MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

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

Memories of Building 20 from UROP

Norma McGavern-Norland
ngavern@MIT.EDU

The first time I came into building 20 was for a job interview, in 1976. The lights had gone out on the floor that I figured was the first floor but later realized was the basement, and I nearly had to feel my way around. Boy, I thought, this is quite a place. The right site for a UROP program that was still a kind of new "alternative" program.

Twenty is the only building I know where a waterfall periodically issued from the vicinity of the second floor in C-wing; where a small cable attached to East Garage during construction of the biology building, the other end attached to a window frame in the UROP office, nearly sent an entire wall, windows and all, in the direction of the parking lot; where a localized fire in some wing or other caused an amazing late afternoon indoor rainshower in B and C wings; where the clean-out of an old lab in preparation for renovation of UROP's old quarters had us unearthing file cabinets from World War II, the odd hospital bed, and enough hardware to open a store; where the "radiation" symbol on a typically ancient wooden door marked someone's personal bicycle storage.

In the late 1970's people tended to walk in off the street to the UROP office bringing inventions that, if we would only finance them, would save the world. I remember an energy device that you were supposed to put in whatever creek was at hand and it would light the attached light bulb. Maybe this stuff happened because coming into a building like this was easy to do, not intimidating. Twenty was a place where you could do anything, it seemed. It was inhabited by such a variety of people, even dogs and children. Some of the people and projects were mysterious. But most were friends. There were neighborhoods. I remember fondly the concerts UROP staff helped with the amazing array of musical talent at hand. I'll miss it, but not too much.