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Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development
company A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared ...
owned by multinational company
Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
. With headquarters located in Murray Hill,
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...
, the company operates several laboratories in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
and around the world. Researchers working at Bell Laboratories are credited with the development of
radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation comin ...
, the
transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
, the
laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The ...
, the
photovoltaic cell A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon.
, the
charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD),
information theory Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. ...
, the
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
operating system, and the programming languages B, C,
C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
, S,
SNOBOL SNOBOL ("StriNg Oriented and symBOlic Language") is a series of programming languages developed between 1962 and 1967 at AT&T Bell Laboratories by David J. Farber, Ralph E. Griswold and Ivan P. Polonsky, culminating in SNOBOL4. It was one of ...
, AWK,
AMPL AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) is an algebraic modeling language to describe and solve high-complexity problems for large-scale mathematical computing (i.e., large-scale optimization and scheduling-type problems). It was developed ...
, and others. Nine
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
s have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories. Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the
Bell System The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundr ...
telephone conglomerate. In the late 19th century, the laboratory began as the Western Electric Engineering Department, located at 463 West Street in New York City. In 1925, after years of conducting research and development under
Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...
, a Bell subsidiary, the Engineering Department was reformed into Bell Telephone Laboratories and placed under the shared ownership of the
American Telephone & Telegraph Company AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
(AT&T) and Western Electric. In the 1960s the laboratory was moved to
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...
. It was acquired by Nokia in 2016.


Origin and historical locations


Bell's personal research after the telephone

In 1880, when the
French government The Government of France ( French: ''Gouvernement français''), officially the Government of the French Republic (''Gouvernement de la République française'' ), exercises executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister, who ...
awarded
Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and T ...
the
Volta Prize The Volta Prize (French: ''prix Volta'') was originally established by Napoleon III during the Second French Empire in 1852 to honor Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist noted for developing the electric battery.John L. Davis. Artisans and savan ...
of 50,000
francs The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centu ...
for the
invention of the telephone The invention of the telephone was the culmination of work done by more than one individual, and led to an array of lawsuits relating to the patent claims of several individuals and numerous companies. Early development The concept of th ...
(equivalent to about US$10,000 at the time, or about $ now), he used the award to fund the
Volta Laboratory The Volta Laboratory (also known as the Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory, the Bell Carriage House and the Bell Laboratory) and the Volta Bureau were created in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. by Alexander Graham Bell.(19/20th-century scientist and ...
(also known as the "Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory") in Washington, D.C. in collaboration with Sumner Tainter and Bell's cousin
Chichester Bell Chichester Alexander Bell (1848–1924) was an American chemist and inventor. He was a first cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, and instrumental in developing improved versions of the phonograph.American History MuseumCharles Sumner Tainter Papers, ...
.Bruce, Robert V. ''Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude''. Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University; currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in ...
, 1990. .
The laboratory was variously known as the ''Volta Bureau'', the ''Bell Carriage House'', the ''Bell Laboratory'' and the ''Volta Laboratory''. It focused on the analysis, recording, and transmission of sound. Bell used his considerable profits from the laboratory for further research and education to permit the " ncreaseddiffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf": resulting in the founding of the Volta Bureau (c. 1887) which was located at Bell's father's house at 1527 35th Street N.W. in Washington, D.C. Its carriage house became their headquarters in 1889. In 1893, Bell constructed a new building close by at 1537 35th Street N.W., specifically to house the lab. This building was declared a
National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places liste ...
in 1972. and   After the invention of the telephone, Bell maintained a relatively distant role with the Bell System as a whole, but continued to pursue his own personal research interests.


Early antecedent

The Bell Patent Association was formed by
Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and T ...
, Thomas Sanders, and Gardiner Hubbard when filing the first patents for the telephone in 1876. Bell Telephone Company, the first telephone company, was formed a year later. It later became a part of the American Bell Telephone Company. In 1884, the American Bell Telephone Company created the Mechanical Department from the Electrical and Patent Department formed a year earlier.
American Telephone & Telegraph Company AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
(AT&T) and its own subsidiary company, took control of American Bell and the Bell System by 1889. American Bell held a controlling interest in Western Electric (which was the manufacturing arm of the business) whereas AT&T was doing research into the service providers.


Formal organization and location changes

In 1896, Western Electric bought property at 463 West Street to station their manufacturers and engineers who had been supplying AT&T with their product. This included everything from telephones,
telephone exchange telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syste ...
switches, and transmission equipment. On January 1, 1925, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. was organized to consolidate the development and research activities in the communication field and allied sciences for the Bell System. Ownership was evenly shared between
Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...
and AT&T. The new company had existing personnel of 3600 engineers, scientists, and support staff. In addition to the existing research facilities of 400,000 square feet of space, its space was extended with a new building on about one quarter of a city block.Telephony, Volume 87(5), p.20, January 31, 1925 The first chairman of the board of directors was John J. Carty, the vice-president of AT&T, and the first president was Frank B. Jewett, also a board member, who stayed there until 1940. The operations were directed by E. B. Craft, executive vice-president, and formerly chief engineer at Western Electric. By the early 1940s, Bell Labs engineers and scientists had begun to move to other locations away from the congestion and environmental distractions of New York City, and in 1967 Bell Laboratories headquarters was officially relocated to Murray Hill, New Jersey. Among the later Bell Laboratories locations in New Jersey were
Holmdel Holmdel Township (usually shortened to Holmdel) is a township in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. The township is centrally located in the Raritan Valley region, being within the regional and cultural influence of the Raritan Bays ...
, Crawford Hill, the
Deal Test Site The Deal Test Site (now Joe Palaia Park) is located in Ocean Township, New Jersey. The Joe Palaia Park was originally started as the Foxburst Farm, a tract which is now the southern portion of the park. It was purchased by Western Electric, (par ...
,
Freehold Freehold may refer to: In real estate *Freehold (law), the tenure of property in fee simple * Customary freehold, a form of feudal tenure of land in England * Parson's freehold, where a Church of England rector or vicar of holds title to benefice ...
, Lincroft, Long Branch, Middletown,
Neptune Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 time ...
,
Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...
, Piscataway, Red Bank,
Chester Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...
, and Whippany. Of these, Murray Hill and Crawford Hill remain in existence (the Piscataway and Red Bank locations were transferred to and are now operated by
Telcordia Technologies iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...
and the Whippany site was purchased by
Bayer Bayer AG (, commonly pronounced ; ) is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include pharmaceutic ...
). The largest grouping of people in the company was in
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...
, at Naperville- Lisle, in the Chicago area, which had the largest concentration of employees (about 11,000) prior to 2001. There also were groups of employees in
Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...
, Indiana;
Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, an ...
;
North Andover, Massachusetts North Andover is an affluent town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the 2020 census the population was 30,915. History Native Americans inhabited what is now northeastern Massachusetts for thousands of years prior to European c ...
;
Allentown, Pennsylvania Allentown ( Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The city has a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 census. It is the fastest-growing major city in Pennsylvania ...
;
Reading, Pennsylvania Reading ( ; Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Reddin'') is a city in and the county seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city had a population of 95,112 as of the 2020 census and is the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania after Philade ...
; and
Breinigsville, Pennsylvania Breinigsville is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 7,495. The town is part of Upper Macungie Township and is located approximately south ...
; Burlington, North Carolina (1950s–1970s, moved to Greensboro 1980s) and
Westminster, Colorado The City of Westminster is a home rule municipality located in Adams and Jefferson counties, Colorado, United States. The city population was 116,317 at the 2020 United States Census with 71,240 residing in Adams County and 45,077 residing in ...
. Since 2001, many of the former locations have been scaled down or closed. The Holmdel site, a 1.9 million square foot structure set on 473 acres, was closed in 2007. The mirrored-glass building was designed by
Eero Saarinen Eero Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer noted for his wide-ranging array of designs for buildings and monuments. Saarinen is best known for designing the General Motors ...
. In August 2013, Somerset Development bought the building, intending to redevelop it into a mixed commercial and residential project. A 2012 article expressed doubt on the success of the newly named Bell Works site, but several large tenants had announced plans to move in through 2016 and 2017.


