Bell Telephone Laboratories was established in 1925 in Murray Hill, New Jersey: It was intended to take over the research arm of the Western Electric division of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and was jointly admin-istered by the two companies. The organization’s principal task was to design and develop telephone switching equip-ment, but there was also research in facsimile (fax) trans-mission and television.
The research that would have the greatest impact, however, would come from a relative handful of Bell scien-tists who were given resources to undertake fundamental research. In the 1930s Bell scientist Karl Jansky, investi-gating interference with long-range radio transmissions, discovered that radio waves were arriving from space, leading to the development of radio astronomy. Other Bell Labs developments of the 1930s and 1940s included the vocoder, an early electronic speech synthesizer, and the photovoltaic cell, with its potential application to solar power systems.
Several Bell Labs technologies would have a direct impact on the computer field. The transistor, developed by Bell Labs researchers John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley, would make a new generation of more compact and reliable computers possible. Informa-tion theory (see information theory and Shannon, Claude) would revolutionize telecommunications, signal processing, and data transfer. Work on the laser in the 1960s would eventually lead to the compact disc (see cd-rom and dvd-rom). Other hardware contributions include the charge-coupled device (CCD) that would revolutionize astronomical and digital photography and fiber-optic cables for high-volume data communications.
In software engineering the most important achieve-ments of Bell researchers were the development of the C programming language and the UNIX operating system in the early 1970s (see c; Ritchie, Dennis; and unix). The elegant design of the modular UNIX system is still admired today, and versions of UNIX and Linux power many servers and networks.
New Corporate Direction
Perhaps ironically, AT&T’s near monopolistic position in the telecommunications industry both provided substan-tial revenue for fundamental research and shielded the lab from competitive pressure and the need to tie research to the development of commercial products. As a result, Bell Labs arguably became the most important private research institution in the 20th century. By the end of the 1980s, however, court decisions had reshaped the landscape of the communications field, and Bell Labs became a victim of the company’s change from monopolist to competitor.
In 1996 AT&T divested Bell Labs along with its main equipment manufacturing facilities into a new company, Lucent Technologies. A smaller group of researchers were retained and reorganized as AT&T Laboratories. As the 2000s began these researchers made new achievements, including tiny transistors whose size is measured in atoms, optical data routing (see optical computing) and nanotechnology, DNA-based computing (see molecular computing), and other esoteric but potentially momentous fields.
In recent years, however, the organization has largely changed its focus from long-term research in fundamental topics to the search for projects that can be quickly turned into commercial products—in essence the requirement that the Labs become a profit center. The merger of Lucent and another communications giant, Alcatel, in 2006 has led to renewed concerns that consolidation and even tighter inte-gration of the Labs with corporate goals might come at the expense of the kind of research culture that has inspired the Labs’ greatest breakthroughs.
The research that would have the greatest impact, however, would come from a relative handful of Bell scien-tists who were given resources to undertake fundamental research. In the 1930s Bell scientist Karl Jansky, investi-gating interference with long-range radio transmissions, discovered that radio waves were arriving from space, leading to the development of radio astronomy. Other Bell Labs developments of the 1930s and 1940s included the vocoder, an early electronic speech synthesizer, and the photovoltaic cell, with its potential application to solar power systems.
Several Bell Labs technologies would have a direct impact on the computer field. The transistor, developed by Bell Labs researchers John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley, would make a new generation of more compact and reliable computers possible. Informa-tion theory (see information theory and Shannon, Claude) would revolutionize telecommunications, signal processing, and data transfer. Work on the laser in the 1960s would eventually lead to the compact disc (see cd-rom and dvd-rom). Other hardware contributions include the charge-coupled device (CCD) that would revolutionize astronomical and digital photography and fiber-optic cables for high-volume data communications.
In software engineering the most important achieve-ments of Bell researchers were the development of the C programming language and the UNIX operating system in the early 1970s (see c; Ritchie, Dennis; and unix). The elegant design of the modular UNIX system is still admired today, and versions of UNIX and Linux power many servers and networks.
New Corporate Direction
Perhaps ironically, AT&T’s near monopolistic position in the telecommunications industry both provided substan-tial revenue for fundamental research and shielded the lab from competitive pressure and the need to tie research to the development of commercial products. As a result, Bell Labs arguably became the most important private research institution in the 20th century. By the end of the 1980s, however, court decisions had reshaped the landscape of the communications field, and Bell Labs became a victim of the company’s change from monopolist to competitor.
In 1996 AT&T divested Bell Labs along with its main equipment manufacturing facilities into a new company, Lucent Technologies. A smaller group of researchers were retained and reorganized as AT&T Laboratories. As the 2000s began these researchers made new achievements, including tiny transistors whose size is measured in atoms, optical data routing (see optical computing) and nanotechnology, DNA-based computing (see molecular computing), and other esoteric but potentially momentous fields.
In recent years, however, the organization has largely changed its focus from long-term research in fundamental topics to the search for projects that can be quickly turned into commercial products—in essence the requirement that the Labs become a profit center. The merger of Lucent and another communications giant, Alcatel, in 2006 has led to renewed concerns that consolidation and even tighter inte-gration of the Labs with corporate goals might come at the expense of the kind of research culture that has inspired the Labs’ greatest breakthroughs.
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