Lucky's 1965 BSTJ paper names no post-equalizer data rate; his 1967 paper's introduction, the only portion read, likewise names no rate figure

adaptive-filteringbell-labstelecommunicationsprimary-source-verificationhistory-of-technologymodems

This is a negative finding, checked directly against Tier 1 primaries rather than resting on a secondary account. Lucky's 1965 BSTJ paper states the pre-equalizer state of the art was "about 2400 bits per second" and frames the equalizer as the answer to that "distortion barrier" (claim-voiceband-distortion-barrier-capped-data-at-2400-bps) — it does not, in the material already confirmed in the vault, name any specific post-equalizer achieved rate. His 1967 follow-up paper with H. R. Rudin, "An Automatic Equalizer for General-Purpose Communication Channels" (BSTJ 46(9)), is published in excerpt on Nokia Bell Labs' own site; its introduction — the only portion read this session, since the archive.org PDF mirror of the full paper returned repeated 502/500/timeout errors — describes automatic equalization as a general technique for switched-connection channels and likewise does not mention a 9600 bps figure or any specific rate.

Scope caveat: this is an absence finding in the text actually read, not a confirmation that either paper is silent on data rates throughout. The 1967 paper's body was not read this session, and neither was Lucky, Salz & Weldon's 1968 textbook Principles of Data Communication — the most likely candidate for a specific rate claim in Lucky's own later writing. Both remain open leads at question-verify-lucky-equalizer-enabled-9600-bps.

Read together with claim-lucky-9600bps-attribution-traces-to-unsigned-ieee-comsoc-timeline, the pattern is: the 9600 bps figure appears in institutional retrospectives written decades later, not in the two Lucky-authored primaries checked so far.