The year was 1964. The Pelsue Company was 1 year old. I was graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School in Denver, and was headed to the University of Colorado in Boulder in the fall.
Dad & Mom decided that we were taking that “last family trip”. With my sister Gail and I we loaded up the Pontiac station wagon with Pelsue blowers, and our allocated luggage, hooked the GPC Mobile Power Trailer to the bumper and headed out.
It was great! We had never been to the East Coast.
Boston: the Old North Church, Concord Green, Lobster at Anthony’s Pier 4.
New York City; Empire State Building, climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty, Broadway to see the Music Man, and to sneak around the block to Birdland, one of the all-time great Jazz Clubs.
Washington DC: The Washington Monument, Capitol Building, Dinner at Blackie’s with Uncle John and Mary Ann Thurman.
New Jersey…….. Aaaah, what to see here? The Jersey Shore? No time for that.
It was the Bell Telephone Laboratories. BELL LABS!
I could not appreciate how many innovations I saw that day, which are now a part of everyday American Life.
While Dad met with engineers, we were treated to a tour. The transistor was invented here. Solid-state electronics began here, transatlantic cables were designed here. The list was endless.
At the conclusion of the tour we entered a museum room. Music was playing in the background. There was Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone. Another display showed the early switchboards, and step switches, transistors, and a plethora of other “futuristic” devices.
FIBER OPTICS
At the conclusion of our tour, we came to a display with a beam of light. Our host put his hand up to stop the light, and the background music in the room went silent. A dial would allow us to change the color of the light, and that changed the music station.
The engineer explained that Alexander Graham Bell had designed and patented a method of transmitting sound over light waves. But it was the invention of the LASER that allowed commercialization.
Then there was the problem of “conducting light”. He explained that Bell Labs was working with a small glass company in upstate New York (Corning) who had devised a method of extruding glass fiber, which could be bundled into cables.
The remaining challenge was in keeping the light signal inside the fiber strand, particularly as it turned a corner. Corning Glass Works had developed a method of extruding and “cladding” the fiber, which almost completely eliminated signal losses over distance.
The following year I started working part time in the Pelsue Company. I learned that the largest “twisted pair” cables were about 3 1/2" in diameter, and had 3600 pair of wires. That provides a maximum of 3600 voice conversations.
By the mid 1970s we pulled one of the first FIBER OPTIC cables into Princeton, NJ. It was the diameter of my thumb, contained 144 glass fibers, and could be multiplexed to carry about 500,000 voice conversations.
That is ancient history in technology terms.
I miss Bell Labs. That Bell Labs; supported by the All-American Bell System, where smart people worked, just because they were smart. Their job was to think… and come up with one or two break-through ideas during their career.
New Jersey. Who knew?
