MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

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

Site of my First Job

Eva Ritter-Walker
evawalker@ectwalker.com

Building 20 was the site of my first job! I remember looking at the building, which bore no resemblance to the elegant main complex, with some misgivings, but I was thrilled to have been offered a job at the Institute and told Ralph Sayers I didn't really care about the money! Inexperienced as I was, however, and new to this country, I soon realized that Building 20 housed an eclectic community.

As bilingual secretary and linguistic informant for German, I worked for a small group of linguists toiling over the hopeless vagaries of "mechanical translation." Little did I then anticipate that one of our postdocs would soon be famous for his "universal grammar" -- Noam Chomsky.

Nor would I have imagined that then EE professor Jerry Wiesner, with whom I shared a wild ride in Dick Keyes' car as he tried to rush us all home to the western suburbs during a hurricane, would later become a US President's Science Advisor and an MIT President.

Building 20 was a lively, not very quiet place in the late 50s. Machines hummed on the first floor, and students and staff were coming and going constantly. Much of that has changed. But every once in a while, one encounters an old colleague from the Bldg. 20 days at the Quarter Century Club.