Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories (also known as
Bell Labs and formerly known as
AT&T Bell Laboratories and
Bell Telephone Laboratories) was the main
research and development arm of the
United States Bell System. At its peak, Bell Labs was the premier facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including the
transistor,
laser,
information theory, the
UNIX operating system, and the
C programming language. There have been 6
Nobel Prizes awarded for work done at Bell Labs.
[List of Awards]Bell Labs had research and development facilities throughout the
USA, with the greatest concentration of facilities located in
New Jersey. Among the locations in New Jersey were
Crawford Hill,
Freehold,
Holmdel,
Lincroft,
Long Branch,
Middletown,
Murray Hill,
Piscataway,
Red Bank and
Whippany. The largest facility in the country was in Illinois, at
Naperville-
Lisle, which had the single largest concentration of employees (about 11,000) prior to the telecomm bust of 2000. There were also facilities in
Columbus, Ohio,
Allentown and
Breinigsville in Pennsylvania, and
Westminster, Colorado. Since 2000, many of the former Bell Labs locations have been scaled back or shut down entirely.
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Bell Labs logo, used from 1969 until 1983. |
1920s
Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc. was established 1925 by
Walter Gifford (then president of
AT&T) as a separate entity which would take over the work being conducted by
Western Electric's engineering department's research division. Ownership of Bell Labs was evenly split between AT&T and Western Electric.
During its first year of operation,
Facsimile (fax) transmission was first demonstrated publicly by the Bell Labs. In 1926, the laboratories invented the first
synchronous-sound motion picture system
[Encyclopædia Britannica Article], and continued to produce inventions throughout its lifetime.
In 1927, a long-distance
television transmission of images of
Herbert Hoover from Washington to New York was successful, and in 1928 the
thermal noise in a resistor was first measured by
John B. Johnson with
Harry Nyquist, who provided a theoretical analysis. During the 1920s, the
one-time pad cipher was invented by
Gilbert Vernam and
Joseph Mauborgne at the labs; Bell's
Claude Shannon later proved that it was unbreakable.
1930s
In 1933, a foundation for
radio astronomy was laid by
Karl Jansky during his work investigating the origins of static on long-distance communications. He discovered that
radio waves were being emitted from the center of the
galaxy. Also in 1933,
stereo signals were transmitted live from
Philadelphia to
Washington DC. In 1937, the
vocoder, the first electronic
speech synthesizer was invented and demonstrated by
Homer Dudley. Bell researcher
Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with
George Paget Thomson for the discovery of
electron diffraction, which helped lay the foundation for
solid-state electronics.
1940s
In the early 1940s, the
photovoltaic cell was developed by
Russell Ohl. In 1947, the
transistor, probably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by
John Bardeen,
William Bradford Shockley, and
Walter Houser Brattain (all of whom subsequently won the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956). In 1948, "
A Mathematical Theory of Communication", one of the founding works in
information theory, was published by
Claude Shannon in the
Bell System Technical Journal; it built in part on earlier work in the field by Bell researchers
Harry Nyquist and
Ralph Hartley. In 1949, Bell Labs demonstrated the first remote operation of a
teleprinter, which was in
New Hampshire and was controlled by a computer in
New York City. It also introduced a series of increasingly complex calculators through the decade.
Calculators
*Model I -
Complex Number Calculator, completed January 1940, for doing calculations of
complex numbers*Model II -
Relay Calculator or
Relay Interpolator, September 1943, for aiming anti-aircraft guns by interpolating from positions
*Model III -
Ballistic Computer, June 1944, for calculations of ballistic trajectories
*Model IV -
Bell Laboratories Relay Calculator, March 1945, a second Ballistic Computer
*Model V -
Bell Laboratories General Purpose Relay Calculator, two were built: July 1946 and February 1947. These were general-purpose programmable computers using electromechanical relays.
*Model VI - November 1950, an enhanced Model V.
1950s
The 1950s saw fewer developments and less activity. But in 1956,
TAT-1, the first
transatlantic telephone cable was laid between Scotland and Newfoundland, in a joint effort by
AT&T, Bell Labs, and British and Canadian telephone companies. A year later, in 1957,
MUSIC, one of the first computer programs to play
electronic music, was created by
Max Mathews. New
greedy algorithms developed by
Robert C. Prim and
Joseph Kruskal, revolutionized
computer network design. In 1958, the
laser was first described, in a technical paper by
Arthur Schawlow and
Charles Townes.
1960s
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The LED was invented at Bell Labs in 1962. |
The 1960s saw several important developments from Bell Labs, including the
light-emitting diode (LED) in 1962, invented by
Nick Holonyak. Since their invention, LEDs have been used in millions of
commercial products around the world such as
personal computers. In 1964, the
Carbon dioxide laser was invented by
Kumar Patel. In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the
Cosmic Microwave Background, and won the Nobel Prize in 1978. In 1966,
Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a key technology in wireless services, was developed and patented by
R. W. Chang. In 1968,
Molecular beam epitaxy was developed by
J.R. Arthur and
A.Y. Cho; molecular beam epitaxy allows semiconductor chips and laser matrices to be manufactured one atomic layer at a time. In 1969, the
UNIX operating system was created by
Dennis Ritchie and
Ken Thompson. UNIX has since been developed into more modern operating systems such as
Linux and
Mac OS X. The
Charge-coupled device (CCD) was invented in 1969 by
Willard Boyle and
George E. Smith.
