Hi Steve,
For a long time, California was viewed as hostile to
phone companies,
or at least AT&T, and I remember clearly people saying that Bell Labs
would never have a location in CA as a result.
Here's what Larry Luckham told me in a private email that he's since
said could be copied to the list.
Larry wrote:
Of the thousands of web pages that I have posted the
one of the Bell
Labs photos is the one that generates a dozen queries a year. Had no
idea that would be the case when I posted it. The photos are also the
most ripped off and reposted of anything I've ever done. But, to your
points.
The facility I set up in Oakland was temporary and for a specific
experiment that ran for roughly 4 years. You may recall that
beginning in the mid 60's the Bell System was experiencing a huge and
unpredicted demand for 411, information operator services. The lead
time to provide the trunking and other facilities for 411 operations
was something like 25 years. The public facing response was the "$55
million dollar phone call" ad campaign intended to point customers
back to printed directories. The inward facing response was to figure
out a way to handle each request for service faster so that the
existing trunking and other facilities could meet the growing demand.
At that time information operators relied on printed directories much
the same as the customer's printed directory, except that theirs were
loose leaf, reprinted monthly, and supplemented with a yellow daily
addendum. They were also printed in a larger format to make reading
easier. A division of the Labs called Business Information Systems
Corp. out of the Raritan River Center was tasked with the project and
given a very short timeline. A computer database and electronic
display terminals driven by a very powerful search engine was the
result. Special operator terminals were designed and built by Western
Electric. The search engine was contracted out to Computer Corp. of
America (CCA) which had been founded by some guys from Minsky's AI lab
at MIT. Then the idea was to try it out in a live environment.
The San Francisco Bay Area was selected as reasonably representative
and that's where I came in. I was already managing the data center at
the local Bell company, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph,
San Francisco, so I was recruited to make it happen. I built the
mainframe data center, PT&T provided space in an information operating
room a few blocks away and CCA came onsite to do the programming.
The testing ran roughly 4 years. I had moved on before it ended, but
it was successful and was implanted, at least to some degree, but this
shop was dismantled and everyone went home. Then technology did what
it always does, it ran over everything and changed the world.
Along came the PC, the Internet, smart phones, etc.
It's been a very long time and I'm sure I've forgotten, or
misremembered stuff, but that's kind of what I remember.
Hope it sheds some light.
--
Cheers, Ralph.