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04/05/2006
Cell Phones in Trouble?
Bon jour, mes amis. C’est une crazy world we live in. Last
week my wife and I saw the Broadway musical “Spamalot”. I
found this professed rip-off of the movie “Monty Python and the
Holy Grail” to be hilarious and delightfully crazy. However,
when I looked at Monday’s Star-Ledger and saw the front-page
banner headline “LUCENT HEADS FOR PARIS” I realized that
there are much crazier things than a Monty Python musical.
Having spent over 36 years at Bell Labs, now a part of Lucent, I
find it almost inconceivable that it will be part of a yet-to-be-
named company under a management dominated by the French.
With other Bell Labs retirees, I share the concern over our
pensions and other benefits.
To appreciate the craziness of today’s situation, a bit of history is
instructive. In 1952 I joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, then a
part of the Bell System, which consisted of the labs, the Western
Electric Company, most of the country’s large telephone
companies and the dominant American Telephone and Telegraph
Company (AT&T). In those days there was the quaint custom of
naming companies in a manner that bore some resemblance to
their function or product. The Bell System had a million
employees and we employees could take advantage of a generous
stock plan that involved the purchase of AT&T stock.
In 1984, CEO of AT&T Charlie Brown broke up the Bell
System, divesting and consolidating the telephone companies
into seven “Baby Bells” while retaining Bell Labs and Western
Electric, the manufacturing subsidiary. Bell Labs became AT&T
Bell Laboratories. We stockholders found ourselves the owners
of AT&T and all the Baby Bell stocks. Years later, AT&T spun
off Bell Labs as a part of the newly formed Lucent Technologies.
Over the years Lucent has made substantial cuts in our retirement
benefits and some years ago I sold all my AT&T, partly in a
pique because of its shifting of our pensions and health plans
over to Lucent, which didn’t exist when I retired in 1989.
Today, I find myself with a few hundred shares of AT&T, thanks
to the recent acquisition of AT&T by SBC, which now calls
itself AT&T! It seems that the SBC/AT&T merger to form one
of the largest telecommunications service providers helped to
spur the proposed Alcatel/Lucent merger to form the world’s
largest manufacturer of communications equipment. One thing
Lucent brings to the table is expertise in the wireless arena and
customers such as Verizon, a major player in cell phone service.
If things aren’t crazy enough, this past week saw the release of
the results of a Swedish study on cell phone use and cancer. The
results are not encouraging. Over the years, there have been
questions about possible bad effects resulting from the use of cell
phones. Could brain tumors result from the electromagnetic
radiation from these phones held up next to the head of the user?
Previous studies were reassuring and found no ill effects. Today,
you look around and see many whose cell phones seem to be
attached to their heads; they’re obviously not concerned.
The Swedish study, led by Kjell Mild of the Swedish National
Institute for Working Life and published in the International
Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, comes to a
strikingly different conclusion. Cell phones have played a
significant role in Sweden since 1984 so they have over two
decades of experience with them. The study involved over 2,000
cancer patients and a like number of healthy individuals. The
conclusion was that those who were heavy cell phone users,
defined as having accumulated 2,000 hours on the cell phone,
have a 240 percent higher chance of a malignant tumor on the
side of the head next to the phone! This number of hours of use
was likened to 10 years of talking at work on the cell phone an
hour a day. I have the feeling from my observations that many
people pile up 2,000 hours in much less than 10 years!
If cell phone usage contributes to cancer and listening to loud
music on your iPod or Walkman contributes to hearing loss over
time, it would seem prudent to seriously restrict what goes in
your ears. If confirmed, the Swedish study should stimulate a
major effort by AT&T and Alcaluc (or whatever it’s going to be
called) to promote hands-free cell phoning that gets the antenna
away from the head. Surely the French will have the answer?
Now that I’ve gotten those concerns off my chest, let’s continue
on another joint American/French theme. A few weeks ago, I
wrote of the role played by the French sculptor Houdon in the
reconstruction of George Washington. I find that Houdon also
played a role in a “reconstruction” of another revolutionary hero,
John Paul Jones. Jones is perhaps best known for his words
spoken in 1779 when he captured a British frigate and, as his
own ship was sinking, said, “I have not yet begun to fight!”
Jones’ place in American naval history is demonstrated by the
fact that his body lies in an elaborate sarcophagus in a crypt
beneath the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Or does it? That’s the question posed in an article titled “Home
is the Sailor…” by Adam Goodheart in the April 2006
Smithsonian. This month marks the 100th anniversary of the
return of Jones’ body to Naval Academy. Surprisingly, Jones,
born in Scotland, spent just a few years in America. When his
services were no longer needed he returned to Europe, finally
coming to rest in France. He died in Paris in 1792 at age 45.
Jones hoped to obtain some sort of military command from either
King Louis XVI, soon to lose his head, or from President George
Washington. A letter from Washington appointing Jones to a
diplomatic post was in the mail when Jones died.
Before his death, Jones paid numerous unappreciated visits to the
U.S. ambassador to France, Governour Morris. One day, feeling
ill, he summoned Morris to his bedside to draft a will. Morris
reluctantly performed that chore and left Jones to visit his
mistress before returning with her and a doctor to find Jones
dead. Morris arranged for a burial but a French admirer of Jones
paid the expenses for the funeral. Jones was buried in a cemetery
for foreign-born Protestants. Morris did not attend the funeral.
Over a century later General Horace Porter, a Medal of Honor
recipient in the Civil War, arrived in Paris as the ambassador to
France. Porter had an obsession to find and bring back the body
of Jones to America. Unfortunately, all records of the burial site
were destroyed by fire and Porter embarked on a quest that
turned up some old maps that helped locate the probable site.
Delayed a few years by exorbitant demands for money for
excavation rights, Porter started digging in 1905, with funding
from the U.S. government when Teddy Roosevelt became
president. Roosevelt was a naval buff and saw the public
relations value in bringing this famous naval hero back home.
It’s a long story but Porter unearthed a leaden casket with a body
that was in surprisingly good shape after a century! The body
was buried covered with alcohol, which helped preserve it. I
won’t go into detail but there was and is controversy about
whether the body is/was really that of Jones. One of the pieces
of evidence that Porter used was a life bust of Jones sculpted by
Houdon. As we noted in the column on Washington, Houdon
was known for making precise measurements of his subjects.
Porter, not having computers to do the scanning used to
reconstruct Washington, did the next best thing. He took a
photograph of Houdon’s bust and laid it over a photo of the
cadaver’s head, citing the match as confirming it was Jones.
In 2004, Nikki Rogers, a physical anthropologist, looked at
microscopic enlargements of old photos of the body and she
concluded that the cause of death was kidney failure, consistent
with descriptions of Jones’ illness prior to his death. Rogers
credits Porter with the first use of “photo-facial superimposition”
when he placed the picture of Houdon’s face over that of the
cadaver. Even so, there still is skepticism that the body
enshrined in the Naval Academy is that of Jones.
It seems that the French thought more of Jones than we did when
he was still alive. The French also revere Jerry Lewis more than
we do and recently had a big ceremony at which some high
honor was bestowed upon him. Vive la France! Vive la Alcaluc
(or whatever)! Crazy - as I''m positng this column on April 5,
it''s snowing like crazy and the ground is covered in white. And
my wife just cut some daffodils with the sun shining an hour ago!
Allen F. Bortrum
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