1970s
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The C programming language was developed at Bell Labs in 1970. |
The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Labs as part of the
personal computing revolution. In 1970, the
C programming language was developed by
Dennis Ritchie for use writing the UNIX operating system (also developed at Bell Labs). In 1971, a computerized
switching system for telephone traffic was invented by
Erna Schneider Hoover, who received one of the first
software patents for it. In 1976,
Fiber optics systems were first tested in
Georgia and in 1980, the first single-chip
32-bit microprocessor, the BELLMAC-32A was demonstrated, it went into production in 1982.In 1980, the
TDMA and
CDMA digital cellular telephone technology was patented. In 1982,
Fractional quantum Hall effect was discovered by
Horst Störmer and former Bell Labs researchers
Robert B. Laughlin and
Daniel C. Tsui; they consequently won a Nobel Prize in 1998 for the discovery. In 1983, the
C++ programming language was developed by
Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension to the original C programming language also developed at Bell Labs.
1980s
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Bell Labs logo, used from 1984 until 1995. |
In 1984,
Karmarkar Linear Programming Algorithm was developed by mathematician
Narendra Karmarkar. Also in 1984,
a divestiture agreement with the American Federal government forced the break-up of AT&T:
Bellcore was split off from Bell Labs to provide the same R&D functions for the newly created
local exchange carriers.
AT&T was also limited to using the Bell trademark only in association with Bell Labs.
Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. was then renamed
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Inc., and became a wholly owned company of the new
AT&T Technologies unit, the former
Western Electric. In 1985,
laser cooling was used to slow and manipulate atoms by
Steven Chu and team. Also in 1985, Bell Labs was awarded the
National Medal of Technology for "For contribution over decades to modern communication systems". During the 1980s, the
Plan 9 operating system was developed as a replacement for
Unix which was also developed at Bell Labs in 1969; Development of the
Radiodrum, a three dimensional electronic instrument. In 1988,
TAT-8 is the first fiber optic transatlantic cable.
1990s
In 1990,
WaveLAN, the first
wireless local area network (LAN) was developed at Bell Labs. Wireless network technology would not become popular until the late 1990s and was first demonstrated in 1995. In 1991, the 56K
modem technology was patented by
Nuri Dagdeviren and his team. In 1994, the
Quantum cascade laser was invented by the
Federico Capasso,
Alfred Cho, and their collaborators and was later greatly improved by the innovations of
Claire Gmachl. In 1996,
SCALPEL electron lithography, which prints features atoms wide on microchips, was invented by
Lloyd Harriott and his team. The
Inferno operating system, an update of Plan 9, was created by Dennis Ritchie with others, using the new
concurrent Limbo programming language.
AT&T spun off Bell Labs, along with most of its equipment-manufacturing business, into a new company named
Lucent Technologies. AT&T retained a smaller number of researchers, who made up the staff of the newly-created
AT&T Laboratories. In 1997, 50 years after inventing the original transistor, the smallest practical transistor (60
nanometers or a mere 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first
optical router was invented and the first combination of voice and data traffic on an
Internet Protocol (IP) network was developed at the Labs.
Recent achievements
2000 was a very active year for the Labs in which
DNA machine prototypes were developed;
progressive geometry compression algorithm made widespread 3-D communication practical; the first electrically powered
organic laser invented; a large-scale map of cosmic
dark matter was compiled, and
F-15, an organic material that makes
plastic transistors possible, was invented. In 2002,
Jan Hendrik Schön, a
German physicist, was fired after his work was found to contain fraudulent data -- the first case of
scientific fraud in the lab's history. Over a dozen of Schön's papers were found to contain completely fictional or considerably altered data, including a paper on molecular-scale transistors that was received as a breakthrough. Also in 2002, the world's first semiconductor laser that emits light continuously and reliably over a broad spectrum of
infrared wavelengths was invented. In 2003, the
New Jersey Nanotechnology Laboratory was founded as the successor to Bell Laboratories at
Murray Hill, New Jersey.
In April 2006, Bell Labs' mother company,
Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with
Alcatel. This deal has raised concerns in the US, where Bell Labs works on highly sensitive defence contracts. It was announced that a separate company with a US board would be set up to manage Bell Labs' and Lucent's sensitive US government contracts.
*
Lucent Technologies*
Worse is Better*
Walter A. Shewhart*
Bell Labs*
Timeline of discoveries as of 2004*
Bell Labs' Murray Hill anechoic chamber*
Google maps satellite view of the Murray Hill Facility