Building Complex Location (code) information, past and present

* Chester (CH) - North Road,
Chester, NJ Chester Township is a township in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 7,838, reflecting an increase of 556 (+7.6%) from the 7,282 counted in the 2000 Census, which had ...
(began 1930, outdoor test site for small size telephone pole preservation, timber-related equipment, cable laying mechanism for the first undersea voice cable, research for loop transmission, Lucent donated land for park) * Crawford Hill (HOH) - Crawfords Corner Road, Holmdel, NJ (built 1930s, currently as exhibit and building sold,
horn antenna A horn antenna or microwave horn is an antenna that consists of a flaring metal waveguide shaped like a horn to direct radio waves in a beam. Horns are widely used as antennas at UHF and microwave frequencies, above 300 MHz. They are ...
used for "Big Bang" theory) * Holmdel (HO) - 101 Crawfords Corner, Holmdel, NJ (built 1959–1962, older structures in the 1920s, currently as private building called Bell Works, discovered extraterrestrial radio emissions, undersea cable research, satellite transmissions systems Telstar 3 and 4) * Indian Hill (IH) - 2000 Naperville Road, Naperville, IL (built 1966, currently Nokia, developed switching technology and systems) * Murray Hill (MH) - 600 Mountain Ave, Murray Hill, NJ (built 1941–1945, currently Nokia, developed transistor, UNIX operating system and C programming language,
anechoic chamber An anechoic chamber (''an-echoic'' meaning "non-reflective") is a room designed to stop reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves. They are also often isolated from energy entering from their surroundings. This combination means t ...
, several building sections demolished) * Short Hills (HL) - 101-103 JFK Parkway, Short Hills, NJ (Various departments such as Accounts Payable, IT Purchasing, HR Personnel, Payroll, Telecom and the Government group, and Unix Administration Systems Computer Center. Buildings exist without the overhead walkway between the two buildings and two different companies are located from banking and business analytics.) * Summit (SF) - 190 River Road, Summit, NJ (building was part of the UNIX Software Operations and became UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. In December 1991, USL combined with Novell. Location is a banking company.) * West St ( ) - 463 West Street, New York, NY (built 1898, 1925 until December 1966 as Bell Labs headquarters, experimental talking movies, wave nature of matter, radar) * Whippany (WH) - 67 Whippany Road, Whippany, NJ (built 1920s, demolished and portion building as Bayer, performed military research and development, research and development in radar, in guidance for the
Nike missile The United States Army's Nike Ajax was the world's first operational guided surface-to-air missile (SAM), entering service in 1954. Nike Ajax was designed to attack conventional bomber aircraft flying at high subsonic speeds and altitudes abov ...
, and in underwater sound,
Telstar 1 Telstar 1 was a communications satellite launched by NASA on July 10, 1962. It was the satellite that allowed the first live broadcast of television images between the United States and Europe. Telstar 1 remained active for only 7 months before i ...
, wireless technologies)


Bell Labs locations listed in 1974 corporate directory

* Allentown - Allentown, PA * Atlanta - Norcross, GA * Centennial Park - Piscataway, NJ * Chester - Chester, NJ * Columbus - Columbus, OH * Crawford Hill - Holmdel, NJ * Denver - Denver, CO * Grand Forks-MSR - Cavalier, ND issile Site Radar (MSR) Site* Grand Forks-PAR - Cavalier, ND erimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR) Site* Guilford Center - Greensboro, NC * Holmdel - Holmdel, NJ * Indianapolis - Indianapolis, IN * Indian Hill - Naperville, IL * Kwajalein - San Francisco, CA * Madison - Madison, NJ * Merrimack Valley - North Andover, MA * Murray Hill - Murray Hill, NJ * Raritan River Center - Piscataway, NJ * Reading - Reading, PA * Union - Union, NJ * Warren Service Center - Warren, NJ * Whippany - Whippany, NJ


Discoveries and developments

Bell Laboratories was, and is, regarded by many as the premier research facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including
radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation comin ...
, the
transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
, the
laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The ...
,
information theory Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. ...
, the operating system
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
, the programming languages C and
C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
,
solar cells A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon.
, the
charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD), and many other optical, wireless, and wired communications technologies and systems.


1920s

In 1924, Bell Labs physicist Walter A. Shewhart proposed the
control chart Control charts is a graph used in production control to determine whether quality and manufacturing processes are being controlled under stable conditions. (ISO 7870-1) The hourly status is arranged on the graph, and the occurrence of abnormalit ...
as a method to determine when a process was in a state of statistical control. Shewhart's methods were the basis for
statistical process control Statistical process control (SPC) or statistical quality control (SQC) is the application of statistical methods to monitor and control the quality of a production process. This helps to ensure that the process operates efficiently, producing ...
(SPC): the use of statistically based tools and techniques to manage and improve processes. This was the origin of the modern quality movement, including Six Sigma. In 1926, the laboratories invented an early example synchronous-sound motion picture system, in competition with
Fox Movietone Movietone News is a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States. Under the name British Movietone News, it also ran in the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1986, in France also produced by Fox-Europa, in Australia and New Zealand until 197 ...
and
DeForest Phonofilm Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s. Introduction In 1919 and 1920, Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patents on a sound-on-film proc ...
. In 1927, a Bell team headed by Herbert E. Ives successfully transmitted long-distance 128-line television images of
Secretary of Commerce The United States secretary of commerce (SecCom) is the head of the United States Department of Commerce. The secretary serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all matters relating to commerce. The secretary rep ...
Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gre ...
from Washington to New York. In 1928 the
thermal noise A thermal column (or thermal) is a rising mass of buoyant air, a convective current in the atmosphere, that transfers heat energy vertically. Thermals are created by the uneven heating of Earth's surface from solar radiation, and are an example ...
in a resistor was first measured by John B. Johnson, and
Harry Nyquist Harry Nyquist (, ; February 7, 1889 – April 4, 1976) was a Swedish-American physicist and electronic engineer who made important contributions to communication theory. Personal life Nyquist was born in the village Nilsby of the parish Stora ...
provided the theoretical analysis; this is now termed ''Johnson noise''. During the 1920s, the
one-time pad In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked, but requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is not smaller than the message being sent. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with a ra ...
cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode ...
was invented by Gilbert Vernam and
Joseph Mauborgne Joseph Oswald Mauborgne (February 26, 1881 – June 7, 1971) co-invented the one-time pad with Gilbert Vernam of Bell Labs. In 1914 he published the first recorded solution of the Playfair cipher. Mauborgne became a Major General in the U ...
at the laboratories. Bell Labs'
Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts I ...
later proved that it is unbreakable.


1930s

In 1931, a foundation for
radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation comin ...
was laid by
Karl Jansky Karl Guthe Jansky (October 22, 1905 – February 14, 1950) was an American physicist and radio engineer who in April 1933 first announced his discovery of radio waves emanating from the Milky Way in the constellation Sagittarius. He is considered ...
during his work investigating the origins of static on long-distance shortwave communications. He discovered that radio waves were being emitted from the center of the
galaxy A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System ...
. In 1931 and 1932, experimental high fidelity, long playing, and even stereophonic recordings were made by the labs of the
Philadelphia Orchestra The Philadelphia Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the " Big Five" American orchestras, the orchestra is based at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, where it performs its subscriptio ...
, conducted by
Leopold Stokowski Leopold Anthony Stokowski (18 April 1882 – 13 September 1977) was a British conductor. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his appear ...
. In 1933, stereo signals were transmitted live from
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
to Washington, D.C. In 1937, the
vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder ...
, an electronic speech compression device, or codec, and the Voder, the first electronic
speech synthesizer Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal languag ...
, were developed and demonstrated by Homer Dudley, the Voder being demonstrated at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Bell researcher Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with
George Paget Thomson Sir George Paget Thomson, FRS (; 3 May 189210 September 1975) was a British physicist and Nobel laureate in physics recognized for his discovery of the wave properties of the electron by electron diffraction. Education and early life Thomson ...
for the discovery of
electron diffraction Electron diffraction refers to the bending of electron beams around atomic structures. This behaviour, typical for waves, is applicable to electrons due to the wave–particle duality stating that electrons behave as both particles and waves. S ...
, which helped lay the foundation for
solid-state electronics Solid-state electronics means semiconductor electronics: electronic equipment using semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes and integrated circuits (ICs). The term is also used as an adjective for devices in which semiconductor electr ...
.


