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Show Magnetic Bubble Improves telephone Service j t Vh I - . , 4 1 " l' Provo and Salt Lake City are two of the first areas in Utah to incorporate the use of a tiny magnetic bubble to improve telephone service. "Eventually these bubble machines will become a standard for recorded announcements," an-nouncements," said Jack Brown, Network manager in Salt Lake City. The bubble is a ' tiny magnetic area less than one-tenthousandth of an inch in diameter which is wrapped in a layer of crystal. About five million bubbles can be stored on a crystal chip the size of a dime. The presence or absence of the bubbles represents bits of information which can be moved at high speeds to perform memory and logic functions. Perforated metal sheets create, the alternating magnetic field which moves the bubbles around. These bubbles are inexpensive inex-pensive to make and are rugged and reliable. They use little energy and will not lose their information even if power is lost. Locally, these bubbles are working well as a recording device. The bubbles are also being used for testing microwave transmission i systems that Mountain Bell's tiny magnetic bubble which will be used to II improve telephone service. 11 can carry voice, data, and television signals. Someday, a bubble chip the size of a postage stamp may be able to store the contents of an entire directory. Magnetic bubble memories were first invented in-vented at Bell Labs in 1966. Since then they have been improving to the point that they are now being used in telecommunications, data processing and consumer electronics industries. The bubble patent is only one of 19,000 patents from Bell Labs since it began operation in 1925. |