Error Detecting and Error Correcting Codes ; Traveling-Wave Tubes ; Memory Requirements in a Telephone Exchange.
New York: Bell Telephone Laboratories 1950. First Edition. 675 pages. 8vo. Blue cloth with previous owner name (C. K. Birdsall) printed at base of spine panel and signature on front wrapper of January issue. Bound privately from separate issues, this copy does not have a volume title page. The entire Volume XXIX offered, containing 4 quarterly issues of the Bell System Technical Journal (only the January issue still retains it's original wrappers as often the case). The article by Hamming is found on pp. 147-160 in the April 1950 issue. Sound and clean, noting a taped tear on page 496. Near Fine. Cloth. [25356]
Volume XXIX contains work by some of Bell Lab's great minds. It contains work by Hamming in coding theory, Pierce on traveling wave tubes, Shannon on Memory sizing, 2 articles by Hartley and Bardeen on Germanium Point Contacts. It also includes articles on the transistor and triode as they were being developed. A few of the highlights follow.
"Hamming was the first coding theorist to attract widespread interest in his work...frustrated when a failure in one of Bell Lab's relay comptuers had spoiled a run of data, Hamming began developing the first error-correction codes (now known as Hamming codes), which enabled computers to find and correct single errors in a stretch of data, as well as to discover double errors. Error correction has since been developed into a scientific discipline..." (Origins of Cyberspace 646)
Pierce's massive four installment article on Traveling-Wave Tubes is found in the January, April, July and October issues. Pierce "invented the electron-multiplier tube and electron gun (the basis of television computer monitors, and other visual display equipment), and was instrumental in developing NASA's first communications satellites" (Origins of Cyberspace 836).
Issue 3 in this volume includes Shannon's Memory Requirements in a Telephone Exchange. (Origins of Cyberspace 883).
"Charles Kennedy (“Ned”) Birdsall, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and a pioneering inventor and educator in microwave tubes and plasma physics...Among numerous awards and honors for his contributions, Ned was selected as the inaugural recipient for the IEEE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award in 2011. This Technical Field Award is one of the highest awards in the IEEE hierarchy, and recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of Nuclear and Plasma Sciences and Engineering. His citation is "for theoretical investigations and fundamental discoveries involving microwave tubes, electron beam physics and particle-in-cell simulation of plasma physics."" (EECS Univ Michigan)
Also see Lee,"International Biographical Dictionary of Computer Pioneers", 1995, for more information about Bardeen, Hamming, Hartley, Pierce, Shannon and others. Shannon, Collected Papers, #56
Price: $650.00