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Comment by lokimedes

3 years ago

I’m currently reading the book this site referenced, “The idea factory” a wonderful account on Bell Labs with portraits of Shockley, Shannon and the other fathers of the information age.

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lokimedes

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whoopdedo  3 years ago

It's very "Bell Labs" for them to be given a vaguely defined problem (So I hear you know a lot about copper.), immediately recognize that the solution is more complicated than it was suggested (Can you artificially weather copper so it looks 100 years old?), but rather than merely reject the idea instead come up with an alternate and unexpected solution that does what they wanted in the first place but didn't know how to ask. (No but 20-year aged copper looks the same as 100-year old.) Bonus points for making use of leftover parts they had lying around anyway.

That said, why did they go to Bell Labs rather than a building constructor in the first place? It's not like copper is an exotic material. Did the NPS just completely forget that people had been using copper on roofs for centuries... excuse me, millennia.

  • vineyardmike  3 years ago

    > That said, why did they go to Bell Labs rather than a building constructor in the first place?

    I don’t know the real answer, to be clear, and I had the same question when reading the story. But I suspect the answer is a combination of prestige (everyone wants to work with bell labs, not John smith of idahos metallurgy shop) and connections (someone at bell labs knew a local politician who knows a guy who knows a NPS worker in that team).

    That’s usually what everything is.