Word: belled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...computer common room in Bell Laboratories' six-story brick quarters in Murray Hill, N.J., is strewn with a herd of toy sheep, an assortment of plastic ducks and a glass beaker that contains a Madagascar hissing cockroach. Walking along one of the facility's narrow, institutional-green corridors, Mathematician Ronald Graham effortlessly juggles six spinning white balls. Some days the balls are black. Not long ago, in a nearby office, a shimmying belly dancer tried to perk up a brooding scientist who was convinced that he had lost his zest for research. Since its founding on New Year...
...also have to be brilliant. Of the 20,000 people employed by Bell Labs in 19 facilities spread throughout the nation, 2,769 are Ph.D.s. "The brainpower around here is enormous," says Physicist Horst Stormer, referring to the Murray Hill branch, where a force of 3,200 does much of Bell's basic research. "This is like a university with a faculty of 500 physicists. If all of us took off and went to different universities, we wouldn't have the same impact." But clumped together, like uranium fuel rods in a reactor, the physicists and other Murray Hillers form...
...ensuing chain reaction has changed modern society. Over the span of 60 years, Bell Labs has generated 21,000 patents, one for each of the institution's working days and then some. More than mere inventions, the patents cover breakthroughs that have launched entire industries--developments such as the transistor, the solar cell and satellite TV. Meanwhile, scientists at Bell have raked in seven Nobel prizes and, in the process, inspired some legends...
...thousands more ticket counterfeiters who stormed the gates. Rides broke down almost immediately. A gas leak forced the shuttering of Fantasyland. The day's corrosive heat sent women's spiked heels sinking into the asphalt on Main Street. Nor was this a debacle to be covered over with Tinker Bell dust; the whole sorry spectacle was broadcast on a live TV special co-hosted by Ronald Reagan. WALT'S DREAM A NIGHTMARE, proclaimed the Los Angeles Tidings...
...Point Systems have shipped parallel-processing computers that are nearly as ambitious, and a pair of start-up companies, Encore and Sequent, are finding a ready market for more modest parallel machines. Meanwhile, research teams across the U.S. are experimenting with even more radical designs. Among them: AT&T Bell Laboratories computer circuits that mimic the action of the billions of neurons in the human brain. "It's a time for experimentation," says Illinois' Smarr. "There are 1,000 flowers blooming...