Bell Labs - Wikipedia

Bell Labs - Wikipedia
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74°24′01″W
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Research and scientific development company
For the building, see
Bell Laboratories Building
. For the part that continues under AT&T, see
AT&T Labs
Nokia Bell Labs
Logo since 2023
Bell Labs' headquarters in
Murray Hill, New Jersey
in 2012
Company type
Subsidiary
Industry
Telecommunication, information technology,
material science
Founded
January 1925
; 101 years ago
1925-01
(as Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.)
Headquarters
Murray Hill, New Jersey
, U.S.
Parent
AT&T
and
Western Electric
(1925–1996)
Lucent Technologies
(1996–2006)
Alcatel-Lucent
(2006–2016)
Nokia
(2016–present)
Subsidiaries
Nokia Shanghai Bell
Website
nokia
.com
/bell-labs
Nokia Bell Labs
commonly referred to as
Bell Labs
, is an American industrial
research and development
company owned by the
Finnish
technology company
Nokia
. With headquarters located in
Murray Hill, New Jersey
, the company operates several laboratories in the United States and around the world.
As a former subsidiary of the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company
(AT&T), Bell Labs and its researchers have been credited with the development of
radio astronomy
, the
transistor
, the
laser
, the
photovoltaic cell
, the
charge-coupled device
(CCD),
information theory
, the
Unix
operating system, and the
programming languages
C++
SNOBOL
AWK
AMPL
, and others, throughout the 20th century. Eleven
Nobel Prizes
and five
Turing Awards
have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the
Bell System
telephone conglomerate. The laboratory began operating in the late 19th century as the
Western Electric
Engineering Department, located at
463 West Street
in New York City. After years of advancing
telecommunication
innovations, the department was reformed into Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925 and placed under the shared ownership of Western Electric and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. In the 1960s, laboratory and company headquarters were moved to Murray Hill, New Jersey.
Its alumni
during this time include a plethora of world-renowned scientists and engineers.
With the
breakup of the Bell System
, Bell Labs became a subsidiary of
AT&T Technologies
in 1984, which resulted in a drastic decline in its funding.
In 1996, AT&T spun off AT&T Technologies, which was renamed to
Lucent Technologies
, using the Murray Hill site for headquarters. Bell Laboratories was split with
AT&T
retaining parts as
AT&T Laboratories
. In 2006, Lucent merged with French telecommunication company
Alcatel
to form
Alcatel-Lucent
, which was acquired by Nokia in 2016.
Origin and historical locations
edit
Bell's personal research after the telephone
edit
Bell's 1893
Volta Bureau
building in
Washington, D.C.
In 1880, when the
French government
awarded
Alexander Graham Bell
the
Volta Prize
of 50,000
francs
for the
invention of the telephone
(equivalent to about US$10,000 at the time, or about $350,000 now),
he used the award to fund the
Volta Laboratory
(also known as the "Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory") in
Washington, D.C.
in collaboration with
Sumner Tainter
and Bell's cousin
Chichester Bell
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 advancing the diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf.
This resulted in the founding of the Volta Bureau (
c.
1887
) at the Washington, D.C. home of his father, linguist
Alexander Melville Bell
. The carriage house there, at 1527 35th Street N.W., 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
in 1972.
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
edit
The Bell Patent Association was formed by
Alexander Graham Bell
, 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.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company and its own subsidiary company took control of American Bell and the Bell System by 1899.
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.
10
11
Formal organization and location changes
edit
The
Bell Laboratories Building
, built at 463 West Street in New York City in 1925
In 1896, Western Electric bought property at
463 West Street
to centralize the manufacturers and engineers which had been supplying AT&T with such technology as telephones,
telephone exchange
switches and transmission equipment.
During the early 20th century, several historically significant laboratories were established. In 1915, the first radio transmissions were made from a shack in
Montauk, Long Island
. That same year, tests were performed on the first transoceanic radio telephone at a house in
Arlington County, Virginia
. A radio reception laboratory was established in 1919 in the
Cliffwood
section of
Aberdeen Township, New Jersey
. Additionally for 1919, a transmission studies site was established in
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania
that built, in 1929, the coaxial conductor line for first tests of long-distance transmission in various frequencies.
12
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 and AT&T. The new company had 3600 engineers, scientists, and support staff. Its 400,000-square-foot (37,000 m
) space was expanded with a new building occupying about one quarter of a city block.
13
The first chairman of the board of directors was
John J. Carty
, AT&T's vice president, and the first president was
Frank B. Jewett
13
also a board member, who stayed there until 1940.
14
15
16
The operations were directed by E. B. Craft, executive vice-president, and formerly chief engineer at Western Electric.
In the early 1920s, a few outdoor facilities and radio communications development facilities were developed. In 1925, the test plot studies were established at
Gulfport, Mississippi
, where there were numerous telephone pole samples established for wood preservation. At the
Deal, New Jersey
location, work was done on ship-to-shore radio telephony. In 1926, in the
Whippany
section of
Hanover Township, New Jersey
, land was acquired and established for the development of a 50-kilowatt broadcast transmitter. In 1931, Whippany increased with 75 acres (30 ha) added from a nearby property. In 1928, a 15-acre (6.1 ha) site in
Chester Township, New Jersey
, was leased for outdoor tests, though the facility became inadequate for such purposes. In 1930, the Chester location required the purchase of an additional 85 acres (34 ha) of land to be used for a new outdoor plant development laboratory. Prior to Chester being established, a test plot was installed in
Limon, Colorado
in 1929, similar to the one in Gulfport. The three test plots at Gulfport, Limon, and Chester were outdoor facilities for preservatives and prolonging the use of telephone poles. Additionally, in 1929, a land expansion was done at the Deal Labs to 208 acres (84 ha). This added land increased the facility for radio transmission studies.
