MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

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

Windows '50

Hermann Haus
'54

Professor Louis Smullin hired me for a summer job in 1950. I worked in the lab in Room 20B-003. I could open the windows in the lab. When I moved later into an office in Room 20B-120, I had again the privilege of windows that could be opened. When Buildings 36 and 38 were being designed, I urged the designers to put in windows that could be opened, to no avail. Design of buildings with sealed windows is, unfortunately, a paradigm of modern architecture. And the windows in Building 20 did not crash like Windows '95 crashes on my computer...