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bell labsLawrence Harley "Larry" Luckham worked at Bell Labs in the 1960's, "managing a data center and developing an ultra high speed information retrieval system."

One day, Larry took his camera to work and photographed his employees, most of whom were women. The programmers -- mostly dudes -- weren't nearly as photogenic (or as "great" as the rest of his staff, notes Larry), but the pictures he ended up with are fascinating, especially if you're interested in early technology, mod fashion, Mad Men, or all of the above.

Can you spot a real-life Joanie?

Computer Operations Supervisor: This was a large IBM mainframe computer around 1967 when this picture was taken. One meg of memory, 648 meg of hard drives, no video and it cost in the millions!

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Programming is Fun: Even when it doesn't work the way it was supposed to the first time!

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Lecture: I have no idea what I was discussing here, but somebody picked up the camera.

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Computer Operations Supervisor: Don't let the oscilloscope fool you. Bea didn't work on the hardware. But she was an outstanding supervisor.

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Data Terminal Test Room: These special prototype terminals were state of the art at the time and were the first displays in which the data was first written to memory then displayed.

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Computer Operators: Many names have disappeared from my memory after 35 years, but these were an excellent and dedicated group of people.

bell labs