At the entrance one is greeted by a water tower in the shape of a transistor, the latter having been invented here in 1947.
The structure below is a memorial to Karl Jansky, the father of radio astronomy.
It is a stylized rendition of the radio receiver Jansky built and with which he discovered radio waves originating from the center of the Milky Way. As with Penzias and Wilson, Jansky found a hiss that he could not account for and meticulously worked out the source.
Alas, he published his discovery in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, and there was no money for follow up studies.
The building, which once housed the preeminent institution of scientific research, is now but an office complex. With a housing development, as seen in the background of the Jansky Memorial, taking up much of the former grounds.
⭐️ 📡 🖥 🔠⭐️
Back when I was in high school, and this building was still a Bell Labs facility, I and three classmates learned computer programming here. I remember one session, where the instructor left us alone and we somehow starting printing and could not stop, paper continuously spewing out of the printer. I recall unplugging what I thought was the printer, but paper just kept coming out (I had unplugged the wrong printer). Finally the instructor returned, flipped a switch and the printing stopped, totally unconcerned with the paper. More interested in helping us figure out what went wrong.
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