17
The beginning of 1930s, established three facilities with radio communications experiments and chemical aspects testing. By 1939, the
Summit, New Jersey
, chemical laboratory was nearly 10 years established in a three-story building conducted experiments in corrosion, using various fungicides tests on cables, metallic components, or wood. For 1929, land was purchased in
Holmdel Township, New Jersey
, for a radio reception laboratory to replace the
Cliffwood
location that had been in operation since 1919. In 1930, the Cliffwood location was ending its operations as Holmdel was established. Whereas, in 1930, a location in
Mendham Township, New Jersey
, was established to continue radio receiver developments farther from the Whippany location and eliminate transmitter interference at that facility with developments. The Mendham location worked on communication equipment and broadcast receivers. These devices were used for marine, aircraft, and police services as well as the location performed precision frequency-measuring apparatus, field strength measurements, and conducted radio interference.
18
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 Township
Crawford Hill
, the
Deal Test Site
Freehold
Lincroft
Long Branch
Middletown
Neptune Township
Princeton
Piscataway
Red Bank
Chester Township
, 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
and the Whippany site was purchased by
Bayer
19
).
The largest grouping of people in the company was in
Illinois
, 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
, Indiana;
Columbus, Ohio
North Andover, Massachusetts
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Reading, Pennsylvania
; and
Breinigsville, Pennsylvania
; Burlington, North Carolina (1950s–1970s, moved to Greensboro 1980s) and
Westminster, Colorado
. Since 2001, many of the former locations have been scaled down or closed.
The Old
Bell Labs Holmdel Complex
, located about 20 miles south of New York City, in
New Jersey
Bell's
Holmdel research and development lab
, a 1,900,000-square-foot (180,000 m
) structure set on 473 acres (191 ha), was closed in 2007. The mirrored-glass building was designed by
Eero Saarinen
. 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,
20
but several large tenants had announced plans to move in through 2016 and 2017.
21
22
Building Complex Location (code) information, past and present
edit
Crawford Hill-
Nokia
sold buildings, "Big Bang"
horn antenna
nearby
Holmdel- built in the 1920s as field test labs and in 1962, built this office
complex
. Alcatel-Lucent sold location
Indian Hill- built in 1966 under
AT&T
Murray Hill- built mid 1940s with expansions to this
AT&T
footprint
Whippany- 1940s military style buildings provided
radar
development
Whippany – was an
AT&T
location from the mid-1920s until 1996.
Lucent Technologies
from 1996 to 2006 and
Alcatel-Lucent
from 2006 to 2009 (closure). The buildings were sold and demolished in 2010, except for two buildings repurposed for Bayer.
Chester (CH) – North Road,
Chester Township, New Jersey
(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 Technologies donated land for park)
23
Crawford Hill (HOH) – Crawfords Corner Road,
Holmdel
, NJ (built 1930s, currently as exhibit and building sold,
horn antenna
used for "Big Bang" theory)
Red Hill (HR) – located at exit 114 on the Garden State Parkway (480 Red Hill Rd, Middletown, NJ), the building that formerly housed hundreds of Bell Labs researchers is now in use by
Memorial Sloan Kettering
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); provided office space for ~8000 workers in the 1980s (reaching a peak of ~9000 in 1982); prized glass building with hollow interior designed by
Eero Saarinen
; a 3-legged white water tower built to resemble a
transistor
marks the long entrance drive to this facility.
24
The three legs represent the Collector (C), Base (B), and Emitter (E) of a transistor.
25
26
27
Indian Hill (IH) – 2000 Naperville Road, Naperville, IL (built 1966, currently Nokia, developed switching technology and systems)
28
Indian Hill New (IHN) – 1960 Lucent Lane, Naperville, IL (built in 2000 by Lucent Technologies for growth of the Indian Hill Bell Labs complex.
29
The steel and glass designed, 613,620-square-foot (57,007 m
) building with 900 parking places, was sold by Nokia for $4.8 million in April 2023. The buyer, Franklin Partners, purchased the 41-acre (17 ha) site for warehousing but decisions were made to demolish the building for future approved planning. The pedestrian bridge to Indian Hill building was demolished as a separated company.
30
The conference room
31
and lobby scenes of the building
32
were filmed in July 2010, during Alcatel-Lucent ownership, for the Ron Howard film,
The Dilemma
.)
33
Indian Hill Park (IHP) – 200 Park Pl, Naperville, IL (Leased facility until Lucent Technologies consolidation to Indian Hill location.)
34
Indian Hill South (IX) – Naperville, IL (Leased facility until Lucent Technologies consolidation to Indian Hill location.)
35
Indian Hill West (IW) – Naperville, IL (Leased facility until Lucent Technologies consolidation to Indian Hill location.)
36
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
, several building sections demolished)
Network Software Center (NSC and/or NW) – 2500-2600 Warrenville Rd, Lisle, IL (Built in mid 1970s. Owned property under AT&T Bell Labs, then Lucent Technologies constructed an additional building in 2000s. During Alcatel-Lucent consolidation to Indian Hill location, the buildings were placed for sale and sold to
Navistar
in 2010.
