Finally, Crane finished adding the unrequested lightning-strike protection to the EtherLink’s manufacturing spec, 3Com manufactured the card, and Metcalfe began to sell it, with one of the first customers being what he identified as “a huge bank in New York City with a tall skyscraper,” which bought a thousand EtherLink cards for their IBM PCs.
“But they were shrewd,” Metcalf said. “They also bought a thousand of our competitor’s cards.” That bank then installed both cards in their PCs.
“And I’ll bet you know now what happened next,” Metcalfe said. “Lightning struck the building and fried all of our competitor’s cards, and ours kept working. Whereupon we received an order for another thousand cards.”
Stubborn engineer proved prescient. Company saved. ®
▻http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/28/ron_crane_saves_3com