Word: bell
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Bell pulled scientists out of other departments until a research team of some 40 men-physicists, chemists, metallurgists, engineers-was working at top speed on a project to find out just why the current was amplified. They did, and on June 30, 1948, Bell, with its usual modesty, issued the scientific understatement of the decade: "The Bell Telephone Laboratories wishes to demonstrate today a new device. Its essential simplicity indicates the possibility of widespread use." For finding out why, Brattain and two theoretical physicists, William Shockley and John Bardeen, won a Nobel Prize...
...transistor is that it can do virtually everything the vacuum tubes-for nearly 40 years the mainstay of the communications industry-could do, and do it better. It is more reliable, sturdier, and only a fraction of the tube's size. Today a full third of Bell Labs' scientists are working on the transistor and the whole new family of "solid state" electronic devices it has spawned. The transistor not only made space exploration possible; it also ushered in the new technique of miniaturization, thus made hundreds of new products possible...
...fact, computer progress has outrun man's ability to prepare magnetic-tape instructions complex enough to keep the brains busy. The ideal computer would be one that operators can instruct verbally. Bell plans to build one able to hear and obey some 50 words...
...next step is machines that can do more than answer just yes or no; they would, in effect, reason by considering alternatives, reach "under the circumstances" conclusions. Bell has already reconstructed a neuron, the basic element of the human brain, electronically, will ..try linking several together in a "neural net" duplicating nerve tissue. Eventually they hope to devise a computer able to freely associate ideas. IBM and others are trying to control molecules to work as a new kind of transistor, make a computer whose components will "feel" each other's information, come to qualitative decisions...
...problem; when it is solved, it will provide a compact, noiseless power source for propulsion, lighting, heating, may even bring back the electric auto. The ancient dream of man, individual flight, perhaps with a scuba-like rocket belt, is under serious development. The U.S. Army has awarded Bell Aero-systems a $60,000 research contract for a rocket belt, and Bell believes it can build one in less than two years...