In the 1980’s, Bell Labs had a showcase laboratory facility in the rural horse country of western New Jersey. In addition to being a working facility, it also housed the Bell Labs version of a Disney-esk “future world”. We would use this facility to provide our own version of “shock and awe” to visiting dignitaries.
Before we get to the specifics of a particularly memorable meeting, lets go on a virtual tour of this facility.
In the front lawn is the world famous “Telephone Pole Forest”. In several acres of well-manicured lawn stands several hundred telephone poles, none more than 10 feet tall. We would tell guests this is where AT&T made its poles. The sad part is that sveral people actually believed that this testing facilitywas for real telephone pole production.
This facility also had an engineered swamp built in the back. The swamp was used to measure the impact of water on cables. Only AT&T would build a swamp in New Jersey!
Other interesting aspects included a huge back end of a ship to test cable laying and my personal favorite, a lightning machine.
The interior of the building had a mix of existing and futuristic prototype equipment.
In the mid 1980’s we were entertaining a delegation from China. I was tasked to be part of engineering team that would demonstrate our latest communications gear, and of course show why Capitalism was superior to Communism. Of course AT&T was really a Monopolistic company that was practically socialistic, and therefore closer to the Chinese model, but that’s a detail for the historians to work out.
The Chinese delegation had ten men who seemingly all went to the same tailor and the same barber. They brought a woman who served as a translator.
Not that I speak Chinese- I spoke for 2 minutes and the translator only said 4 words to the delegation. I was suspicious that they might me missing some of the finer points.
Speaking of Science Fiction. The videos we used to demonstrate the on-demand fiber based video systems was the Star Wars Trilogy. The third movie had just been released and the video had great visuals and sound range. A perfect demo.
We escorted them into a small executive theatre area with 3 large screen televisions. As they walked in we displayed their entrance on the screens. This was not much of a stretch of real Bell Labs rocket science. They stopped and stared at there images on the large screens. They waved, jumped, and did all sorts of silly things. I asked the translator if they had any questions. It seems this was the first time they had seen themselves on television. One small move for detente.
When they were seated we began the video demonstration. Their head guy was given the remote control and was instructed to “order” his on demand videos.
Again, our explanation of maybe 150 words was distilled to about 7 words in Chinese, probably something like “they want you to push the blue button.”
With the button pushed the screens filled with the final scene from the first Star Wars movie. Luke was racing towards the Death Star with Darth Vader in hot pursuit.
Another push of the button created a split screen with another epic battle from “The Empire Strikes Back”.
We all enjoyed the scenes and the 500 watts of surround sound sound that made the walls shake with each explosion.
Our guests were confused.
More button pushes revealed more classic scenes, including the Death Star unleashing it Death ray on the doomed planet of Alderaan.
We asked if they had any questions. The translator huddled with the delegation for a couple of minutes. My Bell Labs colleagues and I had no idea what was going on.
After a few more minutes the translator asked, “ What was that military film that you just showed us?”
The answer, “It was Star Wars”
Another couple of minutes of private caucusing in Chinese
Another Question, “ That was a demonstration of Star Wars?”
At that point we finally realized what had happened.
In March of that same year President Reagan had announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, a system to protect the U.S. from nuclear missiles with space based weapons.
This program had been called, “Star Wars”.
Our delegation had no idea that Star Wars was a movie! They believed that we had just shown them the super secret space weapon capabilities of the United States!
While it might have been fun to let them believe that the U.S. had Death Stars, Tie fighters, light sabres and death rays, we decided that we had to draw the line at causing a major diplomatic incident. We explained to them that it was just a series of famous movies. We showed them the covers to the video discs.
All Science Fiction.
This time when we gave an explanation of about 200 words, we heard almost 200 words in Chinese. I hope she got it right.
Today, We have three more Star Wars movies, China makes most of the world’s electronic gear, and the telephone pole trees still are only 10 feet tall in a field of weeds.
1 Comment
May 3, 2009 at 3:31 am
This had me on the FLOOR laughing! Thanks.
Jane