1940s

In the early 1940s, the
photovoltaic cell A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon.
was developed by Russell Ohl. In 1943, Bell developed SIGSALY, the first digital scrambled speech transmission system, used by the Allies in World War II. The British wartime codebreaker
Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical ...
visited the labs at this time, working on speech encryption and meeting
Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts I ...
. Bell Labs Quality Assurance Department gave the world and the United States such statisticians as Walter A. Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming, Harold F. Dodge, George D. Edwards, Harry Romig, R. L. Jones, Paul Olmstead, E.G.D. Paterson, and
Mary N. Torrey Mary Newton Torrey (February 2, 1910 - January 7, 1998) was an American mathematical statistician and quality control specialist for Bell Laboratories. With Harold F. Dodge at Bell Labs, she was an early contributor to the theory of acceptance ...
. During World War II, Emergency Technical Committee – Quality Control, drawn mainly from Bell Labs' statisticians, was instrumental in advancing Army and Navy ammunition acceptance and material sampling procedures. In 1947, the
transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
, probably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by
John Bardeen John Bardeen (; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the tra ...
,
Walter Houser Brattain Walter Houser Brattain (; February 10, 1902 – October 13, 1987) was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. They shared t ...
, and William Bradford Shockley (and who subsequently shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956). In 1947,
Richard Hamming Richard Wesley Hamming (February 11, 1915 – January 7, 1998) was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer engineering and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code (which makes use of a ...
invented
Hamming code In computer science and telecommunication, Hamming codes are a family of linear error-correcting codes. Hamming codes can detect one-bit and two-bit errors, or correct one-bit errors without detection of uncorrected errors. By contrast, the sim ...
s for
error detection and correction In information theory and coding theory with applications in computer science and telecommunication, error detection and correction (EDAC) or error control are techniques that enable reliable delivery of digital data over unreliable commu ...
. For patent reasons, the result was not published until 1950. In 1948, "
A Mathematical Theory of Communication "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is an article by mathematician Claude E. Shannon published in ''Bell System Technical Journal'' in 1948. It was renamed ''The Mathematical Theory of Communication'' in the 1949 book of the same name, a sma ...
", one of the founding works in
information theory Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. ...
, was published by
Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts I ...
in the ''
Bell System Technical Journal The ''Bell Labs Technical Journal'' is the in-house scientific journal for scientists of Nokia Bell Labs, published yearly by the IEEE society. The managing editor is Charles Bahr. The journal was originally established as the ''Bell System Tech ...
''. It built in part on earlier work in the field by Bell researchers
Harry Nyquist Harry Nyquist (, ; February 7, 1889 – April 4, 1976) was a Swedish-American physicist and electronic engineer who made important contributions to communication theory. Personal life Nyquist was born in the village Nilsby of the parish Stora ...
and Ralph Hartley, but it greatly extended these. Bell Labs also introduced a series of increasingly complex calculators through the decade. Shannon was also the founder of modern cryptography with his 1949 paper ''
Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems" is a paper published in 1949 by Claude Shannon discussing cryptography from the viewpoint of information theory. It is one of the foundational treatments (arguably ''the'' foundational treatment) of modern c ...
''.


Calculators

* Model I: A
complex number calculator George Robert Stibitz (April 30, 1904 – January 31, 1995) was a Bell Labs researcher internationally recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer. He was known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s on the realization of Boolea ...
, completed in 1939 and put into operation in 1940, for doing calculations of
complex number In mathematics, a complex number is an element of a number system that extends the real numbers with a specific element denoted , called the imaginary unit and satisfying the equation i^= -1; every complex number can be expressed in the fo ...
s. * Model II: Relay Computer / Relay Interpolator, September 1943, for interpolating data points of flight profiles (needed for performance testing of a gun director). This model introduced error detection (self checking). * Model III: Ballistic Computer, June 1944, for calculations of ballistic trajectories * Model IV: Error Detector Mark II, March 1945, improved ballistic computer *
Model V The Model V was among the early electromechanical general purpose computers, designed by George Stibitz and built by Bell Telephone Laboratories, operational in 1946. Only two machines were built: first one was installed at National Advisory Co ...
: General-purpose electromechanical computer, of which two were built, July 1946 and February 1947 * Model VI: 1949, an enhanced Model V


1950s

The 1950s also saw developments based upon
information theory Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. ...
. The central development was
binary code A binary code represents text, computer processor instructions, or any other data using a two-symbol system. The two-symbol system used is often "0" and "1" from the binary number system. The binary code assigns a pattern of binary digits, als ...
systems. Efforts concentrated on the prime mission of supporting the Bell System with engineering advances, including the N-carrier system, TD
microwave radio relay Microwave transmission is the transmission of information by electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the microwave frequency range of 300MHz to 300GHz(1 m - 1 mm wavelength) of the electromagnetic spectrum. Microwave signals are normally lim ...
,
direct distance dialing Direct distance dialing (DDD) is a telecommunication service feature in North America by which a caller may, without operator assistance, call any other user outside the local calling area. Direct dialing by subscribers typically requires extra d ...
, E-
repeater In telecommunications, a repeater is an electronic device that receives a signal and retransmits it. Repeaters are used to extend transmissions so that the signal can cover longer distances or be received on the other side of an obstruction. Som ...
, wire spring relay, and the Number Five Crossbar Switching System. In 1952,
William Gardner Pfann William Gardner Pfann (October 27, 1917 – October 22, 1982) was an inventor and materials scientist with Bell Labs. Pfann is known for his development of zone melting which is essential to the semiconductor industry. As stated in an official ...
revealed the method of zone melting, which enabled semiconductor purification and level doping. In 1953,
Maurice Karnaugh Maurice Karnaugh (; October 4, 1924 – November 8, 2022) was an American physicist, mathematician, computer scientist, and inventor known for the Karnaugh map used in Boolean algebra. Career Karnaugh studied mathematics and physics at City Co ...
developed the
Karnaugh map The Karnaugh map (KM or K-map) is a method of simplifying Boolean algebra expressions. Maurice Karnaugh introduced it in 1953 as a refinement of Edward W. Veitch's 1952 Veitch chart, which was a rediscovery of Allan Marquand's 1881 ''logi ...
, used for managing of Boolean algebraic expressions. In 1954, the first modern
solar cell A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon.
was invented at Bell Laboratories. In 1956 TAT-1, the first transatlantic communications cable, was laid between Scotland and Newfoundland in a joint effort by AT&T, Bell Laboratories, and British and Canadian telephone companies. In 1957, Max Mathews created
MUSIC Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...
, one of the first computer programs to play
electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electro ...
.
Robert C. Prim Robert Clay Prim (born September 25, 1921 in Sweetwater, Texas, Sweetwater, Texas) is an American mathematician and computer scientist. In 1941, Prim received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, where he also ...
and
Joseph Kruskal Joseph Bernard Kruskal, Jr. (; January 29, 1928 – September 19, 2010) was an American mathematician, statistician, computer scientist and psychometrician. Personal life Kruskal was born to a Jewish family in New York City to a successful fur ...
developed new
greedy algorithm A greedy algorithm is any algorithm that follows the problem-solving heuristic of making the locally optimal choice at each stage. In many problems, a greedy strategy does not produce an optimal solution, but a greedy heuristic can yield locally ...
s that revolutionized computer network design. In 1958, a technical paper by
Arthur Schawlow Arthur Leonard Schawlow (May 5, 1921 – April 28, 1999) was an American physicist and co-inventor of the laser with Charles Townes. His central insight, which Townes overlooked, was the use of two mirrors as the resonant cavity to take maser ac ...
and
Charles Hard Townes Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated wit ...
first described the
laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The ...
. In 1959, Mohamed M. Atalla and
Dawon Kahng Dawon Kahng ( ko, 강대원; May 4, 1931 – May 13, 1992) was a Korean-American electrical engineer and inventor, known for his work in solid-state electronics. He is best known for inventing the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effe ...
invented the metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). The MOSFET has achieved electronic hegemony and sustains the
large-scale integration An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
(LSI) of circuits underlying today's
information society An information society is a society where the usage, creation, distribution, manipulation and integration of information is a significant activity. Its main drivers are information and communication technologies, which have resulted in rapid inf ...
.


1960s

On October 1, 1960, the Kwajalein Field Station was announced as a location for the NIKE-ZEUS test program. Mr. R. W. Benfer was the first director to arrive shortly on October 5 for the program. Bell Labs designed many of the major system elements and conducted fundamental investigations of phase-controlled scanning antenna arrays. In December 1960, Ali Javan, PhD physicist from the university of Teheran, Iran with help by Rolf Seebach and his associates William Bennett and Donald Heriot, successfully operated the first gas laser, the first continuous-light laser, operating at an unprecedented accuracy and color purity. In 1962, the
electret microphone An electret microphone is a type of electrostatic capacitor-based microphone, which eliminates the need for a polarizing power supply by using a permanently charged material. An ''electret'' is a stable dielectric material with a permanently em ...
was invented by Gerhard M. Sessler and James E. West. Also in 1962, John R. Pierce's vision of
communications satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth ...
s was realized by the launch of Telstar. On July 10, 1962, the Telstar spacecraft was launched into orbit by NASA and it was designed and built by Bell Laboratories. The first worldwide television broadcast was July 23, 1962 with a press conference by President Kennedy. In Spring 1964, the building of an electronic switching systems center was planned at Bell Laboratories near Naperville, Illinois. The building in 1966 would be called Indian Hill, and development work from former electronic switching organization at Holmdel and Systems Equipment Engineering organization would occupy the laboratory with engineers from Western Electric Hawthorne Works. Scheduled for work were about 1,200 people when completed in 1966, and peaked at 11,000 before October 2001 Lucent Technologies downsizing occurred. In 1964, the
carbon dioxide laser The carbon-dioxide laser (CO2 laser) was one of the earliest gas lasers to be developed. It was invented by Kumar Patel of Bell Labs in 1964 and is still one of the most useful types of laser. Carbon-dioxide lasers are the highest-power contin ...
was invented by Kumar Patel and the discovery/operation of the Nd:YAG laser was demonstrated by J.E. Geusic ''et al.'' Experiments by
Myriam Sarachik Myriam Paula Sarachik (August 8, 1933October 7, 2021) was a Belgian-born American experimental physicist who specialized in low-temperature solid state physics. From 1996, she was a distinguished professor of physics at the City College of New ...
provided the first data that confirmed the
Kondo effect In physics, the Kondo effect describes the scattering of conduction electrons in a metal due to magnetic impurities, resulting in a characteristic change i.e. a minimum in electrical resistivity with temperature. The cause of the effect was fi ...
. The research of Philip W. Anderson into electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems led to improved understanding of metals and insulators for which he was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
in 1977. In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the
cosmic microwave background In Big Bang cosmology the cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR) is electromagnetic radiation that is a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all spac ...
, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978. Frank W. Sinden, Edward E. Zajac,
Ken Knowlton Kenneth Charles Knowlton (June 6, 1931 – June 16, 2022) was an American computer graphics pioneer, artist, mosaicist and portraitist. In 1963, while working at Bell Labs, he developed the BEFLIX programming language for creating bitmap comput ...
, and
A. Michael Noll A. Michael Noll (born 1939, Newark, New Jersey) is an American engineer, and professor emeritus at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He served as dean of the Annenberg School from 1992 t ...
made computer-animated movies during the early to mid-1960s.
Ken Knowlton Kenneth Charles Knowlton (June 6, 1931 – June 16, 2022) was an American computer graphics pioneer, artist, mosaicist and portraitist. In 1963, while working at Bell Labs, he developed the BEFLIX programming language for creating bitmap comput ...
invented the computer animation language
BEFLIX The name derives from a combination of ''Bell Flicks''. Ken Knowlton used BEFLIX to create animated films for educational and engineering purposes. He also collaborated with the artist Stan Vanderbeek at Bell Labs to create a series of computer-ani ...
. The first digital computer art was created in 1962 by Noll. In 1966,
orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing In telecommunications, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a type of digital transmission and a method of encoding digital data on multiple carrier frequencies. OFDM has developed into a popular scheme for wideband digital comm ...
(OFDM), a key technology in wireless services, was developed and patented by R. W. Chang. In December 1966, the New York City site was sold and became the
Westbeth Artists Community Westbeth Artists Housing is a nonprofit housing and commercial complex dedicated to providing affordable living and working space for artists and arts organizations in New York City. The complex comprises the full city block bounded by West, Be ...
complex. In 1968,
molecular beam epitaxy Molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) is an epitaxy method for thin-film deposition of single crystals. MBE is widely used in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, including transistors, and it is considered one of the fundamental tools for the dev ...
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,
Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He is most well-known for creating the C (programming language), C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix ...
and
Ken Thompson Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943) is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system. He also invented the B programmi ...
created the computer operating system
UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
for the support of telecommunication switching systems as well as general-purpose computing. Also, in 1969, the
charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD) was invented by
Willard Boyle Willard Sterling Boyle, (August 19, 1924May 7, 2011) was a Canadian physicist. He was a pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm he h ...
and
George E. Smith George Elwood Smith (born May 10, 1930) is an American scientist, applied physicist, and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device (CCD). He was awarded a one-quarter share in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semico ...
, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009. From 1969 to 1971,
Aaron Marcus Aaron Marcus (born 22 May 1943) is an American user-interface and information-visualization designer, as well as a computer graphics artist. Biography Marcus was always interested in both science and technology as well as visual communication ...
, the first graphic designer involved with computer graphics, researched, designed, and programmed a prototype interactive page-layout system for the Picturephone.


1970s

The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the
personal computing A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...
revolution. The 1970s also saw a major central office technology evolve from crossbar electromechanical relay-based technology and discrete transistor logic to Bell Labs-developed thick film hybrid and
transistor–transistor logic Transistor–transistor logic (TTL) is a logic family built from bipolar junction transistors. Its name signifies that transistors perform both the logic function (the first "transistor") and the amplifying function (the second "transistor"), as o ...
(TTL), stored program-controlled switching systems; 1A/ #4 TOLL Electronic Switching Systems (ESS) and 2A Local Central Offices produced at the Bell Labs Naperville and Western Electric Lisle, Illinois facilities. This technology evolution dramatically reduced floor space needs. The new ESS also came with its own diagnostic software that needed only a switchman and several frame technicians to maintain. About 1970, the coax-22 cable was developed by Bell Labs. This coax cable with 22-strands allowed a total capacity of 132,000 phone calls. Previously, there was a 12-strand coax cable used for "L" carrier systems. Both these types of cables were manufactured at Western Electrics' Baltimore Works facility on machines designed by a Western Electric Senior development engineer. In 1970,
A. Michael Noll A. Michael Noll (born 1939, Newark, New Jersey) is an American engineer, and professor emeritus at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He served as dean of the Annenberg School from 1992 t ...
invented a tactile, force-feedback system, coupled with interactive stereoscopic computer display. In 1971, an improved task priority system for computerized
telephone exchange telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syste ...
switching systems for telephone traffic was invented by
Erna Schneider Hoover Erna Schneider Hoover (born June 19, 1926) is an American mathematician notable for inventing a computerized telephone switching method which "revolutionized modern communication" according to several reports. It prevented system overloads by mon ...
, who received one of the first
software patent A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm. Background A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time ...
s for it. In 1972,
Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He is most well-known for creating the C (programming language), C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix ...
developed the compiled programming language C as a replacement for the interpreted language B, which was then used in a
worse is better Worse is better (also called the New Jersey style) is a term conceived by Richard P. Gabriel in an essay of the same name to describe the dynamics of software acceptance. It refers to the argument that software quality does not necessarily increa ...
rewrite of UNIX. Also, the language AWK was designed and implemented by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and
Brian Kernighan Brian Wilson Kernighan (; born 1942) is a Canadian computer scientist. He worked at Bell Labs and contributed to the development of Unix alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan's name became widely known through co- ...
of Bell Laboratories. Also in 1972, Marc Rochkind invented the
Source Code Control System Source Code Control System (SCCS) is a version control system designed to track changes in source code and other text files during the development of a piece of software. This allows the user to retrieve any of the previous versions of the origin ...
. In 1976,
optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass ( silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair Hair is a protein filament that grows ...
systems were first tested in
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...
and in 1980, the first single-chip
32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculati ...
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...
, the
Bellmac 32 The Bellmac 32 is a microprocessor developed by Bell Labs' processor division in 1980, implemented using CMOS technology and was the first microprocessor that could move 32 bits in one clock cycle. The microprocessor contains 150,000 transistors ...
A was demonstrated. It went into production in 1982.


1980s

During the 1980s, the operating system ''
Plan 9 from Bell Labs Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system which originated from the Computing Science Research Center (CSRC) at Bell Labs in the mid-1980s and built on UNIX concepts first developed there in the late 1960s. Since 2000, Plan 9 has be ...
'' was developed extending the UNIX model. Also, the
Radiodrum The Radiodrum or radio-baton is a musical instrument played in three-dimensional space using two mallets (snare drum sticks with wires). It was developed at Bell Labs in the 1980s (and patented), originally to be a three-dimensional computer mou ...
, an electronic music instrument played in three space dimensions, was invented. In 1980, the TDMA digital cellular telephone technology was patented. The launching of the Bell Labs Fellows Award started in 1982 to recognize and honor scientists and engineers who have made outstanding and sustained R&D contributions at AT&T with a level of distinction. As of the 2021 inductees, only 336 people have received the honor. In 1982,
fractional quantum Hall effect The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of e^2/h. It is a property of a collective state in which elec ...
was discovered by
Horst Störmer Horst may refer to: Science * Horst (geology), a raised fault block bounded by normal faults or graben People * Horst (given name) * Horst (surname) * ter Horst, Dutch surname * van der Horst, Dutch surname Places Settlements Germany * Horst ...
and former Bell Laboratories researchers
Robert B. Laughlin Robert Betts Laughlin (born November 1, 1950) is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. Along with Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University and Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton Universi ...
and Daniel C. Tsui; they consequently won a Nobel Prize in 1998 for the discovery. In 1984, the first photoconductive antennas for picosecond electromagnetic radiation were demonstrated by Auston and others. This type of antenna became an important component in terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. In 1984, Karmarkar's algorithm for linear programming was developed by mathematician
Narendra Karmarkar Narendra Krishna Karmarkar (born Circa 1956) is an Indian Mathematician. Karmarkar developed Karmarkar's algorithm. He is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher. He invented one of the first provably polynomial time algorithms for linear pro ...
. Also in 1984, a divestiture agreement signed in 1982 with the American Federal government forced the break-up of AT&T:
Bellcore iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...
(now
iconectiv iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...
) was split off from Bell Laboratories to provide the same R&D functions for the newly created local exchange carriers. AT&T also was limited to using the Bell trademark only in association with Bell Laboratories. ''Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.'' became a wholly owned company of the new
AT&T Technologies AT&T Technologies, Inc., was created by AT&T in 1983 in preparation for the breakup of the Bell System, which became effective as of January 1, 1984. It assumed the corporate charter of Western Electric Co., Inc. History Creation AT&T (origi ...
unit, the former Western Electric. The 5ESS Switch was developed during this transition. In 1985,
laser cooling Laser cooling includes a number of techniques in which atoms, molecules, and small mechanical systems are cooled, often approaching temperatures near absolute zero. Laser cooling techniques rely on the fact that when an object (usually an atom) ...
was used to slow and manipulate atoms by
Steven Chu Steven ChuAMPL AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) is an algebraic modeling language to describe and solve high-complexity problems for large-scale mathematical computing (i.e., large-scale optimization and scheduling-type problems). It was developed ...
, was developed by
Robert Fourer Robert Fourer (born September 2, 1950) is a scientist working in the area of operations research and management science. He is currently President of AMPL Optimization, Inc and is Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering and Management Science ...
, David M. Gay and Brian Kernighan at Bell Laboratories. Also in 1985, Bell Laboratories was awarded the
National Medal of Technology The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...
"For contribution over decades to modern communication systems". In 1985, the programming language
C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
had its first commercial release.
Bjarne Stroustrup Bjarne Stroustrup (; ; born 30 December 1950) is a Danish computer scientist, most notable for the invention and development of the C++ programming language. As of July 2022, Stroustrup is a professor of Computer Science at Columbia University ...
started developing C++ at Bell Laboratories in 1979 as an extension to the original C language. Arthur Ashkin invented optical tweezers that grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers. A major breakthrough came in 1987, when Ashkin used the tweezers to capture living bacteria without harming them. He immediately began studying biological systems using the optical tweezers, which are now widely used to investigate the machinery of life. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2018) for his work involving optical tweezers and their application to biological systems. In 1988, TAT-8 became the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable. Bell Labs in Freehold, NJ developed the 1.3-micron fiber, cable, splicing, laser detector, and 280 Mbit/s repeater for 40,000 telephone-call capacity. In the late 1980s, realizing that voiceband modems were approaching the Shannon limit on bit rate, Richard D. Gitlin, Jean-Jacques Werner, and their colleagues pioneered a major breakthrough by inventing DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and creating the technology that enabled megabit transmission on installed copper telephone lines, thus facilitating the broadband era.


1990s

In May 1990, Ronald Snare was named AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow, for “Singular contributions to the development of the
common-channel signaling In telecommunication, common-channel signaling (CCS), or common-channel interoffice signaling (CCIS), is the transmission of control information ''( signaling)'' via a separate channel than that used for the messages, The signaling channel usually ...
network and the signal transfer points globally.” This system began service in the United States in 1978. Bell Labs Vice President Donald Leonard knew first-hand Mr. Snare’s accomplishments and knowledge over many years of Mr. Snare’s technical work and consultations. Vice President Leonard nominated and sponsored Mr. Snare for the Fellow Award recognition. Among this inductee, awards were presented to several others for accomplishments in other technical fields during the ceremony. In the early 1990s, approaches to increase
modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...
speeds to 56K were explored at Bell Labs, and early patents were filed in 1992 by Ender Ayanoglu, Nuri R. Dagdeviren and their colleagues. In 1992 Jack Salz, Jack Winters and Richard D. Gitlin provided the foundational technology to demonstrate that adaptive antenna arrays at the transmitter and receiver can substantially increase both the reliability (via diversity) and capacity (via spatial multiplexing) of wireless systems without expanding the bandwidth. Subsequently, the BLAST system proposed by Gerard Foschini and colleagues dramatically expanded the capacity of wireless systems. This technology, known today as MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), was a significant factor in the standardization, commercialization, performance improvement, and spectacular growth of cellular and wireless LAN systems. In 1994, the quantum cascade laser was invented by
Federico Capasso Federico Capasso (born 1949, Rome, Italy), a prominent applied physicist, was one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University. He has co-authored over ...
,
Alfred Cho Alfred Yi Cho (; born July 10, 1937) is a Chinese-American electrical engineer, inventor, and optical engineer. He is the Adjunct Vice President of Semiconductor Research at Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs. He is known as the "father of molecular be ...
, Jerome Faist and their collaborators. Also in 1994,
Peter Shor Peter Williston Shor (born August 14, 1959) is an American professor of applied mathematics at MIT. He is known for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially f ...
devised his quantum factorization algorithm. In 1996, SCALPEL electron
lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
, which prints features atoms wide on microchips, was invented by Lloyd Harriott and his team. The operating system Inferno, an update of Plan 9, was created by Dennis Ritchie with others, using the then-new concurrent programming language
Limbo In Catholic theology, Limbo (Latin '' limbus'', edge or boundary, referring to the edge of Hell) is the afterlife condition of those who die in original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the Damned. Medieval theologians of Western Euro ...
. A high performance database engine (Dali) was developed which became DataBlitz in its product form. In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named
Lucent Technologies Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business u ...
. AT&T retained a small number of researchers who made up the staff of the newly created
AT&T Labs AT&T Labs is the research & development division of AT&T, the telecommunications company. It employs some 1,800 people in various locations, including: Bedminster NJ; Middletown, NJ; Manhattan, NY; Warrenville, IL; Austin, TX; Dallas, TX; Atl ...
. In 1997, the smallest then-practical transistor (60
nanometer 330px, Different lengths as in respect to the molecular scale. The nanometre (international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: nm) or nanometer (American and British English spelling differences#-re, ...
s, 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first optical router was invented.


