[geeks] nerd reading for a Friday night ... old-skool waxed twine lacing

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at verizon.net>
" 
" >From: Sandwich Maker <adh at an.bradford.ma.us>
" 
" >" From: Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at verizon.net>
" >" 
" >" 
" >" I guess in hind sight they needed the approval for long distance to get 
" into 
" >" cellular phone market and offer bundled long distance, but it would take a 
" >" whole lot for me to give up a legal monopoly (esp. with a federally 
" mandated 
" >" profit on every dollar spent!)...
" >
" >bell labs is/was their research arm, so by definition every dollar
" >they spent was research expense right?  so they could go to the govt
" >and say we've had research expenses, we need a rate increase and get
" >it.  the sub rosa joke at att-bl was spend $1, save $1.10...  it was a
" >very sweet place to work at back then.
" 
" Yep - Bellcore was nice, but it paled in comparison based on the stories I 
" heard...

here's one:

i started at bl a month before the first breakup, as a contractor.  i
was there 7 years.

regular mts-level employees could sign purchase orders up to $1k
without other approval.  a friend discovered he could get starlan
cards for our group's unixpcs for $795, and driver s/w for another
$795 - so he wrote 24 purchase orders, to equip all dozen of our
little unix boxes around the group.  we grabbed rj45 cables from the
stockroom and threw them over the walls and hey presto...

we didn't have any sort of mandate for this, we just wanted to learn
about networking.  he got some notoriety for his spending, but no
static that i ever heard of.  and that network became the foundation
of a project his group took on two years later.
--
we weren't encouraged to spend money [though it could look that way],
we were encouraged to feed our curiousity.  bell labs was structured
to get the -best- from its employees, not the -most-.  that's
something that pays dividends in ways that are difficult to
bottomline.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought