In 1964, David Todd Wilkinson and Peter Roll, Dicke’s colleagues at Princeton University, began constructing a Dicke radiometer to measure the cosmic microwave background.[29] In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson at the Crawford Hill location of Bell Telephone Laboratories in nearby Holmdel Township, New Jersey had built a Dicke radiometer that they intended to use for radio astronomy and satellite communication experiments.[27] On 20 May 1964 they made their first measurement clearly showing the presence of the microwave background,[30] with their instrument having an excess 4.2K antenna temperature which they could not account for. After receiving a telephone call from Crawford Hill, Dicke said “Boys, we’ve been scooped.”[2][31][32] A meeting between the Princeton and Crawford Hill groups determined that the antenna temperature was indeed due to the microwave background. Penzias and Wilson received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.[33]

Lmao, another TIL.