2000s

2000 was an active year for the Laboratories, in which
DNA machine A DNA machine is a molecular machine constructed from DNA. Research into DNA machines was pioneered in the late 1980s by Nadrian Seeman and co-workers from New York University. DNA is used because of the numerous biological tools already found in ...
prototypes were developed; progressive geometry compression algorithm made widespread 3-D communication practical; the first electrically powered
organic laser Organic lasers use an organic (carbon based) material as the gain medium. The first organic laser was the liquid dye laser. These lasers use laser dye solutions as their gain media. Organic lasers are inherently tunable and when configured as o ...
was invented; a large-scale map of cosmic
dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ...
was compiled; and the F-15 (material), an organic material that makes plastic transistors possible, was invented. In 2002, physicist Jan Hendrik Schön was fired after his work was found to contain fraudulent data. It was the first known case of fraud at Bell Labs. In 2003, the New Jersey Institute of Technology Biomedical Engineering Laboratory was created at
Murray Hill, New Jersey Murray Hill is an unincorporated community located within portions of both Berkeley Heights and New Providence, located in Union County in northern New Jersey, United States. It is the longtime central location of Bell Labs (part of Nokia s ...
. In 2004, Lucent Technologies awarded two women the prestigious Bell Labs Fellow Award. Magaly Spector, a director in INS/Network Systems Group, was awarded for "sustained and exceptional scientific and technological contributions in
solid-state physics Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how th ...
, III-V material for semiconductor lasers,
Gallium Arsenide Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated c ...
integrated circuits, and the quality and reliability of products used in high speed optical transport systems for next generation high bandwidth communication." Eve Varma, a technical manager in MNS/Network Systems Group, was awarded for her citation in "sustained contributions to digital and
optical networking Optical networking is a means of communication that uses signals encoded in light to transmit information in various types of telecommunications networks. These include limited range Local area network, local-area networks (LAN) or Wide area networ ...
, including architecture, synchronization, restoration, standards, operations and control." In 2005,
Jeong H. Kim Jeong Hun Kim ( ko, 김종훈; born August 13, 1960) is a South Korean-born American academic, businessman, and entrepreneur in the technology industry. In 2004, Kim was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions t ...
, former President of Lucent's Optical Network Group, returned from academia to become the President of Bell Laboratories. In April 2006, Bell Laboratories' parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with Alcatel. On December 1, 2006, the merged company,
Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...
, began operations. This deal raised concerns in the United States, where Bell Laboratories works on defense contracts. A separate company, LGS Innovations, with an American board was set up to manage Bell Laboratories' and Lucent's sensitive U.S. government contracts. In March 2019, LGS Innovations was purchased by
CACI CACI International Inc. (originally California Analysis Center, Inc., then Consolidated Analysis Center, Inc.) is an American multinational professional services and information technology company headquartered in Northern Virginia. CACI prov ...
. In December 2007, it was announced that the former Lucent Bell Laboratories and the former Alcatel Research and Innovation would be merged into one organization under the name of Bell Laboratories. This is the first period of growth following many years during which Bell Laboratories progressively lost manpower due to layoffs and spin-offs making the company shut down briefly. In February 2008, Alcatel-Lucent continued the Bell Laboratories tradition of awarding the prestigious award for outstanding technical contributors. Martin J. Glapa, a former chief Technical Officer of Lucent's Cable Communications Business Unit and Director of Advanced Technologies, was presented by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs President Jeong H. Kim with the 2006 Bell Labs Fellow Award in
Network Architecture Network architecture is the design of a computer network. It is a framework for the specification of a network's physical components and their functional organization and configuration, its operational principles and procedures, as well as commun ...
, Network Planning, and Professional Services with particular focus in Cable TV Systems and
Broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
Services having "significant resulting Alcatel-Lucent commercial successes." Glapa is a patent holder and has co-written the 2004 technical paper called "Optimal Availability & Security For Voice Over Cable Networks" and co-authored the 2008 "Impact of bandwidth demand growth on HFC networks" published by IEEE. As of July 2008, however, only four scientists remained in physics research, according to a report by the scientific journal ''Nature''. On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas, including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software. In 2009, Willard Boyle and George Smith were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention and development of the
charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD).


2010s

Gee Rittenhouse, former Head of Research, returned from his position as chief operating officer of Alcatel-Lucent's Software, Services, and Solutions business in February 2013, to become the 12th President of Bell Labs. On November 4, 2013, Alcatel-Lucent announced the appointment of
Marcus Weldon Marcus Weldon (born 25 July 1968) was the 13th President of Bell Labs. He also served as the Corporate Chief Technology Officer of Nokia. Education Weldon won a scholarship (bursary) to the Bedford Modern School, which he attended until the a ...
as President of Bell Labs. His stated charter was to return Bell Labs to the forefront of innovation in
Information and communications technology Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications ( telephone lines and wireless signals) and computer ...
by focusing on solving the key industry challenges, as was the case in the great Bell Labs innovation eras in the past. In July 2014, Bell Labs announced it had broken "the broadband Internet speed record" with a new technology dubbed XG-FAST that promises 10 gigabits per second transmission speeds. In 2014, Eric Betzig shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in super-resolved fluorescence microscopy which he began pursuing while at Bell Labs in the Semiconductor Physics Research Department. On April 15, 2015,
Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion. Their first day of combined operations was January 14, 2016. In September 2016, Nokia Bell Labs, along with
Technische Universität Berlin The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...
, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the
Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied science, applied and Natural sci ...
achieved a data rate of one terabit per second by improving transmission capacity and spectral efficiency in an optical communications field trial with a new modulation technique. In 2018,
Arthur Ashkin Arthur Ashkin (September 2, 1922 – September 21, 2020) was an American scientist and Nobel laureate who worked at Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies. Ashkin has been considered by many as the father of optical tweezers, "LaserFest – t ...
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" which was developed at Bell Labs in the 1980s. In December 2019, Nokia announced the 2019 Bell Labs Fellows award recipients and citations: * Kendall William Harvey, groundbreaking innovation in and sustained contribution to advanced software for IP routing systems. * Kari Juhani Järvinen, developing outstanding audio technologies and successfully driving them into key standards (from GSM to UMTS to LTE and towards 5G), with significant impact on Nokia business. * Suresh Kalyanasundaram, outstanding contributions to cellular radio performance, from new physical layer algorithms to scheduler design. * Thomas Pfeiffer, advancing research and industrialization of optical access technologies and architectures. * Kurt Pynaert, passionate technology leadership, engineering and innovation contributing to Nokia's Fixed Access and End-to-End Solutions business. * Roland Ryf, groundbreaking optical designs and experimental results that have advanced Nokia's optical products and technical reputation. * Cinzia Sartori, highly impactful and sustained contributions to system architecture, network slicing and self-organizing networks in end-to-end mobile networks. * Lieven Trappeniers, sustained contributions in social communications, streaming media management, IoT systems and data analytics.


2020s

In 2020, Alfred Aho and
Jeffrey Ullman Jeffrey David Ullman (born November 22, 1942) is an American computer scientist and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University. His textbooks on compilers (various editions are popularly known as the d ...
shared the Turing Award for their work on compilers, starting with their tenure at Bell Labs during 1967–69. In December 2020, Nokia announced the 2020 Bell Labs Fellows award recipients and citations: * Fred Buchali, fundamental and sustained contributions to high-baud-rate systems and digital signal processing for optical transmission systems. * Devaki Chandramouli, seminal contributions to several generations of mobile network technologies and demonstrating excellence in leading technology development in industry standards bodies. * Giancarlo Gavioli, creation of industry-leading optical networks solutions and seminal contributions in communication theory and algorithmic development and dense integrated digital circuit implementation. * Jani Lainema, developing outstanding video technologies and driving those into the dominant global standards. * Klaus Ingemann Pedersen, outstanding contributions to radio resource management research and holistic end-to-end system-level performance modeling and analysis.  * Jorge Rabadan, consistent and sustained contribution to the development and standardization of Virtual Private Network technologies. * Shahriar Shahramian, seminal contributions to the field of mmWave integrated circuits and architectures with significant impact on wireless communication systems. On, November 16, 2021, Nokia presented the 2021 Bell Labs Fellows Award Ceremony, six new members (Igor Curcio, Matthew Andrews, Bjorn Jelonnek, Ed Harstead, Gino Dion, Esa Tiirola) held at Nokia Batvik Mansion, Finland.


