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AT&T Archives: Live From Bell Labs (1992)

2,523 views · Published 25 April 2012 · 53:26 · Indexed 23 September 2026

Channel: AT&T Tech Channel · 2012 · Science & Technology

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This edition of "Live from AT&T's Bell Laboratories!" was co-hosted by David Heil from PBS' Newton's Apple series and Bell Labs' VP of Research (and Nobel Prize winner) Arno Penzias. It took place on April 29, 1992. 
 
This special program grew in scope between 1991 and 1992, with a live "studio audience" (in a Bell Labs auditorium) of hundreds of kids, and a live 2-way satellite Q&A connect with Wisconsin and Texas middle-school students. It was also broadcast worldwide via Armed Forces Television. Though it wasn't aired live, the program was broadcast on PBS during the same week it was taped. 
 
Specials include a photophone demonstration - 1870s technology explained - leading into how fiber optics communications originated with this antique concept invented by Alexander Graham Bell. 
 
They also take some students to visit a new Telstar satellite as it is tested, and perform some experiments in Bell Labs' famous anechoic chamber. 
 
One of the most impressive science demonstrations is a "global message relay", basically sending email around the globe. Only they're not actually using the public email/internet we're used to today, they used the AT&T Learning Network, a message service that connected 35,000 students around the world on a closed network. 
 
Created for National Science and Technology Week, an event hosted by the National Science Foundation. 

Footage Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

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