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> I would say engineers have little to say about decisions in a huge company like ATT. The AT&T of the Bell Labs days was not like a modern telco that just tak
by zrm 9y ago
> I would say engineers have little to say about decisions in a huge company like ATT.
The AT&T of the Bell Labs days was not like a modern telco that just takes bids for everything from Cisco et al. AT&T designed their own phones, phone switches, computers, microprocessors, programming languages, operating systems, etc.
> I must confess that when I read Shannon's seminal paper out of curiosity in the 2000', I was hugely disappointed.
That's always the way with seminal papers. The ideas are by now so integrated into modern society that we can't even imagine what it was like for that to be a revolutionary concept.
- JPLeRouzic 9y ago>> The AT&T of the Bell Labs days ... designed their own ... True, I am old enough to have see my own employer (France Telecom) doing the same: Computers : SM80 and SM90 [0] and heavy involvement in other computers like the LCT3202. Operating system: A clone of Unix in Pascal! Phones indeed: S63 and older phones, Phone switches: E10 and software of 11F. For me the 80" were the good old time, you well describe what came after that "just takes bids for everything from Cisco et al" [0] http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/projet/unix/sps7.htm http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/projet/unix/sps7.htm