Sharks With Frickin' Laser Beams Attached to Their Heads

In 1921, the federal government exempted AT&T from antitrust regulations, allowing Bell Labs to pursue?as Gertner has it?a ?mission to connect all of us, and all of our new machines, together.? (At the time, Russia seemed to take this mission a lockstep further, establishing the Central Institute of Labor laboratory, ?machine-human complexes,? as descriptions of the era put it, for bioengineering the ?perfect electric man.?) With dibs on the latest innovations, both military and civilian, the feds were wise to grant AT&T, and by dint Bell Labs and its manufacturing division, Western Electric, this elastic courtesy. By 1941, when Bell Labs president O.E. Buckley was heading the National Defense Research Committee, the lab itself had relocated from Manhattan to an expanded facility in Murray Hill, N.J.. The windows were painted black, barbed wire curled inward, and nearly 75 percent of research went to the war machine.

ed lee ed lee garmin nuvi 1450 tommy john surgery colorado weather alcohol poisoning alcohol poisoning