Ian Ross, Who Led Bell Labs, Dies at 85 | Hacker News Reader

Ian Ross, Who Led Bell Labs, Dies at 85

nytimes.com

82 pointsari_elle7 comments

  "It's a foolish thing to tell a research person what
   the problem is - you'll get the answer to that problem
   and miss a brilliant discovery in the process,"
   Dr. Ross said.

Priceless.

He sounds like the perfect boss for an R&D department.

I never heard of him before, but now I feel like back when Dennis Ritchie passed away unnoticed outside of the tech crowd, while everyone was mourning for Steve Jobs.

a great view inside of bell labs in its heyday is the book "three degrees above zero".

http://books.google.com/books/about/Three_Degrees_Above_Zero...

it sounds like the kind of place i would have liked to have worked. not sure if any place with that magic (or PARC's magic) still exist in the corporate world.

MS research probably comes closest.

“If we had had the same progress in the aircraft industry, you and I could be flying between London and New York in 500,000-seat planes and the fare would be about 25 cents,” he once said.

What kind of progress/innovation does he refer to in this?

At a guess, transistors on a die.

ENIAC to your phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectron_tube

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