This guy was a badass. He Mcgyvered a 1 kilometer data link using LIGHT because he was annoyed his employer, PARC, opened up a new office up the road and he couldn't test his printer.
Excerpt from Dealers of Lightning:
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Starkweather and Rider worked together on coordinating the SLOT and character generator until early 1972, when they were stymied not by a technical obstacle but one entirely man-made. This was the relocation of more than twenty of PARC’s seventy scientists up the hill to a building newly rented from the Singer Company and known as Building 34 (because its address was 3406 Hillview). The Computer Science Lab, including Rider, got bundled off to the new quarters while everyone else, including Starkweather, temporarily stayed behind on Porter. The move separated the two by a kilometer of real estate—too far to string an overhead line and, with the four-lane Foothill Highway in the way, impossible to link via a ground cable.
“The administrators said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be back together in another year,’” Starkweather recalled. “I said, ‘Great, what are we supposed to do in the meantime?’”
But one Sunday afternoon shortly after the move Starkweather got a brainstorm while sitting at home. He immediately jumped in his car, drove to Porter Drive, and mounted a stairwell to the roof.
Just as he had thought, he could take line-of-sight aim from where he stood to the rooftop of Building 34. He might not be able to span the distance by cable or wire—but he could do it by laser beam.
The next day he ordered four telescopes from Edmund’s for about $300 apiece. He and Rider replaced the eyepieces of two with low-power lasers and the others with sensitive photodetectors. They bolted one laser scope and one detector on each roof, aiming each at its complement across the way, to create a visible light data link.
The circuit worked flawlessly in almost any weather, even fog, although minor adjustments were often necessary after a rainstorm, when the weight of accumulated water made the roofs sag slightly.
“When SLOT was running I’d send a pulse of light up the hill to signal the character generator to send a line of data down to the detector on my roof, which would send it down to this laser and then to the printer,”
Starkweather recalled. “After all, we were only encoding ones and zeros. It was like sending binary data on a long wire made out of light, instead of copper.”
One book frequently overlooked when it comes to computer and internet history is The Dream Machine. It tells the story of J.C.R. Licklider, who was a psychology and computer science professor, and a director at ARPA. He had the vision for the "Intergalactic Computer Network" which became the Internet, and either directed or came into contact with nearly every project that created fundamental computing technologies.
The recent book by Brian Kernighan, "UNIX: A History and a Memoir" [1], was a fascinating personal memoir about the birth of Unix as well as how things used to work at AT&T Bell Labs.
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution
That last one is a little dry, I still found it interesting. It's about Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. It's currently available for sale for $1.99 on the Kindle.
I'd add Eccentric Orbits and Skunk Works, both of which are about other fields (satcom and aero, respectively), but have similar themes of innovation and its mother, necessity. (And mother-in-law, politics.)
Along those lines, a personal favorite is Empires of Light, covering the race for electrification and lighting. It critically includes the role of George Westinghouse, which a lot of books leave out (typically focusing more on Tesla & Edison instead).
Dealers of Lightning is an order of magnitude more interesting than any other book in the genre I've ever read (mainly because of Xerox PARC of course). But for 90's stuff, Chapman: "In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters" is fun and really good as well :)
Seconded! In search of stupidity is a huge amount of fun. It can be a little mean-spirited/bitter at times, but it felt like a "Computer Chronicles: After Dark" kinda thing.
Excerpt from Dealers of Lightning:
------
Starkweather and Rider worked together on coordinating the SLOT and character generator until early 1972, when they were stymied not by a technical obstacle but one entirely man-made. This was the relocation of more than twenty of PARC’s seventy scientists up the hill to a building newly rented from the Singer Company and known as Building 34 (because its address was 3406 Hillview). The Computer Science Lab, including Rider, got bundled off to the new quarters while everyone else, including Starkweather, temporarily stayed behind on Porter. The move separated the two by a kilometer of real estate—too far to string an overhead line and, with the four-lane Foothill Highway in the way, impossible to link via a ground cable.
“The administrators said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be back together in another year,’” Starkweather recalled. “I said, ‘Great, what are we supposed to do in the meantime?’”
But one Sunday afternoon shortly after the move Starkweather got a brainstorm while sitting at home. He immediately jumped in his car, drove to Porter Drive, and mounted a stairwell to the roof.
Just as he had thought, he could take line-of-sight aim from where he stood to the rooftop of Building 34. He might not be able to span the distance by cable or wire—but he could do it by laser beam.
The next day he ordered four telescopes from Edmund’s for about $300 apiece. He and Rider replaced the eyepieces of two with low-power lasers and the others with sensitive photodetectors. They bolted one laser scope and one detector on each roof, aiming each at its complement across the way, to create a visible light data link.
The circuit worked flawlessly in almost any weather, even fog, although minor adjustments were often necessary after a rainstorm, when the weight of accumulated water made the roofs sag slightly.
“When SLOT was running I’d send a pulse of light up the hill to signal the character generator to send a line of data down to the detector on my roof, which would send it down to this laser and then to the printer,”
Starkweather recalled. “After all, we were only encoding ones and zeros. It was like sending binary data on a long wire made out of light, instead of copper.”