[TUHS] Working at Bell Labs: photos by Larry Luckham, 1967

[John P. Linderman]

On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 11:17 AM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 14, 2024 at 10:16 PM George Michaelson <ggm at algebras.org>
> wrote:
> > Forgive me if these predate the glory days, found them interesting
> >
> > https://retronaut.com/retronaut-capsules/1967-life-at-bell-labs
>
> These came up a few years ago, in the halcyon pre-COVID "before" days
> (aka, March 2019), and there was some discussion at the time.
>
> This facility was in northern California (Oakland, I believe) and was
> part of an experiment in making directory assistance both faster and
> less resource intensive. Ralph Corderoy wrote to Larry Luckham and got
> some more detail about the experiment; John Linderman subsequently
> chimed in with some of the business and vision failures that led to
> the overall effort being scuttled, as one of his early projects built
> on the results of the experiment.
>
> Links:
>
> https://tuhs.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tuhs@tuhs.org/thread/32BDNXR2TD7P6MTLS5HBHROGFCUKPCFV/
>
> https://tuhs.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tuhs@tuhs.org/thread/RNDFGAXB3LPLAWO46YZKXB5BWLN6GGYN/#RNDFGAXB3LPLAWO46YZKXB5BWLN6GGYN
>
>         - Dan C.
>

I didn't participate in the California testing. I recall it ran on IBM
equipment,
but I have lost all contact with my then-supervisor, who did participate.
It's hard for me to understand why they set up a fairly elaborate operation
just to investigate directory assistance, why it would have been in
California, and why it took years to conduct (and then abort) the test.
It seems more likely to me that the center already existed, and the
directory assistance test just took advantage of it having some spare
cycles.
But that's just sheer speculation on my part. -- jpl
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