37
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
, and in underwater sound,
Telstar 1
, wireless technologies)
28
List of Bell Labs (1974)
edit
Bell Lab's 1974 corporate directory listed 22 labs in the United States, located in:
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 [Missile Site Radar (MSR) Site]
Grand Forks-PAR – Cavalier, ND [Perimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR) Site]
Guilford Center – Greensboro, NC
Holmdel
– Holmdel, NJ
Indianapolis – Indianapolis, IN
Indian Hill – Naperville, IL
Kwajalein
– San Francisco, CA
38
39
40
41
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
List of Bell Labs (2024)
edit
Nokia Bell Labs' 2024 website showed 10 labs, located in:
42
Antwerp – (Copernicuslaan 50, 2018
Antwerp, Belgium
Budapest – (Skypark 8A, Bókay János utca 36–42, 1083,
Budapest, Hungary
Cambridge – (Broers Building, 21 J.J. Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
, CB3 0FA, United Kingdom)
Espoo – (Karaportti 3 FI-02610,
Espoo, Finland
Munich – (Werinherstrasse 91 81541,
Munich, Germany
Murray Hill – (600 Mountain Avenue,
Murray Hill, New Jersey
07974-0636) (Global Headquarters)
Oulu – (Kaapelitie 4, 90620
Oulu, Finland
Paris – (12 rue Jean Bart, 91300 Massy)
Paris-Saclay
, Nozay, France
Shanghai – (No.388 Ningqiao Road, Pudong Jinqiao,
Shanghai
201206 China
Stuttgart – (Magirusstraße 8, 70469
Stuttgart, Germany
Also listed as research locations without additional information was
Sunnyvale, California
, US and
Tampere, Finland
The
Naperville, Illinois
Bell Labs location near Chicago was considered the Chicago Innovation Center and hosted Nokia's second annual Algorithm World event in 2022.
43
Discoveries and developments
edit
This section
needs additional citations for
verification
Please help
improve this article
by
adding citations to reliable sources
in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
December 2018
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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
, the
transistor
, the
laser
information theory
, the operating system
Unix
, the programming languages
and
C++
solar cells
, the
charge-coupled device
(CCD), and many other optical, wireless, and wired communications technologies and systems.
1920s
edit
In 1924, Bell Labs physicist
Walter A. Shewhart
proposed the
control chart
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
(SPC): the use of statistically based tools and techniques to manage and improve processes. This was the origin of the modern quality control movement, including
Six Sigma
In 1926, the laboratories invented an early
synchronous-sound motion picture
system, in competition with
Fox Movietone
and
DeForest Phonofilm
44
In 1927, a Bell team headed by
Herbert E. Ives
successfully transmitted long-distance 128-line television images of
Secretary of Commerce
Herbert Hoover
from Washington to New York. In 1928 the
thermal noise
in a resistor was first measured by
John B. Johnson
, for which
Harry Nyquist
provided the theoretical analysis; this is now termed
Johnson-Nyquist noise
. During the 1920s, the
one-time pad
cipher
was invented by
Gilbert Vernam
and
Joseph Mauborgne
at the laboratories. Bell Labs'
Claude Shannon
later proved that it is unbreakable.
In 1928,
Harold Black
invented the negative feedback system commonly used in amplifiers. Later,
Harry Nyquist
analyzed Black's design rule for negative feedback. This work was published in 1932 and became known as the
Nyquist criterion
1930s
edit
Reconstruction of the directional antenna used in the discovery of radio emission of extraterrestrial origin by
Karl Guthe Jansky
at
Bell Telephone Laboratories
in 1932
In 1931, a foundation for
radio astronomy
was laid by
Karl Jansky
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
In 1931 and 1932, the labs made experimental high fidelity, long playing, and even stereophonic recordings of the
Philadelphia Orchestra
, conducted by
Leopold Stokowski
45
In 1933,
stereo signals
were transmitted live from
Philadelphia
to Washington, D.C.
In 1937, the
vocoder
, an electronic speech compression device, or codec, and the
Voder
, the first electronic
speech synthesizer
, 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
for the discovery of
electron diffraction
, which helped lay the foundation for
solid-state electronics
1940s
edit
A replica of the first
transistor
, a
point-contact
germanium
device, invented at Bell Laboratories in 1947
In the early 1940s, the
photovoltaic cell
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
visited the labs at this time, working on speech encryption and meeting
Claude Shannon
46
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
. 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
, arguably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by
John Bardeen
Walter Houser Brattain
, and
William Bradford Shockley
(who subsequently shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956). Also in 1947,
Douglas H. Ring
of Bell Labs introduced the idea of using hexagonal "cells" to reuse frequencies in mobile
radiotelephony
, laying the theoretical groundwork for modern
cellular networks
47
The same year,
Richard Hamming
invented
Hamming codes
for
error detection and correction
. For patent reasons, his result was not published until 1950.
In 1948, "
A Mathematical Theory of Communication
", one of the founding works in
information theory
, was published by
Claude Shannon
in the
Bell System Technical Journal
. It built in part on earlier work in the field by Bell researchers
Harry Nyquist
and
Ralph Hartley
, but went much further. 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
Calculators
edit
48
49
Model I: A
complex number calculator
, completed in 1939 and put into operation in 1940, for doing calculations of
complex numbers
Model II: Relay Computer / Relay Interpolator,
50
September 1943, for interpolating data points of flight profiles (needed for performance testing of a gun director).
51
This model introduced error detection (self checking).