Nobel Prizes, Turing Awards

Nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories. * 1937: Clinton J. Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter. * 1956:
John Bardeen John Bardeen (; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the tra ...
,
Walter H. Brattain Walter Houser Brattain (; February 10, 1902 – October 13, 1987) was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. They shared the ...
, and
William Shockley William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointl ...
received the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the first
transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
s. * 1977: Philip W. Anderson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing an improved understanding of the electronic structure of glass and magnetic materials. * 1978:
Arno A. Penzias Arno Allan Penzias (; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang t ...
and Robert W. Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovering
cosmic microwave background radiation In Big Bang cosmology the cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR) is electromagnetic radiation that is a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all space ...
, a nearly uniform glow that fills the
Universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the univers ...
in the microwave band of the radio spectrum. * 1997:
Steven Chu Steven ChuHorst Störmer Horst may refer to: Science * Horst (geology), a raised fault block bounded by normal faults or graben People * Horst (given name) * Horst (surname) * ter Horst, Dutch surname * van der Horst, Dutch surname Places Settlements Germany * Horst ...
, Robert Laughlin, and
Daniel Tsui Daniel Chee Tsui (, born February 28, 1939) is a Chinese-born American physicist, Nobel laureate, and the Arthur Legrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus, at Princeton University. Tsui's areas of research include electrical pro ...
, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering and explaining the
fractional quantum Hall effect The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of e^2/h. It is a property of a collective state in which elec ...
. * 2009:
Willard S. Boyle Willard Sterling Boyle, (August 19, 1924May 7, 2011) was a Canadian physicist. He was a pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm he h ...
,
George E. Smith George Elwood Smith (born May 10, 1930) is an American scientist, applied physicist, and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device (CCD). He was awarded a one-quarter share in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semico ...
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Charles K. Kao. Boyle and Smith were cited for inventing
charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD) semiconductor imaging sensors. * 2014: Eric Betzig shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in super-resolved fluorescence microscopy which he began pursuing while at Bell Labs. * 2018:
Arthur Ashkin Arthur Ashkin (September 2, 1922 – September 21, 2020) was an American scientist and Nobel laureate who worked at Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies. Ashkin has been considered by many as the father of optical tweezers, "LaserFest – t ...
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" which was developed at Bell Labs. The
Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
has been won five times by Bell Labs researchers. * 1968:
Richard Hamming Richard Wesley Hamming (February 11, 1915 – January 7, 1998) was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer engineering and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code (which makes use of a ...
for his work on numerical methods, automatic coding systems, and error-detecting and error-correcting codes. * 1983:
Ken Thompson Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943) is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system. He also invented the B programmi ...
and
Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He is most well-known for creating the C (programming language), C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix ...
for their work on operating system theory, and for developing
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
. * 1986:
Robert Tarjan Robert Endre Tarjan (born April 30, 1948) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is the discoverer of several graph algorithms, including Tarjan's off-line lowest common ancestors algorithm, and co-inventor of both splay trees ...
with
John Hopcroft John Edward Hopcroft (born October 7, 1939) is an American theoretical computer scientist. His textbooks on theory of computation (also known as the Cinderella book) and data structures are regarded as standards in their fields. He is the IBM P ...
, for fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures. * 2018:
Yann LeCun Yann André LeCun ( , ; originally spelled Le Cun; born 8 July 1960) is a French computer scientist working primarily in the fields of machine learning, computer vision, mobile robotics and computational neuroscience. He is the Silver Professo ...
and
Yoshua Bengio Yoshua Bengio (born March 5, 1964) is a Canadian computer scientist, most noted for his work on artificial neural networks and deep learning. He is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the Université de ...
shared the Turing Award with
Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 6 December 1947) is a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, most noted for his work on a ...
for their work in Deep Learning. * 2020: Alfred Aho and
Jeffrey Ullman Jeffrey David Ullman (born November 22, 1942) is an American computer scientist and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University. His textbooks on compilers (various editions are popularly known as the d ...
shared the Turing Award for their work on Compilers.


Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award

The
Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
has been won five times by Bell Labs: one under Lucent Technologies, one under Alcatel-Lucent, and three under Nokia. * 1997: Primetime Engineering Emmy Award for "work on digital television as part of the HDTV Grand Alliance." * 2013: Technology and Engineering Emmy for its "Pioneering Work in Implementation and Deployment of Network DVR" * 2016: Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for the pioneering invention and deployment of fiber-optic cable. * 2020: Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for the CCD (
charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
) was crucial in the development of television, allowing images to be captured digitally for recording transmission. * 2021: Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for the "ISO Base Media File Format standardization, in which our multimedia research unit has played a major role." The inventions of fiber-optics and research done in digital television and media File Format were under former AT&T Bell Labs ownership. The
Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...
has been won once by Bell Labs under Alcatel-Lucent. * 2006: Technical GRAMMY® Award for outstanding technical contributions to the recording field. The
Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
has been won once by E. C. Wente and Bell Labs. * 1937: Scientific or Technical Award (Class II) for their multi-cellular high-frequency horn and receiver.


Publications

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Western Electric, and other Bell System companies issued numerous publications, such as local house organs, for corporate distribution, for the scientific and industry communities, and for the general public, including telephone subscribers. The Bell Laboratories Record was a principal house organ, featuring general interest content such as corporate news, support staff profiles and events, reports of facilities upgrades, but also articles of research and development results written for technical or non-technical audiences. The publication commenced in 1925 with the founding of the laboratories. A prominent journal for the focussed dissemination of original or reprinted scientific research by Bell Labs engineers and scientists was the ''
Bell System Technical Journal The ''Bell Labs Technical Journal'' is the in-house scientific journal for scientists of Nokia Bell Labs, published yearly by the IEEE society. The managing editor is Charles Bahr. The journal was originally established as the ''Bell System Tech ...
'', started in 1922 by the AT&T Information Department. Bell researchers also published widely in industry journals. Some of these articles were reprinted by the Bell System as Monographs, consecutively issued starting in 1920. These reprints, numbering over 5000, comprise a catalog of Bell research over the decades. Research in the Monographs is aided by access to associated indexes, for monographs 1–1199, 1200-2850 (1958), 2851-4050 (1962), and 4051-4650 (1964). Essentially all of the landmark work done by Bell Labs is memorialized in one or more corresponding monographs. Examples include: * Monograph 1598 - Shannon, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1948 (reprinted from BSTJ). * Monograph 1659 - Bardeen and Brattain, Physical Principles Involved in Transistor Action, 1949 (reprinted from BSTJ). * Monograph 1757 - Hamming, Error Detecting and Error Correcting Codes, 1950 (reprinted from BSTJ). * Monograph 3289 - Pierce, Transoceanic Communications by Means of Satellite, 1959 (reprinted from Proc. I.R.E.). * Monograph 3345 - Schawlow & Townes, Infrared and Optical Masers, 1958 (reprinted from Physical Review).


Presidents


Notable alumni

* __ Nobel Prize * __
Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...


