Noll
Noll received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the Newark College of Engineering in 1961. Noll went on to receive his M.E.E. 1 degree from New York University in 1963. He was then hired at Bell Labs and studied part time during the evening at the Polytechnic University of Brooklyn.2
This is Noll's connection to the institution that we are attending here today.
Noll is not well known to the public or to many at NYU Tandon. The people who who might know him are researchers and archivists that are interested in Bell Labs, 20th century Telecommunications Technology or students who had attended his courses at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Unfortunately, this is a very specific demographic. Noll and his work was unknown to me before having the opportunity to explore his archival material at the NYU Poly Archives. So it isn't the case that Noll's narrative is being silenced but it is just a fact that there is a lot of important but niche history that exists. However, I think he deserves to be well known. He's a compelling mix of Scientist, Academic, Innovator, Artist, Journalist and Policy Advisor. His breadth of experience and interests is compelling. Noll and his work should feature in contemporary discussions about today's Video Conferencing technology because he has held consistent opinions about it over many decades. He was a steady voice of reason who spoke out against putting money, time and energy into the Picturephone. Over his long career, he's also seen lots of important technologies, people and companies in the field come and go. Noll's experience and his work spanning multiple decades gives us a great time tested perspective from a seasoned professional on Video Conferencing Technology.
Continuning on with his story, Noll completed his PhD Program in 1971, finishing a dissertation on a technology called The Feelies.3 Noll calls the feelies a three-dimensional force-feedback device that enables users to feel things that are simulated in the computer. This enabled tactile, that is touch-based, long distance communication. While text and audio based long distance communication had already seen great success by 1971, the Feelies were something new, something experimental and futuristic. The Feelies were new and exciting enough for Noll to file a patent for it in May 26, 1971. At around the same time that he was doing his dissertation, Noll was also creating artistic, early Computer Graphics work at Bell Labs. His early Computer Graphics work was featured at The Howard Wise Gallery on New York's West 57th Street. The gallery was known as a gallery that brought new and exciting forms of art to the public. In 1971, Noll received his doctorate from Brooklyn Poly and left Bell Labs to work as a member of Staff under Richard Nixon's 4 Science Advisor. The experiences gained at this new position challenged Noll's ideas about technology. Noll learned that technology was in fact not the main driver of society like he had originally thought but rather it was the other way around. He began to think that Social and Economic forces like government policy, finances, and consumer demand were bigger drivers than raw and standoffish technological progress. These realizations changed his perspective so much that Noll would make a drastic professional switch from Electrical Engineering to Communications and Policy. It would ultimately take Noll away forever from the world of Engineering. After smoothly transitioning to this new field, Noll would publish his journalistic work in esteemed newspapers like the New York Times and his policy related work in Academic Journals such as Telecommunications Policy.
After leaving his District Manager Position at At&T, Noll moved into Academic positions. Over the decades, Noll was an adjunct professor at NYU Tisch, teaching a graduate level course in basic telecommunication technology and systems. He then was the Dean of the Annenberg School at USC, leading the school's restructuring of their communications program. He was a Professor of Communication at the school and conducted research on communication policy, social impacts and industry structure. He then became a research Professor at the school conducting archival research on Dr. William O. Baker, the President of Bell Labs and advisor to five seperate US Presidents.
1 Masters of Engineering in Electrical Engineering.
2 Known today as NYU Tandon School of Engineering as of May 2022.
3 The device called the "Feelies" was first refereneced in the dystopian fiction novel Brave New World. It was written by Alduous Huxley and was published in 1932.
4 Nixon was the US President serving from 1969 to 1974.