52
53
Model III: Ballistic Computer,
54
55
June 1944, for calculations of ballistic trajectories.
Model IV: Error Detector Mark II, March 1945,
56
an improved ballistic computer.
Model V
57
General-purpose electromechanical computer, of which two were built, July 1946 and February 1947
58
56
59
Model VI
: 1949, an enhanced Model V.
citation needed
1950s
edit
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needs additional citations for
verification
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by
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The 1950s also saw developments based upon
information theory
. The central development was
binary code
systems. Efforts concentrated on the prime mission of supporting the Bell System with engineering advances, including the N-carrier system, TD
microwave radio relay
direct distance dialing
, E-
repeater
wire spring relay
, and the
Number Five Crossbar Switching System
In 1952,
William Gardner Pfann
revealed the method of
zone melting
, which enabled semiconductor purification and level doping.
In 1953,
Maurice Karnaugh
developed the
Karnaugh map
, used for managing of
Boolean algebraic
expressions.
In January 1954, Bell Labs built one of the first completely transistorized computer machines,
60
TRADIC
or Flyable TRADIC,
61
for the United States Air Force with 10,358 germanium point-contact diodes and 684 Bell Labs Type 1734 Type A cartridge transistors.
citation needed
The design team was led by electrical engineer Jean Howard Felker with James R. Harris and Louis C. Brown ("Charlie Brown") as the lead engineers on the project, which started in 1951.
62
The device took only 3 cubic-feet and consumed 100 watt power for its small and low powered design in comparison to the vacuum tube designs of the times. The device could be installed in a B-52 Stratofortress Bomber and had a performance up to one million logical operations a second. The flyable program used a Mylar sheet with punched holes, instead of the removable plugboard.
63
In 1954, the first modern
solar cell
was invented at Bell Laboratories.
64
The Bell Labs scientists that are credited for inventing
65
the solar cell are Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson.
66
In 1955,
Carl Frosch
and Lincoln Derick discovered semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide.
67
In 1956
TAT-1
, the first
transatlantic communications cable
to carry telephone conversations, 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
, one of the first computer programs to play
electronic music
Robert C. Prim
and
Joseph Kruskal
developed new
greedy algorithms
that revolutionized
computer network design
In 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors; the first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface. They showed that silicon dioxide insulated, protected silicon wafers and prevented dopants from diffusing into the wafer.
68
In 1958, a technical paper by
Arthur Schawlow
and
Charles Hard Townes
first described the
laser
Following Frosch and Derick research,
Mohamed Atalla
and
Dawon Kahng
proposed a silicon MOS transistor in 1959
69
and successfully demonstrated a working MOS device with their Bell Labs team in 1960.
70
71
Their team included E. E. LaBate and E. I. Povilonis who fabricated the device; M. O. Thurston, L. A. D’Asaro, and J. R. Ligenza who developed the diffusion processes, and H. K. Gummel and R. Lindner who characterized the device.
72
73
K. E. Daburlos and H. J. Patterson of Bell Laboratories continued on the work of C. Frosch and L. Derick, and developed a process similar to Hoerni's
planar process
about the same time.
74
J.R. Ligenza and W.G. Spitzer studied the mechanism of thermally grown oxides, fabricated a high quality Si/
SiO
stack and published their results in 1960.
75
76
77
1960s
edit
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.
78
The patent for the electret microphone, an invention by Gerhard Sessler and James West
Logo used from 1969 until 1983, featuring the icon designed by
Saul Bass
In December 1960,
Ali Javan
, PhD physicist from the University of Tehran, 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
was invented by
Gerhard M. Sessler
and
James E. West
. Also in 1962,
John R. Pierce
's vision of
communications satellites
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.
79
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.
80
In 1964, the
carbon dioxide laser
was invented by
Kumar Patel
and the discovery/operation of the
Nd:YAG laser
was demonstrated by Joseph E. Geusic
et al.
Experiments by
Myriam Sarachik
provided the first data that confirmed the
Kondo effect
81
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
in 1977.
82
In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the
cosmic microwave background
, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.
83
Frank W. Sinden, Edward E. Zajac,
Ken Knowlton
, and
A. Michael Noll
made computer-animated movies during the early to mid-1960s.
Ken Knowlton
invented the computer animation language
BEFLIX
. The first digital computer art was created in 1962 by Noll.
In 1966,
orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
(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
complex.
The charge-coupled device was invented by George E. Smith and Willard Boyle.
In 1968,
molecular beam epitaxy
was developed by J.R. Arthur and A.Y. Cho; molecular beam epitaxy allows semiconductor chips and laser matrices to be manufactured one atomic layer at a time.
In 1969,
Dennis Ritchie
and
Ken Thompson
created the computer operating system
UNIX
for the support of telecommunication switching systems as well as general-purpose computing. Also, in 1969, the
charge-coupled device
(CCD) was invented by
Willard Boyle
and
George E. Smith
, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009.
From 1969 to 1971,
Aaron Marcus
, the first graphic designer involved with computer graphics, researched, designed, and programmed a prototype interactive page-layout system for the Picturephone.
1970s
edit
The C programming language was developed in 1972.
The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the
personal computing
revolution.
In the 1970s, major central office technology evolved from crossbar electromechanical relay-based technology and discrete transistor logic to Bell Labs-developed thick film hybrid and
transistor–transistor logic
(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 had a total capacity of 132,000 telephone calls. Previously, a 12-strand coax cable was used for L-carrier systems. Both of these types of cables were manufactured at Western Electric's Baltimore Works facility on machines designed by a Western Electric Senior development engineer.
