In 1964 Physicists at Princeton University started planning an antenna to detect this radiation. But before they could do it, two engineers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson working at nearby Bell Laboratories found an annoying and persistent noise in their microwave communication link. The rest as they say was history. Man had finally discovered the flames of the oldest burning fire, lingering since some 14 billion years ago. The peak of the spectrum suggested a temperature of 3 K. As conjectured long ago by Kirchhoff, the value of the temperature alone should determine the complete spectral distribution of the radiation. Panzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize for their completely accidental but totally momentous discovery.
