Nokia Bell Labs

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 (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 50,000francs 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 (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. 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, Modification of Final Judgment, 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 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, the programming language C++ had its first commercial release. Bjarne Stroustrup started developing C++ at Bell Laboratories in 1979 as an extension to the original C language.

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. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2018) for his work involving optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.

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 by inventing DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and creating the technology that enabled megabit transmission on installed copper telephone lines, thus facilitating the broadband era.

1990s

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. Bell Labs Vice President Donald Leonard knew first-hand Mr. Snare’s accomplishments and knowledge over many years of Mr. Snare’s technical work and consultations. Vice President Leonard nominated and sponsored Mr. Snare for the Fellow Award recognition. Among this inductee, awards were presented to several others for accomplishments in other technical fields during the ceremony.

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.

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. Subsequently, the BLAST system proposed by Gerard Foschini and colleagues dramatically expanded the capacity of wireless systems. This technology, known today as MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), was a significant factor in
the standardization, commercialization, performance improvement, and spectacular growth of
cellular and wireless LAN systems.

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 (operating system), Inferno, an update of Plan 9, was created by Dennis Ritchie with others, using the then-new Concurrent computing, concurrent programming language Limbo (programming language), Limbo. A high performance database engine (Dali) was developed which became DataBlitz in its product form.

In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named Alcatel-Lucent, Lucent Technologies. AT&T retained a small number of researchers who made up the staff of the newly created AT&T Labs.

In 1997, the smallest then-practical transistor (60 nanometers, 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first Optical IP Switching, optical router was invented.

2000s

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 Dye laser, organic laser was invented; a large-scale map of cosmic dark matter was compiled; and the F-15 (material), an organic material that makes Organic electronics, plastic transistors possible, was invented.

In 2002, physicist Schön scandal, 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.

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-Lucent, 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.

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, 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.

As of July 2008, however, only four scientists remained in physics research, according to a report by the scientific journal ''Nature''.

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.

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).

2010s

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.

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.

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.

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.

On April 15, 2015, Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion. Their first day of combined operations was January 14, 2016.

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 Constellation shaping#Probabilistic Constellation Shaping, new modulation technique.

In 2018, Arthur Ashkin shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" which was developed at Bell Labs in the 1980s.

In December 2019, Nokia announced the 2019 Bell Labs Fellows award recipients and citations:
* Kendall William Harvey, groundbreaking innovation in and sustained contribution to advanced software for IP routing systems.
* Kari Juhani Järvinen, developing outstanding audio technologies and successfully driving them into key standards (from GSM to UMTS to LTE and towards 5G), with significant impact on Nokia business.
* Suresh Kalyanasundaram, outstanding contributions to cellular radio performance, from new physical layer algorithms to scheduler design.
* Thomas Pfeiffer, advancing research and industrialization of optical access technologies and architectures.
* Kurt Pynaert, passionate technology leadership, engineering and innovation contributing to Nokia's Fixed Access and End-to-End Solutions business.
* Roland Ryf, groundbreaking optical designs and experimental results that have advanced Nokia's optical products and technical reputation.
* Cinzia Sartori, highly impactful and sustained contributions to system architecture, network slicing and self-organizing networks in end-to-end mobile networks.
* Lieven Trappeniers, sustained contributions in social communications, streaming media management, IoT systems and data analytics.

2020s

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.

In December 2020, Nokia announced the 2020 Bell Labs Fellows award recipients and citations:
* Fred Buchali, fundamental and sustained contributions to high-baud-rate systems and digital signal processing for optical transmission systems.
* Devaki Chandramouli, seminal contributions to several generations of mobile network technologies and demonstrating excellence in leading technology development in industry standards bodies.
* Giancarlo Gavioli, creation of industry-leading optical networks solutions and seminal contributions in communication theory and algorithmic development and dense integrated digital circuit implementation.
* Jani Lainema, developing outstanding video technologies and driving those into the dominant global standards.
* Klaus Ingemann Pedersen, outstanding contributions to radio resource management research and holistic end-to-end system-level performance modeling and analysis. 
* Jorge Rabadan, consistent and sustained contribution to the development and standardization of Virtual Private Network technologies.
* Shahriar Shahramian, seminal contributions to the field of mmWave integrated circuits and architectures with significant impact on wireless communication systems.

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.

Nobel Prizes, Turing Awards

Nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
* 1937: Clinton Davisson, 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 Woodrow Wilson, 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" which was developed at Bell Labs.

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.
* 1983: Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for their work on operating system theory, and for developing Unix.
* 1986: Robert Tarjan with John Hopcroft, 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.

Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award

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."
* 2013: Technology and Engineering Emmy for its "Pioneering Work in Implementation and Deployment of Network DVR"
* 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."

