September 20, 2012 – The fathers of wireless and wired communication will meet for the first time during an annual awards presentation by the American Computer Museum honouring technology pioneers.

Vic Hayes, the father of Wi-Fi, and Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of ethernet, will share the stage October 4, when each receives a George R. Stibitz Computer and Communications Pioneer Award at Montana State University.

“I know they are looking forward to seeing each other,” organizer George Keremedjiev said of Hayes and Metcalfe.

In 1997, the American Computer Museum in Bozeman launched this awards ceremony to honour the living pioneers of the computer, communications and information age. The Stibitz award is named for George R. Stibitz, who pioneered the use of relays for digital computation at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in 1937. Previous recipients of the award have included Steve Wozniak, co-founder of the Apple Computer Company; Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web; and Martin Cooper, an inventor of the cellular phone.