84
In 1970,
A. Michael Noll
invented a tactile, force-feedback system, coupled with interactive stereoscopic computer display.
In 1971, an improved task priority system for computerized
telephone exchange
switching systems for telephone traffic was invented by
Erna Schneider Hoover
, who received one of the first
software patents
for it.
In 1972,
Dennis Ritchie
developed the compiled programming language
as a replacement for the interpreted language
, which was then used in a
worse is better
rewrite of UNIX. Also, the language
AWK
was designed and implemented by
Alfred Aho
Peter Weinberger
, and
Brian Kernighan
of Bell Laboratories. Also in 1972,
Marc Rochkind
invented the
Source Code Control System
In 1976,
optical fiber
systems were first tested in
Georgia
Production of their first internally designed
microprocessor
, the
BELLMAC-8
, began in 1977. In 1980 they demonstrated the first single-chip
32-bit
microprocessor, the
Bellmac 32
A, which went into production in 1982.
In 1978, the proprietary operating system
Oryx/Pecos
was developed from scratch by Bell Labs in order to run AT&T's large-scale
PBX
switching equipment. It was first used with AT&T's flagship System 75, and until very recently was used in all variations up through and including Definity G3 (Generic 3) switches, now manufactured by
Avaya
1980s
edit
Bell Laboratories logo, used from 1984 until 1996
Teletype/AT&T 5620 DMD version of the Blit. Terminal software written by Rob Pike and hardware designed by Bart Locanthi, Jr.
During the 1980s, the operating system
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
was developed extending the UNIX model. Also, the
Radiodrum
, an electronic music instrument played in three space dimensions, was invented.
In 1980, the
TDMA
digital cellular telephone technology was patented.
In late 1981, the Bell Labs Research organization internal use of a terminal called Jerq led to the
Blit terminal
being renamed by designers
Rob Pike
and Bart Locanthi, Jr for the UNIX operating system. It was a programmable bitmap graphics terminal using multi-layers of opened windows operated by a keyboard and a distinguished red-colored three-button digitized mouse.
85
It was later known as the AT&T 5620 DMD terminal for commercial sales. The Blit used the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, whereas the Teletype/AT&T 5620 Dot Mapped Display terminal used the Western Electric WE32000 microprocessor.
86
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, 336 people have received the honor.
87
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were also Bell Labs Fellows for 1982. Ritchie started in 1967 at Bell Labs in the Bell Labs Computer Systems Research department.
88
Thompson started in 1966. Both co-inventors of the UNIX operating system and C language were also awarded decades later the 2011 Japan Prize for Information and Communications.
In 1982,
fractional quantum Hall effect
was discovered by
Horst Störmer
and former Bell Laboratories researchers
Robert B. Laughlin
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
. Also in 1984,
a divestiture agreement
signed in 1982 with the American Federal government forced the breakup of AT&T, and
Bellcore
(now
iconectiv
) 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
unit, the former Western Electric. The
5ESS Switch
was developed during this transition.
The National Medal of Technology was awarded to Bell Labs, the first corporation to achieve this honor in February 1985.
89
In 1985,
laser cooling
was used to slow and manipulate atoms by
Steven Chu
and team. In 1985, the modeling language
A Mathematical Programming Language
AMPL
, was developed by
Robert Fourer
, David M. Gay and Brian Kernighan at Bell Laboratories. Also in 1985, Bell Laboratories was awarded the
National Medal of Technology
"For contribution over decades to modern communication systems".
In 1985,
90
the programming language
C++
had its first commercial release.
91
Bjarne Stroustrup
started developing C++ at Bell Laboratories in 1979 as an extension to the original C language.
91
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.
92
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2018) for his work involving optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.
In the mid-1980s, the Transmission System departments of Bell Labs developed highly reliable long-haul
fiber-optic communications
systems based on
SONET
, and network operations techniques that made very high-volume, near-instantaneous communications across the North American continent possible. Fail-safe and disaster-related traffic management operations systems enhanced the usefulness of the fiber optics. There was a synergy in the land-based and sea-based fiber optic systems even though they were developed by different divisions within the company. These systems are still in use throughout the U.S. today.
Charles A. Burrus became a Bell Labs Fellow in 1988 for his work done as a Technical Staff member. Prior to this accomplishment, was awarded in 1982 the AT&T Bell Laboratories Distinguished Technical Staff Award. Charles started in 1955 at the Holmdel Bell Labs location and retired in 1996 with consultations to Lucent Technologies up to 2002.
93
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. They invented DSL (
digital subscriber line
), the technology that achieved megabit transmission on installed copper telephone lines, and this facilitated the broadband era.
94
1990s
edit
Bell Labs' John Mayo received the National Medal of Technology in 1990.
95
In May 1990, Ronald Snare was named AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow, for "Singular contributions to the development of the
common-channel signaling
network and the signal transfer points globally." This system began service in the United States in 1978.
96
In the early 1990s, approaches to increase
modem
speeds to 56K were explored at Bell Labs, and early patents were filed in 1992 by Ender Ayanoglu, Nuri R. Dagdeviren and their colleagues.
97
The scientist, W. Lincoln Hawkins in 1992 received the National Medal of Technology for work done at Bell Labs.
95
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.
98
Subsequently, the BLAST system proposed by
Gerard Foschini
and colleagues dramatically expanded the capacity of wireless systems.
