Title:

Three Degrees Above Zero

Author:

Jeremy Berstein

Publisher:

Mentor Publishing

International Standard Book Number: (ISBN)

0-451-62529-3

Library of Congress Card Number:

86-60021

This book, "Three Degrees Above Zero" is simply the most wonderful book I have read this year! It tells the story of the formation, and later divestiture, of AT&T Bell Labs. It tells of the spirit, the "e'lan", of those who came to work there and how the internal zeal that made it a Mecca for them to come to is part and parcel of what made it the place that it was. It also tells the individual stories of the great people who made or contributed to our societies most profound technologies, and how these facets of thought are still contributing!

I was otherwise most poiniently touched by the shear quantity of otherwise obscure names that kept popping up. One of these, Robert Merton, while hardly an unknown character, is someone I think that most people would simply say "who"? It was Merton who in fact described the "haunting presence" of, as Arno Penzias put it, "just meeting a hell of a lot of interesting people". A name that I did not formerly know was that of Grote Reber, a truly unsung hero of radio and radio astonomy! Another name of a quite real and genuine person that I did not know of was that of John Kirtland Galt. I won't explain the significanse of this name. For those of us who know, we know. For those who don't, let them find out!