Comment by stuff4ben
2 years ago
Man, what an experience! I got goosebumps just reading that. So much history you could have learned. It's a shame you only got one evening with them. I mean you were with the pioneers of our field. It's like if you just happened to go out to dinner with a bunch of old men and they casually reveal, yes we played baseball too back in NY in 1932, hi, my name is George...
Yeah it was quite an experience. They were very old - in their late 70's. I got the sense that they retired somewhere between 1980-1990, which kinda tracks with the sudden gender imbalance in the field. Prior to the 80's, computing had a larger percentage of women in the industry.
I also got the sense that even though they knew Bells Labs was important, they weren't quite aware of just how fundamental it was to...well basically everything we do today.