99
This technology, known today as MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), was a significant factor in the standardization, commercialization, performance improvement, and growth of cellular and wireless LAN systems.
Amos Joel in 1993 received the National Medal of Technology.
95
Two AT&T Bell Labs scientists, Joel Engel and Richard Frenkiel, were honored with the National Medal of Technology, in 1994.
95
In 1994, the
quantum cascade laser
was invented by
Federico Capasso
Alfred Cho
, Jerome Faist and their collaborators. Also in 1994,
Peter Shor
devised his quantum factorization algorithm.
In 1996, SCALPEL
electron lithography
, 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
. A high performance database engine (Dali) was developed which became DataBlitz in its product form.
100
In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named
Lucent Technologies
. AT&T retained a small number of researchers who made up the staff of the newly created
AT&T Labs
Lucy Sanders was the third woman to receive the Bell Labs Fellow award in 1996, for her work in creating a
RISC
chip that made more phone calls possible using software and hardware on a single server. She started in 1977 and was one of the few woman engineers at Bell Labs.
101
In November 1997, Lucent planned a Bell Laboratories location at
Yokosuka Research Park
in
Yokosuka
, Japan for developing a third generation Wideband Code Division Multiple Access cellular system (
W-CDMA
.)
102
In 1997, the smallest then-practical transistor (60
nanometers
, 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first
optical router
was invented.
Rudolph Kazarinov and Federico Capasso received the optoelectronics Rank Prize on December 8, 1998.
95
In December 1998, Ritchie and Thompson also were honorees of the National Medal of Technology for their work done for pre-Lucent Technologies Bell Labs. The award was presented by U.S. President William Clinton in 1999 in a White House ceremony.
95
21st century
edit
The pre-2013 logo of
Alcatel-Lucent
, the parent company of Bell Labs
2000 was an active year for the Laboratories, in which
DNA machine
prototypes were developed; progressive geometry compression algorithm made widespread 3-D communication practical; the first electrically powered
organic laser
was invented; a large-scale map of cosmic
dark matter
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
103
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
, III-V material for semiconductor lasers,
gallium arsenide
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
, including architecture, synchronization, restoration, standards, operations and control."
In 2005,
Jeong H. Kim
, 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
, 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
104
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,
105
was presented by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs President Jeong H. Kim with the 2006 Bell Labs Fellow Award in
Network Architecture
, Network Planning, and Professional Services with particular focus in Cable TV Systems and
Broadband
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.
106
As of July 2008, however, only four scientists remained in physics research, according to a report by the scientific journal
Nature
107
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.
108
In 2009, Willard Boyle and George Smith were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention and development of the
charge-coupled device
(CCD).
109
Rob Soni was an Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Fellow in 2009 as cited for work in winning North American customers wireless business and for helping to define 4G wireless networks with transformative system architectures.
110
2010s
edit
The entrance sign to Nokia Bell Labs at the company's headquarters in
New Jersey
from 2016 to 2022
Logo of Bell Labs since 2023
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.
111
On November 4, 2013, Alcatel-Lucent announced the appointment of
Marcus Weldon
as President of Bell Labs. His stated charter was to return Bell Labs to the forefront of innovation in
Information and communications technology
by focusing on solving the key industry challenges, as was the case in the great Bell Labs innovation eras in the past.
112
On May 20, 2014, Michel Combes, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, announced the opening of a Bell Labs location in
Tel Aviv, Israel
by summer time. The Bell Labs research team would be directed by an Israeli computer scientist and alum of Bell Labs,
Danny Raz
. The Bell Labs research would be in 'cloud networking' technologies for communications. The location would have approximately twenty academic scientific background employees.
113
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.
114
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.
115
On April 15, 2015,
Nokia
agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion.
116
117
Their first day of combined operations was January 14, 2016.
118
In September 2016, Nokia Bell Labs, along with
Technische Universität Berlin
, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the
Technical University of Munich
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
119
Antero Taivalsaari became a Bell Labs Fellow in 2016 for his specific work.
120
In 2017, Dragan Samardzija was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow.
121
In 2018,
Arthur Ashkin
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems"
92
which was developed at Bell Labs in the 1980s.
2020s
edit
In 2020,
Alfred Aho
and
Jeffrey Ullman
shared the Turing Award for their work on compilers, starting with their tenure at Bell Labs during 1967–69.
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.
122
In December 2021, Nokia's Chief Strategy and Technology Officer decided to reorganize Bell Labs in two separate functional organizations: Bell Labs Core Research and Bell Labs Solutions research. Bell Labs Core Research is in charge of creating disruptive technologies with 10-year horizon. Bell Labs Solutions Research, looks for shorter term solutions that can provide growth opportunities for Nokia.
123
The Nokia 2022 Bell Labs Fellows were recognized on November 29, 2022, in a New Jersey ceremony. Five researchers were inducted to the total of 341 recipients since its inception by AT&T Bell Labs in 1982. One member was from New Jersey, two were from Cambridge, UK, and two were from Finland representing Espoo and Tampere locations.
124
On November 28, 2023, the Nokia 2023 Bell Labs Fellows were recognized in a ceremony held in Finland. Six honorees were inducted to the total of 347 recipients. Two members were from Murray Hill, New Jersey, one from Munich, Germany, and three were from Finland representing two honorees from Espoo and one honoree from Tampere locations. The Murray Hill location honorees were Randeep Bhatia from Bell Labs Core Research, an author of 40 patent filings and Robert L. Willett from Bell Labs Solutions Research, a 35 year employee concentrating on 2D electron systems.
