 |
Bell Labs
"If Bell Labs is a
tree, research is a blossom, development is the fruit."
With approximately 16,000 employees in 16
countries, Bell Labs is the
leading source of new communications technologies. Bell Labs has generated more
than 28,000 patents since 1925 and has played a pivotal role in inventing or
perfecting key communications technologies, including transistors, digital
networking and signal processing, lasers and fiber-optic communications systems,
communications satellites, cellular telephony, electronic switching of calls,
touch-tone dialing, and modems. Bell Labs scientists have received six Nobel
Prizes in Physics, nine U.S. Medals of Science and six U.S. Medals of
Technology. For more information about Bell Labs, visit its web site at
http://www.bell-labs.com.
Bell System mural on Nevada Bell building in Ely,
Nevada.
Click on photo above to view full-size original.
Courtesy of G.D. Thurman.
Bell Labs
- the greatest scientific laboratory that ever existed. Today's modern
society owes a lot of gratitude for the numerous discoveries and inventions that
came out of this great "think tank". It is hoped that this web page will
educate and enlighten the public about how different their lives would be today
if Bell Labs never existed. Lucent Technologies research today is still a
leader in technology advances in pure research.
For more detailed information on Bell Labs history, see
their website at:
http://www.bell-labs.com/history/75/.
For a brief description of Bell
Laboratories, see:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/Bell_Laboratories
Bell Labs: Life in
the Crown Jewel -- Narain Gehani
Bell Labs, the greatest research lab of the 20th century, is going through
difficult times. The current events at Lucent will have a deep impact on Bell
Labs. Gehani talks about Bell Labs with an insider's perspective. He has seen
Bell Labs during its best times and during its difficult days. He was at Bell
Labs during the monopoly and post monopoly days, and when Lucent was doing
great and during its difficult times.
Gehani’s Bell Labs book is the first book that tells the story of this very
famous organization. Bell Labs is part of the heritage of the many of the
current and past companies in the telecom industry. People associated with the
telephone companies will find this book great reading, historical information
of their employer’s glorious past, will get an understanding of the workings
of this great institution, how the AT&T divestiture affected it, and the
challenges faced by it now.
Gehani's story of America's national treasure and corporate crown jewel will
keep you riveted to reading about a way of life possibly gone forever. To read
the book description, click
HERE.
The book is available from
Silicon Press,
Amazon (www.amazon.com),
Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com)
and other book stores.
This information
submitted to this website by:
Indu Taneja
Silicon Press (www.silicon-press.com)
25 Beverly Road
Summit, NJ 07901
Tel: 908-273-8919
Brief History of Bell Labs
Let's begin with
some history of how Bell Labs got started. Most of the quotes below are
from other material already on this web site. From a publication by AT&T
called Western Electric - A brief
History we find the following historical information on how Bell
Labs began:
"Besides acting as
purchaser and as manufacturer for the Bell System, Western Electric also
supplied its parent with executive talent. AT&T presidents from Harry B.
Thayer to Frederick Kappel to Haakon Romnes each served as Western Electric
president beforehand. The AT&T executive who presided over the biggest changes
in Western Electric, and who served longest as AT&T president, Walter Gifford,
started at Western but never became its president. Gifford began at Western in
1904 in the Chicago payroll department. By the time Gifford moved on to AT&T
in 1908, he had become an Assistant Secretary at Western Electric."
"The year Gifford
ascended to the presidency of AT&T, he redirected the business of Western
Electric: he established Bell Laboratories as a separate entity, set up
a separate corporation for the company's supply business. and sold the
international business. Gifford established the separate entity called the
Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc., which took over work previously
conducted by the research division of Western Electric's engineering
department. Bell Labs was 50 percent owned by Western Electric, and 50
percent owned by AT&T. Nine years later, AT&T's development and research group
also joined Bell Labs."
"The 1925
reorganization of the company established the institutional responsibilities
which lasted until the 1980's: Bell Laboratories designed the network,
Western Electric manufactured the telephones, cable, transmission equipment,
and switching equipment, the operating companies installed the phones and
billed customers, and AT&T long lines operated the long distance network."
And from another
publication by AT&T called
Capsule History of the Bell System we find the following additional
information:
"By 1925 it was
recognized that telephone technology was increasingly based on science and the
scientific method, with increasing pressure to put new scientific knowledge to
use as rapidly as possible and by that time the 1907 laboratory had crown to
several times its original size. So the Bell Laboratories organization
was developed to do research, systems engineering and development work.
Research and associated fundamental development provide the reservoir of new
knowledge and new understanding which is essential for new communications
facilities and systems. The work includes all sectors of science that appear
likely to contribute to the advancement of communications and is carried out
in enough volume to assure a minimum time lag in the practical application of
scientific advances. It also includes systems research and operations
research."
Some material
published by Western Electric back in 1964 called
Western Electric and the Bell System states (keep in mind this was
over 35 years ago):
"Since inception, Bell
Laboratories has been pre-eminent in communications technology. At first a
good part of the Laboratories' effort went into hardware development to
increase the reliability and life of the equipment Western Electric produced
and the operating companies used. A further large effort has been devoted to
developing ways to increase the efficiency of Bell System equipment. An
example of this is TASI (Time Assignment Speech Interpolation), a Laboratories
development that doubled the capacity of the first two trans-Atlantic cables
by utilizing the milliseconds of silence in ordinary speech for further
transmission."
