Bell Labs
Bell Labs[a] is an American industrial research and scientific development company. Researchers from there are 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 B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others. Ten Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.[1]
For the building, see Bell Laboratories Building. For the part that continues under AT&T, see AT&T Labs.Company type
Telecommunication, information technology, material science
January 1925 (as Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.)
Murray Hill, New Jersey, U.S.
- AT&T Corporation (1925–1996)
- Western Electric (1925–1983)
- Lucent (1996–2006)
- Alcatel-Lucent (2006–2016
- Nokia (2016–present)
Nokia Shanghai Bell
Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the Bell System telephone conglomerate. The laboratory began in the late 19th century as the Western Electric Engineering Department, located at 463 West Street in New York City. After years of conducting research and development under Western Electric, a Bell subsidiary, the Engineering 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 (AT&T). In the 1960s, laboratory and company headquarters were moved to Murray Hill, New Jersey. Nokia acquired Bell Labs in 2016 as part of its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent.
Origin and historical locations[edit]
Bell's personal research after the telephone[edit]
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 $330,000 now),[2] 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.[3] 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.[3] 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.[3]
In 1893, Bell constructed a new building close by at 1537 35th Street N.W., specifically to house the lab.[3] This building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972.[4][5][6]
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.[7]
Ten Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.[108]
The Turing Award has been won five times by Bell Labs researchers.
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.
The Emmy Award has been won five times by Bell Labs: one under Lucent Technologies, one under Alcatel-Lucent, and three under Nokia.
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.
The Academy Award has been won once by E. C. Wente and Bell Labs.
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.[120] 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,[121] 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:
