The Untold Story of Everything Digital
They are by and large anonymous, although their feats of engineering are an essential part of our daily lives. Not much happens today without the aid of digital electronics, and certainly little in the future will take place without it; yet the young engineers who made going digital possible for the rest of us are faceless, when they should be recognized and honored.

When I met these now octogenarians and nonagenarians,* they were all too humble to seek gratitude in recognition or a bit of the spotlight if angled in their direction, which it never was. They’d rather retell old-boy yarns among themselves about their glory days than be crowned for their momentous achievements.

Even the old laundry building where they made their digital magic happen wasn’t recognized with a plaque at the door until 2012. SEE ALSO: Barta Building: Top 10 Firsts

I was fascinated by their intellectual brilliance, engineering prowess and charming humility when speaking about why they did what they did and how they did it.

I asked to speak for them. They were delighted; so I wrote Bright Boys.

The 70th anniversary of the world going digital was 2019 (1949-2019). It was a good time to stop for a moment to take note of and focus more closely on a story that’s basically remained untold for a very long time. I pared back the story by twenty years in order to isolate the digital goings-on in the Barta Building, and slightly thereafter, as the action moved from Cambridge to Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, MA, twelve miles away.

I added lots of new material as well as looked a bit more closely at the original story. The Untold Story of Everything Digital was the result.

                                                      —Tom Green 

*The last of the Whirlwind builders, Bob Everett, passed away in 2018.