MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

MIT's Building 20: The Magical Incubator Story, Anecdote, or Reminiscence

Jerry Wiesner Got Me a Job

Julian J. Bussgang

I arrived at MIT in 1949 without any money. As a recent immigrant and a special student, who did not qualify for a scholarship, I turned to Jerry Wiesner, the head of RLE, to find a job at the labs. Jerry sent me to Ralph Sayers, the lab administrator, and thus, I became an assistant technician in Building 20 supporting the lab where Pete (Henry) Singleton and Jack Kraft were building the first correlator.

In between attending classes, I was learning to solder components on the boards full of vacuum tubes. Norbert Wiener and Y.W. Lee would drop in to look at the correlator. I became more fascinated with the theory of correlators and correlations than with stuffing resistors and condensers into the boards. Building 20 was the beginning of my professional career. Many of the friendships made in Building 20 have lasted to this day.