125
On December 11, 2023, Nokia announced a state of the art research facility in
New Brunswick, New Jersey
. The planned relocation of the 80 year old, Murray Hill New Jersey Bell Labs facility would take place before 2028.
126
The new building would be LEED Gold certified.
127
The Murray Hill location has had iconic research of various historical innovations for
AT&T Corp.
Lucent Technologies
Alcatel-Lucent
, and Nokia.
128
On November 19, 2024, the Nokia 2024 Bell Labs Fellows were recognized in a ceremony held in Lisbon, Portugal. Five honorees were inducted to the total of 352 recipients that include 83 from the Nokia community. Alexei Ashikhmin from Bell Labs Solutions Research represented Murray Hill Bell Labs with more than 25 years as a coding theory researcher. Two honorees were from Finland representing Espoo and Tampere locations. Additionally, two honorees represented Nokia's Vimercate, Italy and Tokyo, Japan locations.
129
The Nokia Bell Labs 10-story headquarters building, to be built in New Brunswick, New Jersey, had a groundbreaking ceremony on September 4, 2025. The construction is planned to be completed in 2027 and have 34,374-square-meters of space for optical communications, generative artificial intelligence, and quantum physics labs and offices. This building will be called the HELIX 2 building (Health and Life Science Exchange) and its location would allow academic talent from nearby universities for Nokia ventures and new startup partnerships.
130
Accolades
edit
Nobel Prize
edit
Eleven
Nobel Prizes
have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
131
1937:
Clinton J. Davisson
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter.
1956:
John Bardeen
Walter H. Brattain
, and
William Shockley
received the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the first
transistors
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
and
Robert W. Wilson
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovering
cosmic microwave background radiation
, a nearly uniform glow that fills the
Universe
in the microwave band of the radio spectrum.
1997:
Steven Chu
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.
1998:
Horst Störmer
Robert Laughlin
, and
Daniel Tsui
, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering and explaining the
fractional quantum Hall effect
2009:
Willard S. Boyle
George E. Smith
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with
Charles K. Kao
. Boyle and Smith were cited for inventing
charge-coupled device
(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
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems"
92
which was developed at Bell Labs.
2023:
Louis Brus
shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in "the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots"
132
which he began at Bell Labs.
133
2024:
John Hopfield
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in artificial networks for machine learning.
Turing Award
edit
The
Turing Award
has been won five times by Bell Labs researchers.
1968:
Richard Hamming
for his work on numerical methods, automatic coding systems, and error-detecting and error-correcting codes.
134
135
1983:
Ken Thompson
136
and
Dennis Ritchie
137
for their work on operating system theory, and for developing
Unix
134
1986:
Robert Tarjan
138
with
John Hopcroft
139
for fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures.
2018:
Yann LeCun
and
Yoshua Bengio
shared the Turing Award with
Geoffrey Hinton
for their work in Deep Learning.
2020:
Alfred Aho
and
Jeffrey Ullman
shared the Turing Award for their work on Compilers.
IEEE Medal of Honor
edit
First awarded in 1917, the
IEEE Medal of Honor
is the highest form of recognition by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
. The IEEE Medal of Honor has been won 22 times by Bell Labs researchers.
1926
Greenleaf Whittier Pickard
For his contributions as to crystal detectors, coil antennas, wave propagation and atmospheric disturbances.
1936
G A Campbell
For his contributions to the theory of electrical network.
1940
Lloyd Espenschied
For his accomplishments as an engineer, as an inventor, as a pioneer in the development of radio telephony, and for his effective contributions to the progress of international radio coordination.
1946
Ralph Hartley
For his early work on oscillating circuits employing triode tubes and likewise for his early recognition and clear exposition of the fundamental relationship between the total amount of information which may be transmitted over a transmission system of limited band-width and the time required.
1949
Ralph Brown
For his extensive contributions to the field of radio and for his leadership in Institute affairs
1955
Harald T. Friis
For his outstanding technical contributions in the expansion of the useful spectrum of radio frequencies, and for the inspiration and leadership he has given to young engineers.
1960
Harry Nyquist
For fundamental contributions to a quantitative understanding of thermal noise, data transmission and negative feedback.
1963
George C. Southworth
(with
John H. Hammond, Jr.
For pioneering contributions to microwave radio physics, to radio astronomy, and to waveguide transmission.
1966
Claude Shannon
For his development of a mathematical theory of communication which unified and significantly advanced the state of the art.
1967
Charles H. Townes
For his significant contributions in the field of quantum electronics which have led to the maser and the laser.
1971
John Bardeen
For his profound contributions to the understanding of the conductivity of solids, to the invention of the transistor, and to the microscopic theory of superconductivity
1973
Rudolf Kompfner
For a major contribution to world-wide communication through the conception of the traveling wave tube embodying a new principle of amplification.
1975
John R. Pierce
For his pioneering concrete proposals and the realization of satellite communication experiments, and for contributions in theory and design of traveling wave tubes and in electron beam optics essential to this success.
1977
H. Earle Vaughan
For his vision, technical contributions and leadership in the development of the first high-capacity pulse-code-modulation time-division telephone switching system.
1980
William Shockley
For the invention of the junction transistor, the analog and the junction field-effect transistor, and the theory underlying their operation.
1981
Sidney Darlington
For fundamental contributions to filtering and signal processing leading to chirp radar.
