Can you imagine a life without the ability to share information through a computer network, email, or even the Internet? If we can’t Google it, read emails, or open documents from a server, where would our information come from – perusing through pages of old tattered books and waiting on U.S. Postal Service deliveries? Although these are absolutely absurd thoughts to people across the globe, we can thank a La Salle alum for paving the way so information could be shared from one computer to another. Leonard Bosack, whiz-kid of the Class of 1969, was inducted into the La Salle College High School Hall of Fame for being a technology hero, as his brainy romance at Stanford University changed the way people communicate all over the world. Leonard Bosack ’69, co-founder of Cisco Systems, helped lead the way to our hightech lifestyles through the creation and commercialization of router technology.
basketball court, baseball team, or in the school play, he became the shining star of the Math, Science, and German Clubs on campus, earning Scholastic letters in all four years of his involvement. As he prepared to leave his high school years behind, acceptance to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania was no shock to those around him. Bosack continued to excel during his undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, and upon graduation in 1973, he began working as a hardware engineer. Dedicated to continuing his education, Bosack was accepted to Stanford University in 1979 to pursue studies in computer science. Stanford University was the place that helped Leonard change the way of communication as we know it. While on campus at Stanford, Bosack met his future wife, Sandy Lerner, who worked as the Director for Computer Facilities for the Graduate School of Business. As the
“We were gifted with certain abilities before our entry into La Salle, and those gifts and others were developed during our four years there,” says classmate Bill Wasylenko ’69. “One of those great gifts we received, and which we all have utilized, is our ability to see things in a different way. Len Bosack was someone who saw things so differently from me. While I was working as hard as I could to succeed in those math classes, Len was looking well beyond those classes for other challenges.” La Salle College High School has seen many great students walk through its hallways, but it is particularly proud to say one of their own truly changed communication across the globe. Raised in Northeast Philadelphia on Rising Sun Avenue, Leonard Bosack came to La Salle in 1964 from Maternity BVM Parish. His brilliance quickly radiated in the classroom as a “beautiful mind” making the best of the best students feel ordinary in his presence. Other students in the Class of 1969 recognized Bosack as anything but average, as his brilliance certainly stuck out amongst the crowd. Although he was never a star on the
two worked in separate buildings on campus, Lerner in the Business School Lab and Bosack in the Computer Science Lab, they dreamed about the day that they would be able to send warm messages to each other through their computers, sparking a brilliant idea. They quickly attempted to connect the two disconnected computers by running cables through the campus, first connected by bridges and then connected by routers. Messages soon were being sent back and forth through the two once completely disconnected computers, and then they were being sent through all 5,000 computers on campus through 16 square miles creating the first true local area network (LAN) system.
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Once other organizations and universities caught wind of this new technology on Stanford’s campus, Bosack and Lerner soon found that their routers were of high demand, being approached numerous times to purchase their product. The couple then went to Stanford University to see if the school would like to purchase their routers from them. Stanford passed, and Cisco Systems was born. Named after the city north of Stanford University, Cisco Systems established headquarters in Bosack and Lerner’s home, filling the living room with wires and parts as the team created the first commercial routers to distribute to its customers. With Bosack acting as the computer brains and Lerner acting as the entrepreneur, the couple spread word of their new business and products by word of mouth, and generated contracts worth over $200,000 within its first month in operation. Although they had the start-up for the business placed on personal credit cards, Leonard and Sandy quickly made a profit from their routers, and soon realized that they needed to turn their home operation into a well-managed company. “At that point I think we were – Cisco was doing, I think, a quarter million, maybe $350,000 a month without a professional sales staff and without an official conventionally recognized marketing campaign. So it wasn’t a bad business just right then. And so I think just for the novelty of it, the folks at Sequoia listened to us,” Leonard Bosack told PBS Online. Cisco Systems brought in Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital to provide the capital that Cisco didn’t have, as well as create a sense of management for the company. John Morgridge was brought in to manage the entire company, not only as President and CEO of Cisco Systems, but also Bosack and Lerner’s boss.