nomi (08/08/82)
WARNING: SPOILER!
The following article discusses details of the construction and
operation of the long distance communication device in the movie
*E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial*. Those readers who prefer to consider
the communicator as just a hokey fake may not wish to read on.
Reprinted, with permission, from
*Bell Labs News*, August 2, 1982, Vol. 22, No. 33, p. 1-2.
Bell Labs Henry Feinberg
Meet the man who helped E.T. 'phone home'
Millions of movie-goers this summer are seeing an ingenious
device used to make a long, *long* distance call. The movie is *E.T.,
the Extra-Terrestrial*. The device is a whimsically Rube Goldbergesque
microwave system. And if you're willing to wait out the rather
lengthy credits at the end of the picture, you'll see the name of
the communicator's designer, Henry Feinberg.
Feinberg was working in the corporate exhibits group at
Short Hills last spring when director Steven Spielberg asked Bell
Labs for help in finding someone to create the "communicator."
"I was delighted, just delighted," Feinberg said. "It was
right up my alley."
The communicator is critical to the movie's plot. A
homesick extraterrestrial, or E.T., is stranded on Earth. While
watching TV in the suburbs, a "Reach Out and Touch Someone" commercial
inspires him to try to "phone home." With the help of a 10-year-old
Earthling, E.T. builds a communicator from found objects: a golf
umbrella, a coat hanger, a coffee can and some electronic toys. Then
he beams his signal into space, hoping his friends will pick it up and
come back for him.
"I had three criteria for the communicator," Feinberg said.
"It had to be plausible; it had to be made of everyday materials; and
as many of those materials as possible had to be within a 10-year-old's
frame of reference."
Feinberg built the device in his spare time, amid the clutter
of other hobbies in his Manhattan apartment.
He started by rewiring a Texas Instruments "Speak and Spell"
calculator, to disply a "new alphabet" for E.T. He then ran wires from
each button on the keyboard to a row of bobby pins fastened to the
dowel of a wooden coat hanger. The hanger was suspended over the turntable
of a children's phonograph.
Feinberg painted a 10" circular sawblade ("the paint acts as an
insulator," he explained) and put it on the turntable. Then he carefully
scraped the paint from some areas of the disk so that when it revolves,
selected bobby pins make electrical contact with the exposed metal, thus
activating the appropriate buttons on the "Speak and Spell."
In the movie, the communicator is powered by the wind. A string
is tied between a tree branch and a ratchet made from a knife and fork.
As the wind moves the branch, the string pulls the ratchet and the fork
moves the sawblade, tooth by tooth.
Feinberg acoustically coupled a toy CB walkie-talkie to the speaker
in the "Speak and Spell" to bring the signal to the transmitter. The
transmitter uses the UHF tuner from a television set as a frequency
multiplier, a coffee can as a microwave resonator, a funnel as waveguide,
and a golf umbrella lined with aluminum foil as a parabolic antenna to
beam E.T.'s call home.
Feinberg hand-carried the device to the film studio in California.
"I took a few days of vacation to help out on the set," he said. "It was
hard, intense work--12 hours a day--but a whole lot of fun."
Did the device work for E.T. and bring his friends back to rescue
him? Ask any kid.
It worked for Feinberg, right up to the point of transmission.
And even that, he notes, looks plausible.
"Cartoons use the concept of the *plausible impossible*," he said.
"A character gets chased off a cliff and stays in mid-air for a few seconds.
It's only when he looks down that he starts to fall. E.T.'s communicator
represents what I call the *plausible possible*. I wanted some of my Bell
Labs friends to look at it and say, 'Darned if it couldn't work!'"
As Feinberg said, the communicator project was right up his alley.
For over twenty years, he has made a career of doing what he likes best,
"interpreting science for the public."
He started out in the late 1950s as a production assistant on the
*Mr. Wizard* TV series, devising ways to demonstrate scientific principles
with common, household objects. Then he joined Bell Labs, working on films,
displays, exhibits and science demonstrations.
Currently he is on assignment at AT&T in New York, working on the
Bell System exhibits for Walt Disney's new theme park, EPCOT (Experimental
Prototype Community of Tomorrow). And he's having a ball.
"I'm a kid at heart," he admits. "Absolutely!"