To hear Marian Croak tell it, those video calls that got you and corporate America through the pandemic lockdowns almost didn’t happen.
Croak was a young scientist at Bell Labs in the 1980s, when she asked the higher-ups to let her lead a team that would work on a project to allow voice to travel over the internet.
“Actually, they thought it was ridiculous,” said Croak, 67, a Fair Haven resident. “You know, they said the internet was a toy and it was never developed to carry voice and it could never be made reliable enough to carry business-grade traffic. But they gave me a lab and I had a few people who were true believers, like I was.”
Croak, a pioneer in Voice over Internet Protocol, was among the scientists who spoke Tuesday night at “20th Century Black Renaissance at Bell Labs,
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