The popular claim that Lucky's equalizer enabled 9600 bps traces to an unsigned, uncited IEEE ComSoc timeline, not a primary source

adaptive-filteringbell-labstelecommunicationsquant-verificationprimary-source-verificationhistory-of-technologymodems

[unverified-quant — needs primary]

The clearest single statement of the popular one-line claim — "Lucky's equalizer enabled 9600 bps" — traceable this session is the IEEE Communications Society's own "Communications History Guide," which states in two separate timeline entries that "adaptive equalization made possible a data rate of 9600 b/s in the next decade, and much higher in subsequent decades, at acceptably low error rates," and, in a companion entry, that this happened specifically "in this period" (the 1960s). Neither page carries a byline or a citation to a primary source; both are institutional promotional-history timelines, not research documents.

A specific rate figure — an "Nx" multiplier or bits-per-second number — is exactly the claim type the sourcing floor holds to a Tier 1–2 requirement (00-meta/specs/sources.md). An IEEE society's own history page is a real, identifiable institutional source, but it is still an organizational website without stated method, and grades no higher than Tier 3 for a quantitative claim. Separately: no source found this session, including this one, ever phrases the figure as "4× the ~2400 bps ceiling" — that specific multiplier is an arithmetic gloss (9600 ÷ 2400 = 4) rather than a stated claim in any document, and should not be attributed to a source as a quotation.

This note records where the popular claim actually comes from, not that the claim is true or false. See claim-voiceband-distortion-barrier-capped-data-at-2400-bps for the Tier-1-confirmed 2400 bps figure this claim multiplies, and claim-lucky-1965-1967-papers-do-not-state-9600bps-figure for what Lucky's own papers do and do not say. The open verification is tracked at question-verify-lucky-equalizer-enabled-9600-bps.