1982
John Wilder Tukey
For his contributions to the spectral analysis of random processes and the fast Fourier transform algorithm.
1989
C. Kumar N. Patel
For fundamental contributions to quantum electronics, including the carbon dioxide laser and the spin-flip Raman laser.
1992
Amos E. Joel Jr.
For fundamental contributions to and leadership in telecommunications switching systems.
1994
Alfred Y. Cho
For seminal contributions to the development of molecular beam epitaxy.
2001
Herwig Kogelnik
For fundamental contributions to the science and technology of lasers and optoelectronics, and for leadership in research and development of photonics and lightwave communication systems.
2005
James L. Flanagan
For sustained leadership and outstanding contributions in speech technology.
Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award
edit
The
Emmy Award
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."
140
2013: Technology and Engineering Emmy for its "Pioneering Work in Implementation and Deployment of Network DVR"
141
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
) 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."
142
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
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
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
edit
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
, 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.
143
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,
144
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
edit
Period
Name of President
Lifetime
1925–1940
Frank Baldwin Jewett
1879–1949
1940–1951
Oliver Buckley
1887–1959
1951–1959
Mervin Kelly
1895–1971
1959–1973
James Brown Fisk
1910–1981
145
1973–1979
William Oliver Baker
1915–2005
1979–1991
Ian Munro Ross
1927–2013
1991–1995
John Sullivan Mayo
b. 1930
1995–1999
Dan Stanzione
b. 1945
1999–2001
Arun Netravali
1946-2021
146
10
2001–2005
Bill O'Shea
b. 1957
11
2005–2013
Jeong Hun Kim
b. 1961
12
2013–2013
Gee Rittenhouse
13
2013–2021
Marcus Weldon
b. 1968
2021–
Thierry Klein (Bell Labs Solutions Research
147
b. 1971
2021–
Peter Vetter (Bell Labs Core Research
148
b. 1963
See also
edit
Bell Labs Technical Journal
—Published scientific journal of Bell Laboratories (1996–present)
Bell Labs Record
Industrial laboratory
George Stibitz
—Bell Laboratories engineer—"father of the modern digital computer"
History of mobile phones
—Bell Laboratories conception and development of cellular phones
High speed photography
Wollensak
Fastax
high speed (rotating prism) cameras developed by Bell Labs
Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory
Simplified Message Desk Interface
Sound film
Westrex
sound system for cinema films developed by Bell Labs
TWX Magazine
—A short-lived trade periodical published by Bell Laboratories (1944–1952)
Experiments in Art and Technology
—A collaboration between artists and Bell Labs engineers & scientists to create new forms of art
Xerox PARC
Notes
edit
In 1983,
AT&T
created a new subsidiary
AT&T Technologies
. It split up Western Electric into multiple companies as AT&T Technologies subsidiaries. Bell Labs became one of subsidiaries. In 1996, AT&T Technologies was divested and renamed to
Lucent Technologies
Originally named
Bell Telephone Laboratories
(1925–1984), then
AT&T Bell Laboratories
(1984–1996) and
Bell Labs Innovations
(1996–2007)
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Archived
from the original on October 20, 2021
. Retrieved
February 3,
2019
"Dennis M. Ritchie – A.M. Turing Award Laureate"
amturing.acm.org
Archived
from the original on October 20, 2021
. Retrieved
February 3,
2019
"Robert E Tarjan – A.M. Turing Award Laureate"
amturing.acm.org
Archived
from the original on October 30, 2017
. Retrieved
February 3,
2019
"John E Hopcroft – A.M. Turing Award Laureate"
amturing.acm.org
Archived
from the original on October 27, 2021
. Retrieved
February 3,
2019
"Nokia Bell Labs receives the 2020 Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award for pioneering work on imaging sensors"
Bell-labs.com
. October 20, 2020.
Archived
from the original on July 26, 2022
. Retrieved
July 26,
2022
"Alcatel-Lucent wins Emmy® Award for contributing to fundamental changes in how television is watched"
Prnewswire.com
(Press release).
Archived
from the original on May 25, 2022
. Retrieved
July 26,
2022
Nokia [@nokia]
(January 28, 2021).
"Proud to announce that The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences granted a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award to the ISO Base Media File Format standardization, in which our multimedia research unit has played a major role. #video #nokiainnovates #techemmys @TheEmmys https://t.co/HCAHFDi4c3"
Tweet
).
Archived
from the original on March 18, 2022
. Retrieved
July 5,
2022
– via
"Bell Telephone Monograph #1"
. 1920.
Archived
from the original on October 17, 2023
. Retrieved
March 20,
2022
Index of monographs
OCLC
2258253
Barnaby J. Feder (August 13, 1981).
"James Fisk, Bell Labs Executive And Leader In Radar, Dies At 70"
The New York Times
Archived
from the original on November 20, 2016
. Retrieved
January 31,
2017
"Dr. Arun N. Netravali"
www.nae.edu
. National Academy of Engineering
. Retrieved
December 6,
2025
"Thierry e Klein"
. July 22, 2021.
Archived
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. Retrieved
February 14,
2023
"Peter Vetter"
. April 27, 2021.
Archived
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. Retrieved
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2023
Further reading
edit
Martin, Douglas.
Ian M. Ross, a President at Bell Labs, Dies at 85
The New York Times
, March 16, 2013, p. A23
Jon Gertner (2013).
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
ISBN
978-0143122791
Gleick, James
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
. Vintage Books, 2012, 544 pages.
ISBN
978-1400096237
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