Western Electric W e s t e r n E l e c t r i e ' s E l e e t r o n i e ganizing committee, athletes, coaches Messaging System (EMS) made its and other Olympic committees. suceessflil debut this summer during Patricia Bawdon (above), a corre a pre-OIympic swimming and diving spondence .secretary from Sunnyvale, competition held at the University of was one of about 35 WE and 'leletype Southern California, it received favora people who acted as EMS attendants ble reviews from a demanding group during the testing and demonstration of critics^—^the media covering the of the equipment. ITie attendants an competition. The higlily sophisticated swered questions and demonstrated system was designed specifically for the easy-to-use .system for reporters use during the 1984 Summer Olympic- a n d o t h e r u s e r s . Games in Eos Angeles and will provide a dazzling array of communications For more on WE and the 1984 services to the media, the Olympic or Olympics, see page 10. Fourth Quarter Contents 35th Year Page 2 Page 10 Page 22 2 ReadingA R i s iWorks— n g S t a r At Reading, the future is here and now A ^ On Your Mark, Get I w Set, Communicate Western Electric and the Olympics 18 The Irresistible Force The Information Age in your home 22 AT&T Consumer Products An interview with Randall L. Tobias 24 NobodyLike MakesWestern PhonesElectric Some of our newest telephones 26 Four from Teletype And every one a winner 28 Gold Star Semiconductor An update on Western's Korean venture We're still tops at putting the pieces 32 Hurricane back together again ■■ L. On the Cover WE WE is published for employees of George Gray Steve Tomczyk Western Electric. President: D.E. Prooknow; Editor Design Tire to tire in the final lap of a 1000 Secretary: A.M. Zigler; Saul Fingerman Leonard Stern Treasurer: R.E. Ekeblad. meter sprint, a USA cyclist and his Managing Editor Photography Czechoslovakian pursuer pedal hard Editorial office: 222 Broadway, NY NY 10038 Telephone: (212) 669-2621 Adele Donohue-Evans Thomas J. O'Donoghue f o r t h e fi n i s h l i n e . We s t e r n E l e c t r i c Associate Editor Production held equipment tests during the pre- Copyright © 1983 by Western Electric Co., Inc. Olympic cycling competition to All Rights Reserved. prepare for its role in the 1984 Printed in the United States of America. Olympics. Title "WE" is a registered U.S. trademark. Western Electric Reading Works... A Rising Star By Saul Fingerman products, ranging from things like closed system under high pressure. high-voltage integrated circuits to tiny Eor that matter, gallium, itself, is a lasers used for lightwave transmission. strange kind of substance, somewhat If Reading's bur The lasers are produced under the akin to mercury in its behavior. Its geoning success is guidance of a cheerful dynamo named melting point is so low, it will flow in Bob Eggers, whose title of Lightwave your hand if you close your fingers any indication of and Compound Materials Manager, around it. things to come, the doesn't adequately convey the com T h i s k i n d o f b e h a v i o r m a k e s c o m plexity of his field. pound materials good-news, bad-news AT&T Technologies Compound materials are semicon substances. The had news is the prob sector can look for ductor materials that are synthesized lems that go along with synthesizing f r o m t w o o r m o r e e l e m e n t a l c h e m i them and then growing them into ward to a golden cals and then grown into single perfect crystals. The good news is the crystals unlike anything found in na special properties imparted to them future ture. Compound semiconductors are by that synthesis. Neither gallium nor one of the things that distinguish arsenic is of much use alone for Reading from Allentown, whose ex optical applications, but, when you If you happened to own a meter that traordinary integrated circuits are all pass a eurrent through a chip of could measure the kind of creative made from silicon. As a result of over synthetic gallium arsenide, it will emit intelligence it takes to produce tomor 30 years of research and manufacture, light. It has, in fact, become a light row's technology today, and you took silicon technology is more mature emitting diode, or LED. And, by chang it for a drive through the rolling hills than the technology of compound ing its chemistry slightly, you can of Eastern Pennsylvania, the meter's semiconductors. Many of its mysteries change the wavelength, or color, that needle would probably go clear off the have been solved by now—a happy it radiates. scale as you approached a sprawling, s i t u a t i o n t h a t a l l o w s A l l e n t o w n d e Oddly enough, an LED is kind of an low-profiled factory perched high on a velopers to explore silicon's limits of embryonic laser. With a few additional bluff overlooking Berks County possibility in terms of how many processing steps, it can be turned into The factory is Western Electric's circuit elements they can crowd onto a laser. If you can confine most of the Reading Works—a beehive of high a single chip. The vast amount of LED's light within a small region of the tech activity that gives many a visitor silicon lore they have amassed over chip and create polished mirrors at the peculiar sensation of having the years enables them to keep com both ends, you've got yourself a laser. stepped through a time warp into the ing up with industry leaders like the What happens is that the light is future. This odd feeling of temporal 256k ram memory and the WE* r e fl e c t e d b a c k a n d f o r t h b e t w e e n t h e distortion is probably induced by 32000 microprocessor or minicompu m i r r o r s u n t i l i t s t i m u l a t e s f r e e e l e c Reading's penchant for creating the ter. Reading, as we'll see, uses a trons in the gallium arsenide into future, rather than simply anticipating considerable amount of silicon too, emitting more light—something like a it. Visitors to Reading get not only a but for very different kinds of inte chain reaction. This additional light, in glimpse of the future, but also of the grated circuits. turn, stimulates still more light, until awesome capabilities that are helping Compound materials haven't been you've got a cascading beam of con to shape it. studied for nearly as long as silicon. centrated light, all radiating at the That future is firmly rooted in five Even though Eggers' group and Bell same wavelength. Since the mirrors "technologies," each identified by the Labs have garnered enough data about aren't 100 percent reflective, a portion particular semiconductor material them to fill a small library, nobody of the beam can exit to do its light- upon which it is based. They are pretends to know all the answers. Also, considered as separate and distinct compound materials have certain addi technologies because they behave dif tional processing complexities, ferently, begin their crystalline exist resulting from the fact that each ele ence differently, and must be proc ment of a compound marches to the essed differently. Not surprisingly, s o u n d o f a d i ff e r e n t d r u m m e r w h e n i t they also finish up as different kinds of is being processed. Eor example, when synthesizing gal lium arsenide, the arsenide boils off at temperatures needed to melt gallium. Thus, the synthesis has to be done in a 2 ' T r a d e m a r k o f W e s t e r n E l e c t r i c WE Photos by Joseph Gazdak w a v e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s c h o r e s . Incidentally, although we call the laser's beam "light," the output of Reading's lasers is substantially in the infrared region and quite invisible to the human eye. "A laser's wavelength is determined by its chemistry and its structure," explains Eggers, adding that, "Lasers come in all sizes, and many different kinds have been de veloped over the years." Reading's laser chips are so small they are almost as invisible as the "light" they emit. Seeing them, you might wonder how Reading people can polish mirrors on anything so tiny. Well, they don't. Instead, they take advantage of gallium arsenide's crys talline structure by cleaving the chips at their natural planes, more or less the same way diamond cutters facet jewels. The ends break off so cleanly, they create their own mirror finish. At this point, from a manufacturing point of view, the job is only half done.