Computer Savvy Seniors

Thursday June 14, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
This beginners program is for seniors with little or no experience using computers. The seven week series will begin with learning mouse skills and will include instruction in windows management, Word, the keyboard, the internet, and email. The final session will be an open lab to review all the previous classes. This program is designed with beginners in mind and will include lots of review. Registration is required and is for the whole seven week program. Registration begins on Monday, April 9. Please call the Reference Department at 973-538-2592 to register or for more information.

Director's Book Club

Thursday June 14, 2012
10:00 AM
Join us as we discuss A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Eagan. Time changes both everything and nothing in this novel about former punk rocker-turned-music executive.

Father's Day Craft

Thursday June 14, 2012
2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Drop in and make Dad a key chain and a card for his special day. All supplies will be provided.

Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Thursday June 14, 2012
7:00 PM
New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner will be discussing his new book The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation. Join us as he delves into this unique community of scientists and developers for a lecture and book signing. Refreshments will be served.

In the decades between 1920 and 1980, Bell Laboratories in New Jersey was the most innovative and productive institution in the United States. Long before Silicon Valley, Bell Labs attracted the best and brightest, and fomented the genesis of most of today’s technology. In The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (The Penguin Press; $29.95), New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner offers a compelling and eye-opening look at the unique magic of Bell Labs—and American innovation at its best. 

A citadel of science and scholarship and a hotbed of creative thinking not since duplicated, Bell Labs employed nearly 15,000 people in its peak. These ingenious, often eccentric scientists would become revolutionaries and even legends as they developed technologies like radars, lasers, transistors, satellite and mobile phones that can all be traced back to Bell Labs. The Idea Factory reveals the forces that set off this explosion of innovation. As Gertner illustrates, Bell Labs combined the best aspect of both academic and corporate worlds: hiring the brightest and usually the youngest minds, creating a culture and architecture that forced employees in different fields to work together, with intellectual freedom and little pressure to create moneymaking innovations; at the same time, they aggressively pursued marketable technology. Many of today’s researchers and business leaders seek to emulate this model, but haven’t yet been able to arrive at the same balance that made Bell Labs so successful.

Many thanks to Tom Williams at Mendham Books for his help in organizing this lecture.

Bio

Jon Gertner has been a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine since 2004, where he writes about business, technology, and society. He has also served as a senior editor for Money and The American Lawyer. A graduate of Cornell University, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and their two children.