3 Aug
2020
3 Aug
'20
10:26 p.m.
Heinz Lycklama writes:
Jon, this brings back memories of working with summer
students and
Explorer Scout high schools students (like yourself) during my years
at Bell Labs in MH. I have to credit Carl Christensen for bringing me
in to work with him in helping making computers and training resources
available to Explorer Scouts on Monday evenings shortly after I started
at Bell Labs in 1969. I enjoyed this time in helping and motivating the
students as well as taking them on hiking and spelunking trips in NY.
I had one summer student work for me on the LSX projects. He was so
brilliant that I had a challenge to keep him busy with the tasks I gave
him because he finished them so quickly. One of the motivations
for doing LSX was actually providing a platform for the music synthesizer
that Hal Alles was building.
Yes, aside from all of the amazing technical stuff, I'm really glad that
you and Carl introduced me to spelunking.
I'm fuzzy on the details on Hal's synthesizer. I thought that he was building
the digital filter stuff for the SS1, and making music was a side-effect that
took on a life of its own. I do remember the really clever keyboard that Dave
Hagelbarger built for it, and the day that Stevie Wonder came to check it out
and the halls were clogged with his admirers.
John P. Linderman writes:
Students living near MH had a bit of a leg up, having
access to the
Explorers (did that include any young women?). Offspring of employees,
particularly executive level employees, seemed to appear quite often. Adam
Buchsbaum and Rich Cox and Terry Crowley come to mind. But, as the names I
remembered demonstrate, they were exceptionally bright, and often became
(valued) regular employees. I share Heinz's recollection about trying to
keep them busy. Terry Crowley joined us as a summer student, and we gave
him the "summer project" of making some improvements (like eliminating the
512-byte record size limit) to /bin/sort. He came back in under a week and
asked "What's next?" -- jpl
There were three young women in scouts when I was there although two of them
(Andrea and Kristen) were daughters of Hans Lie who was an advisor along with
Heinz and Carl.
Living near MH was a mixed blessing. I lived 8 miles away and bicycled there,
uphill both ways. The final daily test was making it up Glenside Road on my
old heavy Raleigh bike. I remember some issues around that; there were no
employee showers at the labs. But, it turned out that dress code was up to
your supervisor and Joe was OK with me wearing shorts. I occasionally had to
explain that to old-timers who would see me in a hall and who thought that
there was a fixed dress code.
Jon