Theres is always a larger volume of work that is worth doing than can be done currently - Mervin Kelly.
"One policy, one system, universal service." Theodore Vail.
And so Townes sat on the Mexico City train in third class in the summer of 1939, "on slatted wood benches that were non too comfortable, and played a Nazi's accordion and sang songs with Mexican fruit pickers on their way home from the fields in the United States." He felt nervous about eating the local food at the stops--mostly he was afraid of dysentery--and for two days he lived on bottled beer.
"Science had no true owners, only partcipants and contributors" - Mervin Kelly.
"In view of this fact, we would like to obtain some sample transistors when they become available in order to investigate their possible applications to hight-speed digital computing apparatus" - Ralph Bown
"... it might seem a ridiculous waste of time and money. But I think the history of science has shown that valuable consequences often proliferate from simple curiosity." - Claude Shannon.
Claude Shannon's automated mouse' name was Theseus.
"Unfortunately, I am currently completely snowed under with a googol of other jobs" - Claude Shannon.
"Any scientist who worked at Bell Labs - especially anyone in Bill Baker's research department, whose job was probing the unkown- unerstood that failure was a large part of the job. Experiments sometimes literally exploded; results often disappointed; gut feelings frequently turned out to be indigestion" - Jon Gertner.
"The larger the network, in other words, the higher the value of a device on that network to each user" - (Robert) Metcalfe's Law.
"I don't think I was ever motivated by the notion of winning prizes, although I have a couple of dozen of them in the other room, I was motivated more by curiosity. I was never motivated by the desire for money, financial gain. Iwasn't trying to do something big so that I could get a bigger salary" - Claude Shannon on why he went on to do research.
What about Bell Lab's formula was timeless? In his 1997 list, he thought (Jon Pierce) it boiled down to four things:
- A technically competent managmement all the way to the top.
- Researchers didn't have to raise funds.
- Research on a topic or system could be an was supported for years.
- Research could be terminated without damning the researcher.