Bellz Theorem, 2: Twice the Bandwidth
Harry Nyquist, the quiet man down the hall, sings his 1928 sums to a hallway that won't stop to listen. It opens in hi-fi on the real thing, drawn as a diagram: pulses sent 1/2B apart, each zero at every other one's peak, so a wire B wide carries up to 2B pulses a second and every pulse reads back unsmeared; then the hiss every warm wire makes, 4kTRB. On screen and true: J. B. Johnson measured that hiss and Nyquist explained it, both published in July 1928; turning the radiator down quiets the hiss but never to nothing. Labelled liberties: Nyquist at the Labs in 1928 (he was at AT&T, whose research department joined the Labs in 1934), and Shannon in the hallway (he was 12). Johnson appears as his bench only. Dot, Gus and the rest are made up; the Labs carry no marks. Song: Twice the Bandwidth, made for the show (ACE-Step).
True story Every fact on screen was checked before release (2026-10-27). The dialogue is invented.
Cast
6
Sources
- H. Nyquist, Certain Topics in Telegraph Transmission Theory, Trans. AIEE 47 (1928)
- J. B. Johnson, Thermal Agitation of Electricity in Conductors, Phys. Rev. 32, 97 (July 1928)
- H. Nyquist, Thermal Agitation of Electric Charge in Conductors, Phys. Rev. 32, 110 (July 1928)
- Nokia Bell Labs: history (AT&T research merged into the Labs, 1934)
- IEEE Spectrum: Claude Shannon (born 1916; at the Labs from 1941)
