins of leadership.</p>
<p>Similarly, if you want to talk about Internet Protocol, then we should note, again, that the first iteration of IP came out in the early 1970’s, again, beyond the 30 year threshold. So if you want to invoke IP, then I have the right to invoke the concept of the ‘Galactic Network’, which was the first true vision of a globally connected network of computers. That concept was published by legendary computer scientist and MIT professor JCR Licklider. We should also talk about MIT graduate Larry Roberts, who was the first designer and implementor of the Arpanet, which later changed its name to the Internet. No Arpanet, no Internet Protocol. The Arpanet had actually been built and was operational for several years before Vint Cerf invented TCP/IP - in fact, while Cerf was still a PhD student at UCLA, he did part-time research on the already-functional Arpanet. We should also talk about MIT graduate Leonard Kleinrock, who invented the general concept of packet-switching . If the Arpanet had never been built, and the notion of packet switching had never been invented, then Cerf probably would never have invented IP. After all, IP is just one specific implementation of packet-switching. And IP needed the Arpanet to actually be useful for anything. </p>
<p>Let’s also talk about Google. People talk about Google being innovative, but how innovative is it really? Google was far from the first Internet search engine. The first Internet search engine was Alta Vista, a project of DEC, a company that was founded and run by MIT graduate Ken Olsen. For many years, including Google’s early years, Alta Vista was generally seen as a technically on par with Google. Nor was Google the first company to marry search results to text-based ads. That idea was actually first attempted, and reasonably successfully at that, by a company called Goto.com (later called Overture), a company that had connections to neither Stanford nor MIT. The point is, we should credit Google with being a great business success, but not for being truly ‘innovative’, because the truth is, they didn’t really offer anything that hadn’t been offered by somebody else before. </p>
<p>But anyway, the point is, who’s to say that one set of inventions is more impressive than the other? I think we should just leave it that both schools have made seminal contributions that have built on top of each other. Is Internet Protocol really more important than the Arpanet, or the concepts of Licklider’s Galactic Network or Kleinrock’s packet switching? Is the microprocessor really more important than the integrated circuit? I don’t think it’s fair to compare, so I would just leave it that all of these inventions are important.</p>
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<p>No more questionable than some of your claims. For example, you claim MATLAB was a Stanford invention, yet I see you conveniently failed to mention that key contributor (and Mathworks co-founder) Jack Little is an MIT graduate. You talked about Shockley’s transistor, but like I said above, Shockley graduated from MIT, and became a Stanford prof years after he did his seminal transistor work. Victor Scheinman is an MIT grad. </p>
<p>You also claim that Andy Bechtolscheim was responsible for the first UNIX workstation. This is almost certainly false. The Z8000 Onyx UNIX workstation was demo’ed in 1980. Sun Microsystems wasn’t even founded until 1982. </p>
<p><a href=“Technology Info | Scott Granneman”>Technology Info | Scott Granneman;
<p>But the point is not to nitpick about tiny little details. Again, I think it’s better just to say that MIT and Stanford are both fantastic engineering schools. There’s no need to get into an argument about which one is ‘better’.</p>