I once visited the AT&T Bell Labs in NJ to repair one of our lasers and trains a couple of researchers on some repairs they could do on their own. The lab I got to see was similar to what you saw in Real Genius except instead of a high energy laser it was a ring laser used to generate femtosecond laser pulses, and our laser was one of many in the ring.
As awesome as the place was in the late 80's, they were pretty bummed out about the whole breakup and reduction in money for research. You could have fit our entire company building inside their cafeteria space. The two guys I worked with were essentially being paid to do their PhD thesis - I so wanted to be them :) -Jeff On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Ben Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > Perhaps Alcatel-Lucent isn't pure evil after all. They've published > the archives of the Bell System Technical Journal from 1922 to 1983 > online, freely accessible. > > http://bstj.bell-labs.com/ > > Bell Labs practically invented much of our recently civilization > (communications theory, transistor, laser, microchip, Unix, the list > goes on). The public switched telephone network, before the Internet > came along, was probably the most complicated system in human > existence. They documented a lot of it in these journals. Making > them available like this is a huge boon to technology historians. > > Some choice pickings: > > "A mathematical theory of communication" (1948) > This defined the field of information theory -- telecom, DSP, > encryption, compression, etc., all work in this space > http://bstj.bell-labs.com/oldfiles/year.1948/BSTJ.1948.2703.html > http://bstj.bell-labs.com/oldfiles/year.1948/BSTJ.1948.2704.html > > "In-Band Single-Frequency Signaling" (1954) > This was the paper that enabled the infamous "blue boxes" > http://bstj.bell-labs.com/oldfiles/year.1954/BSTJ.1954.3306.html > > "Number One Electronic Switching System" (1964) > The first stored-program telephone switch, a technological marvel of its > day > http://bstj.bell-labs.com/oldfiles/year.1964/BSTJ.1964.4305.html > > "The Unix-Time Sharing System" (1978) > The original paper describing the Unix OS > http://bstj.bell-labs.com/oldfiles/year.1978/BSTJ.1978.5706-2.html > > -- Ben > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