Educational films

AT&T had several short films that focused on the science and technology associated with telephony or inventions from Bell Labs or Bell System. Here is a list of short films with a description and significance. * "West of Chicago Indian Hill" (circa 1966) Film about towns pictured in Naperville area with schools, churches, medical & hospital facilities, recreation events and shopping areas. This was an effort to show life for employees and family of the future home of Bell Telephone Laboratories. There are glimpses of Western Electric supervising the construction of the Indian Hill building and a model. Planned to open in Fall 1966 for 1500 people and was produced by the Film Department at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Ending credits show Writer-Director was John P. Rimo, Cinematography by Tom Musca and Jim Canon of Double Sixteen Co. and Editor was Dick Gerendasy of Wilding Inc. * "Careers at Bell Laboratories" (1979) Recruiting video of careers at various locations and areas of telephony. Featured: Althea Ginn-TIRKS-(Piscataway), Gregory Chesson-Computer System Research Department-Developing Computer Networks-(Murray Hill), Chin-Sheng Chuang-Digital Signal Processing-(Holmdel), Kathy & Peter Hoppner-Develop Maintenance Programs for the 4ESS-Indian Hill Lab-(Naperville, IL), Philip Fair-Designer in the Residential Telephone Department-(Indianapolis, IND), Ray & Maria Bonachea-Supervise Program Administration and System Test for Switching Control Center System- (Columbus, Ohio), Michael Liberty-Digital Technology for Business Customers-(Denver, Colorado), Bill Blinn-Director of Technical Employment at Bell Labs-(Murray Hill) * "Microworld" (1980) BONUS EDITION, hosted by
William Shatner William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the ''Star Trek'' franchise, from his 1965 debut as the captain of the starship ''Enterpris ...
, An Owen Murphy Production Directed by Paul Cohen, Introduction by George Kupczak of the AT&T Archives and History Center, Microchip manufacturing process. * "Discovery" (1982) Holmdel Bell Labs 20th Anniversary documentary produced by the Holmdel Art Studio with historical aspects in a narrated slide show presentation. "This video, in addition to giving a clear, brief history of Bell Labs and the Holmdel complex, also provides good insight into the life of the Bell employee, not just in the work place but at social gatherings and in community outreach." * "Ready for Tomorrow for Today" (1988?) The AT&T Product Training Services Center, located in Dublin, Ohio, features the 5ESS network switch equipment. The presenter indicates the equipment first installation at Seneca, Illinois that pioneered switching services. The switch can be used for local, toll, and tandem offices. The equipment can handle 100,000 lines and 300,000 peak busy hour calls. The modules that make up the 5ESS switch are administrative (AM,) switching (SM,) communication (CM,) remote switching (RSM,) and optically remote (ORM.)--->(The equipment was designed by Bell Labs)" * "Orchestra" (1991) "A classical music segment featured in "Live from Bell Labs, "a children's science series airing on PBS stations nationwide. In Orchestra, leading scientists and physicists from AT&T Bell Laboratories, playing along with professional musicians, perform a movement from a symphony. Short interviews of the scientist-musicians describing their work and its relationship to music are featured throughout the performance." We have Jay Wilpon featured. Look for him and see his instrument and see what was his job! Thanks to our leading musician, John Koch featured as percussion and component engineer. It took me a while to go through the names in a pause and play of the video and back and forth between the group and the video. I searched and see featured at 04:34 the famous, Norm R Tiedemann, another talented individual. * "Live from AT&T Bell Laboratories" (Spring 1991, Episode 1) David Heil and
Arno Penzias Arno Allan Penzias (; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang ...
present scientific and technological ideas or products segments by renowned research scientists to teachers and students in a live PBS showing via satellite. Optical Computing Research Department, Molecular Beam Epitaxy, Speech Activated Manipulator (SAM) robotic arm, Gor-Don Robot from InfoQuest, Whippany
Jesse Russell Jesse Eugene Russell (born April 26, 1948) is an American inventor. He was trained as an electrical engineer at Tennessee State University and Stanford University, and worked in the field of wireless communication for over 20 years. He holds pate ...
Cellular Test Van, office messaging, Jay Wilpon speech recognition for flight reservation system, Alan Wong lasers for optical computers, and AT&T Learning Network with electronic mail. * "Live from AT&T Bell Laboratories" (1992, Episode 2) David Heil and Arno Penzias present scientific and technological ideas or products segments by renowned research scientists to teachers and students in a live PBS showing. Student audience linked by two way satellite in Texas and Wisconsin, and seen around the globe by via Air Forces Television. Greg Blonder-fiber optics, Y. K. Chen and Wing Mu-fastest lasers, undersea cables, Mohammed Islam-logical gate, Kelley Siegal-industrial engineer printed circuit boards, Wayne Knox-infrared laser, Holmdel Janice Marshall-chemical engineer, Ron Graham-Mathematician, Bill Bennett-Telstar 4, Astronaut
Terry Hart Terry Jonathan "T.J." Hart (born October 27, 1946) is an American mechanical and electrical engineer, a retired United States Air Force lieutenant colonel and pilot, and former NASA astronaut. Education Hart was born on October 27, 1946, in Pi ...
-engineer on Telstar 4, Senator David Inouye, Jim West-Anechoic Chamber, Bob Lucky-Communication Sciences Division, Dr. Walter Massey-Director National Science Foundation. * "Live from AT&T Bell Laboratories" (Spring 1993, Episode 3) Broadcast April 28, 1993, David Heil and Arno Penzias present scientific and technological ideas or products segments by renowned research scientist to teachers and students in a live PBS showing. Students in San Francisco Exploratorium and The Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, La Villette, Paris. Text-to-speech, EO communicator, microchips, clean-room, Kelley Purkey Siegal with Science High School students winning a US First Chairman's Award, Joel de Rosnay-Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, Jugglers Tim Furst and Rhys Thomas with Ron Graham-Mathematician, Guy Story-Scientist/Musician Computing Research and lead singer in music video, Ryshard Horowitz-photographer and Ilona Jones-Bell Labs Art Director-poster project digital photo montage (Penn/Teller and digital Karamazov Brothers.) Segments, "The Worm Turns," "Penn and Teller," "Fellowship," "Magic" Bell Labs music video, "Penn and Teller" performing magic with scientists. * "Live from AT&T Bell Laboratories" (Fall 1993, Episode 4) Broadcast September 29, 1993, David Heil and Arno Penzias present scientific and technological ideas or products segments by renowned research scientist to teachers and students in a live PBS showing. President Bill Clinton, former MTV VJ Martha Quinn, and Penn and Teller are featured. Segments have Bell Labs Research Director, Greg Blonder, Researcher Marcia Grabow, engineer Amy Puls, and Math professor Arlie Petters. (58 minutes VHS)


Programs

On May 20, 2014, Bell Labs announced the ''Bell Labs Prize'', a competition for innovators to offer proposals in information and communication technologies, with cash awards of up to $100,000 for the grand prize.


Bell Labs Technology Showcase

The Murray Hill campus features a exhibit, the Bell Labs Technology Showcase, showcasing the technological discoveries and developments at Bell Labs. The exhibit is located just off the main lobby and is open to the public.


See also

*
Bell Labs Holmdel Complex The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, in Holmdel Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States, functioned for 44 years as a research and development facility, initially for the Bell System and later Bell Labs. The centerpiece of the campus i ...
* ''
Bell Labs Technical Journal The ''Bell Labs Technical Journal'' is the in-house scientific journal for scientists of Nokia Bell Labs, published yearly by the IEEE society. The managing editor is Charles Bahr. The journal was originally established as the ''Bell System Tech ...
''—Published scientific journal of Bell Laboratories (1996–present) * '' Bell Labs Record'' * Industrial laboratory *
George Stibitz George Robert Stibitz (April 30, 1904 – January 31, 1995) was a Bell Labs researcher internationally recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer. He was known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s on the realization of Boolea ...
—Bell Laboratories engineer—"father of the modern digital computer" *
History of mobile phones The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network. While the transmission of speech by signal has a long history, the first devices that were wireless, mobile, and ...
—Bell Laboratories conception and development of cellular phones *
High speed photography High-speed photography is the science of taking pictures of very fast phenomena. In 1948, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) defined high-speed photography as any set of photographs captured by a camera capable of 69 ...
&
Wollensak Wollensak Optical was an American manufacturer of audio-visual products located in Rochester, New York. At the height of their popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, many brands of movie cameras came with a Wollensak Velostigmat lens. Wollensak reel- ...
—''Fastax'' high speed (rotating prism) cameras developed by Bell Labs *
Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL) is an American research and development facility based in Niskayuna, New York and dedicated to the support of the US Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. KAPL was instituted in 1946 under a contract between Gen ...
* Simplified Message Desk Interface *
Sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronization, synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decad ...
—''Westrex'' sound system for cinema films developed by Bell Labs * ''
TWX Magazine ''TWX'' was a trade magazine published by the Long Lines Department of AT&T Corporation. The magazine first appeared in June 1944 and was published sporadically, ceasing publication in March 1952 after 41 issues. ''TWX'' magazine took its name f ...
''—A short-lived trade periodical published by Bell Laboratories (1944–1952) *
Experiments in Art and Technology Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit and tax-exempt organization, was established in 1967 to develop collaborations between artists and engineers. The group operated by facilitating person-to-person contacts between artists and e ...
—A collaboration between artists and Bell Labs engineers & scientists to create new forms of art


References


Further reading

* Martin, Douglas
Ian M. Ross, a President at Bell Labs, Dies at 85
''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', March 16, 2013, p. A23 * *
Gleick, James James Gleick (; born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonficti ...
. '' The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood''. Vintage Books, 2012, 544 pages. .


External links

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Bell Works
the re-imagining of the historic former Bell Labs building in Holmdel, New Jersey
Timeline of discoveries as of 2006Nokia Bell-Labs Timeline

Bell Labs' Murray Hill anechoic chamber




* '' ttps://www.publicartinpublicplaces.info/bell-communications-1961-by-anthony-b-heinsbergen Bell Communications Around the Globe', public art sculpture, Los Angeles, California
The Idea Factory
a video interview with Jon Gertner, author of " The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by Dave Iverson of
KQED-FM KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a NPR-member radio station in San Francisco, California. Its parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns its television partners, both of which are PBS member outlets: KQED (channel 9) and KQEH (channel 54). Stu ...
Public Radio, San Francisco {{Coord, 40.683404, -74.400744, type:landmark, display=title Alcatel-Lucent Bell System Berkeley Heights, New Jersey Companies based in Union County, New Jersey Computer science institutes in the United States Computer science research organizations Former AT&T subsidiaries History of telecommunications in the United States National Medal of Technology recipients New Providence, New Jersey Nokia Research institutes in New Jersey v