Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.

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 owned by multinational company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several laboratories in the United States and around the world.

Researchers working at Bell Laboratories 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. Nine Nobel Prizes 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. 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, 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) and Western Electric. In the 1960s the laboratory was moved to New Jersey. It was acquired by Nokia in 2016.

Origin and historical locations

Bell's personal research after the telephone

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 $ 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.Bruce, Robert V. ''Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude''. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 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 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, 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) 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 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 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, Crawford Hill, the Deal Test Site, Freehold, Lincroft, Long Branch, Middletown, Neptune, Princeton, Piscataway, Red Bank, Chester, 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).

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 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. 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 (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 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, 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, and in underwater sound, Telstar 1, 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, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the operating system Unix, the programming languages C and C++, solar cells, the charge-coupled device (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 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 movement, including Six Sigma.

In 1926, the laboratories invented an early example synchronous-sound motion picture system, in competition with Fox Movietone and DeForest Phonofilm.

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, and Harry Nyquist provided the theoretical analysis; this is now termed ''Johnson 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.

1930s

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, experimental high fidelity, long playing, and even stereophonic recordings were made by the labs of the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

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

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.

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, probably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Bradford Shockley (and who subsequently shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956). In 1947, Richard Hamming invented Hamming codes for error detection and correction. For patent reasons, the 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 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''.

Calculators

* 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, 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: 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. 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 1954, the first modern solar cell 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, 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 1958, a technical paper by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes first described the laser.

In 1959, Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng invented the metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). The MOSFET has achieved electronic hegemony and sustains the large-scale integration (LSI) of circuits underlying today's information society.

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 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.

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 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 provided the first data that confirmed the Kondo effect. 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.
In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.

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.

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

The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the personal computing 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 (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 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 C as a replacement for the interpreted language B, 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 and in 1980, the first single-chip 32-bit microprocessor, the Bellmac 32A was demonstrated. It went into production in 1982.

1980s

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.

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 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 break-up of AT&T: 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.

In 1985, laser cooling was used to slow and manipulate atoms by Steven Chu