"Today the technical work of the Laboratories is divided into three
major fields: Research, Systems Engineering, and Development."
"Research represents the search for new knowledge, for new scientific
principles. Although carried out in scientific disciplines which closely
relate to the art of communication, research is not aimed at specific changes
in the telephone system. Rather it is concerned with trying "to outguess the
future" as to where the unexplored areas of science may yield discoveries of
value to the telephone industry and exploring these areas in depth."
"Although the Research Departments comprise only about 12 per cent of the
technical staff of the Laboratories, they represent the fountainhead
from which have flowed thousands of discoveries that have shaped the character
of today's and tomorrow's communications systems. In 1937, Dr. Clinton J.
Davisson received a Nobel Prize and, in 1956, three others - Drs. W. H.
Brattain, W. Shockley and J. Bardeen - shared another; hundreds of others have
received awards and honors representing major distinction in their fields."
"For many years, both Bell
Laboratories and Western Electric concentrated their cooperative effort on
helping the Bell Telephone companies make telephone service available to more
and more Americans. In recent years, however, the Bell System network has been
used to transmit more kinds of communications. AT&T and the operating
companies, therefore, now look more than ever to Bell Laboratories for
innovations and improvements resulting from technological advance."
"Most Bell Laboratories activities are carried on at four locations in
New York and Northern New Jersey:
-
463 West Street, New York -
now principally used for administrative and staff work.
-
Murray Hill, New Jersey - the
main center of research work and of much of the work in electronic
component development and transmission systems and development.
-
Whippany, New Jersey - the
center for military research and development work.
-
Holmdel, New Jersey - a
laboratory opened in 1962, with work going on in such fields as electronic
switching, data communications transmission and switching, and new types
of telephone equipment for the customer.
-
In Spring, 1964, Bell
Laboratories announced plans to build a new center for development work on
electronic switching systems near Naperville, Illinois fairly close to
Western Electric's Hawthorne Works. About 1,200 people are scheduled to
work at the laboratory when it is completed in 1966, including the
electronic switching organization at Holmdel and a small number of Western
Electric engineers from Hawthorne Works and the Systems Equipment
Engineering organization."
One of the innovative telephone
products Bell Labs developed was the
PicturePhone.
The PicturePhone was developed as a prototype in 1956, but never test marketed
until the early 1960's and never became popular after it was briefly offered
commercially in Chicago.
But Bell Labs is probably better
known for its scientific discoveries that changed the future of the world.
The
transistor is probably the single most important invention of Bell Labs
that shaped our future. Without it, there would be no modern electronic
products like personal computers, CD players, etc.
From the Western Electric and
the Bell System publication we find this information:
"Discovery of the transistor
effect came out of research into the nature of semiconductors. Its perfection
as a device was carried on by the Development organization concerned with
electronic components. When it had reached a stage of development, in terms of
performance and economical manufacture, that made it feasible for use in the
telephone system, Systems engineers begin to design communications around it.
These systems were then carried through to working hardware by the Development
engineers and into manufacture by Western Electric."
Another great breakthrough by Bell
Labs was the development of the photovoltaic cell. Also called "solar
battery", this device will hopefully allow us to become independent of the oil
companies and power our homes and electric cars from the sun. Two Bell
System advertisements showing this marvelous device just after Bell Labs
developed it is viewable/downloadable by clicking
HERE to view the first advertisement or
HERE to view the second advertisement.
More inventions and discoveries will
be added here as time permits. But for now, lets briefly cover the
corporate changes that took place with Bell Labs when the Bell System died in
1984 and what has taken place in more recent years.
When the Bell System was officially
divested on January 1, 1984, AT&T was allowed to keep Western Electric, Long
Lines, and Bell Laboratories. They could use the name "BELL" only in
association with Bell Laboratories. As announced on September 20, 1995,
AT&T Corporation split into three new companies: AT&T (communications
services), Lucent Technologies (systems and technology), and NCR
(computers). As a consequence, AT&T Bell Laboratories split, parts going to
AT&T, and parts going to Lucent Technologies. AT&T Laboratories will
serve AT&T, and its research part will be known as
AT&T Research. Bell Laboratories will serve Lucent Technologies,
and its research part will be known as Bell Laboratories Research. AT&T
has since divorced itself of its ownership of NCR.
In October
of 2000, Lucent Technologies "spun off" Avaya. Avaya now has the customer
equipment business for telephone sets.
A neat little collectable I have
that was given to me by Shawn is a leather "notepad" that says "engineer for a
day" on the inside flap along with the Bell logo (1969 - modern - version) and
Western Electric Columbus Works Bell Laboratories written next to the logo.
To view this item, click
HERE.
To view a close-up of the inside wording and logo, click
HERE.
Bell Labs Journals
Documents of historical significance from the
Bell Labs web site. Archived here for historical preservation.
-
A really neat video of
Bell Labs history of innovations
can be found at:
-
http://www.bell-labs.com/project/cineblitz/
It is the first item on that page called "Bell Labs Innovations." It was
produced January 2001 and the description is "Take a musical tour of what Bell
Labs has wrought. (6 min. 7 sec.)". It is recommended you have cable or
ADSL to download this almost 50 megabyte file!
|
