Bob Lucky's Books


Silicon Dreams, St. Martins Press, New York, 1989 (also available in paperback)

This is a book about the ways we represent information and the differences between man and machine in the use and processing of bits. It's a chatty and philosophical book with a minimum of mathematics. I've tried to weave a layman's introduction to information theory through the book as I muse about the mysteries of information, such as why it takes so many bits to represent a picture and why a human being can only input about 50 bits per second. (Sorry, but that's all we're good for!)

Read excerpt from Chapter One -- The Information Age .
Read excerpt from Chapter Two -- Information Theory .
Read excerpt from Chapter Three -- Information and the Evolution of Human Language .
Read excerpt from Chapter Four -- Typing .
Read excerpt from Chapter Five -- Speech .
Read excerpt from Chapter Seven -- Pictures .


Lucky Strikes Again, IEEE Press, New York, 1992

This is the complete collection my Reflections essays from IEEE Spectrum Magazine from its inception in 1982 through September 1992. In addition, I wrote lengthy introductions to each section of the book which are themselves very much like the essays. I'm not including any of the content of this book on this page, but you can click here to read any of the newer essays that were published after this book was printed.

"Lucky, Salz, and Weldon", McGraw-Hill, New York, 1965

Obviously, this book has a real name (Principles of Data Communications), but I'll always remember it as Lucky, Salz, and Weldon. Anyway, it doesn't matter, because you can't get it anymore.

This was a real research book in the early days of data communications, and I still hear from people who have learned from it some time in the distant past. It's kind of obsolete now, and I'm too aware of its imperfections and errors, but all three of us are glad and proud we did it when we did.

Jack Salz has retired from Bell Labs and currently consults at Lucent.  Ned Weldon is at the University of Hawaii. About every ten years we get together and visit Sal's Tavern in Red Bank, New Jersey, where much of this book was written.