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

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. 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, 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

Notable alumni

* __ Nobel Prize
* __ Turing Award

Educational films

AT&T had several short films that focused on the science and technology associated with telephony or inventions from Bell Labs or Bell System. Here is a list of short films with a description and significance.

* "West of Chicago Indian Hill" (circa 1966) Film about towns pictured in Naperville area with schools, churches, medical & hospital facilities, recreation events and shopping areas. This was an effort to show life for employees and family of the future home of Bell Telephone Laboratories. There are glimpses of Western Electric supervising the construction of the Indian Hill building and a model. Planned to open in Fall 1966 for 1500 people and was produced by the Film Department at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Ending credits show Writer-Director was John P. Rimo, Cinematography by Tom Musca and Jim Canon of Double Sixteen Co. and Editor was Dick Gerendasy of Wilding Inc.
* "Careers at Bell Laboratories" (1979) Recruiting video of careers at various locations and areas of telephony. Featured: Althea Ginn-TIRKS-(Piscataway), Gregory Chesson-Computer System Research Department-Developing Computer Networks-(Murray Hill), Chin-Sheng Chuang-Digital Signal Processing-(Holmdel), Kathy & Peter Hoppner-Develop Maintenance Programs for the 4ESS-Indian Hill Lab-(Naperville, IL), Philip Fair-Designer in the Residential Telephone Department-(Indianapolis, IND), Ray & Maria Bonachea-Supervise Program Administration and System Test for Switching Control Center System- (Columbus, Ohio), Michael Liberty-Digital Technology for Business Customers-(Denver, Colorado), Bill Blinn-Director of Technical Employment at Bell Labs-(Murray Hill)
* "Microworld" (1980) BONUS EDITION, hosted by William Shatner, An Owen Murphy Production Directed by Paul Cohen, Introduction by George Kupczak of the AT&T Archives and History Center, Microchip manufacturing process.
* "Discovery" (1982) Holmdel Bell Labs 20th Anniversary documentary produced by the Holmdel Art Studio with historical aspects in a narrated slide show presentation. "This video, in addition to giving a clear, brief history of Bell Labs and the Holmdel complex, also provides good insight into the life of the Bell employee, not just in the work place but at social gatherings and in community outreach."
* "Ready for Tomorrow for Today" (1988?) The AT&T Product Training Services Center, located in Dublin, Ohio, features the 5ESS network switch equipment. The presenter indicates the equipment first installation at Seneca, Illinois that pioneered switching services. The switch can be used for local, toll, and tandem offices. The equipment can handle 100,000 lines and 300,000 peak busy hour calls. The modules that make up the 5ESS switch are administrative (AM,) switching (SM,) communication (CM,) remote switching (RSM,) and optically remote (ORM.)--->(The equipment was designed by Bell Labs)"
* "Orchestra" (1991) "A classical music segment featured in "Live from Bell Labs, "a children's science series airing on PBS stations nationwide. In Orchestra, leading scientists and physicists from AT&T Bell Laboratories, playing along with professional musicians, perform a movement from a symphony. Short interviews of the scientist-musicians describing their work and its relationship to music are featured throughout the performance." We have Jay Wilpon featured. Look for him and see his instrument and see what was his job! Thanks to our leading musician, John Koch featured as percussion and component engineer. It took me a while to go through the names in a pause and play of the video and back and forth between the group and the video. I searched and see featured at 04:34 the famous, Norm R Tiedemann, another talented individual.
* "Live from AT&T Bell Laboratories" (Spring 1991, Episode 1) David Heil and Arno Penzias present scientific and technological ideas or products segments by renowned research scientists to teachers and students in a live PBS showing via satellite. Optical Computing Research Department, Molecular Beam Epitaxy, Speech Activated Manipulator (SAM) robotic arm, Gor-Don Robot from InfoQuest, Whippany Jesse Russell Cellular Test Van, office messaging, Jay Wilpon speech recognition for flight reservation system, Alan Wong lasers for optical computers, and AT&T Learning Network with electronic mail.
* "Live from AT&T Bell Laboratories" (1992, Episode 2) David Heil and Arno Penzias present scientific and technological ideas or products segments by renowned research scientists to teachers and students in a live PBS showing. Student audience linked by two way satellite in Texas and Wisconsin, and seen around the globe by via Air Forces Television. Greg Blonder-fiber optics, Y. K. Chen and Wing Mu-fastest lasers, undersea cables, Mohammed Islam-logical gate, Kelley Siegal-industrial engineer printed circuit boards, Wayne Knox-infrared laser, Holmdel Janice Marshall-chemical engineer, Ron Graham-Mathematician, Bill Bennett-Telstar 4, Astronaut Terry Hart-engineer on Telstar 4, Senator David Inouye, Jim West-Anechoic Chamber, Bob Lucky-Communication Sciences Division, Dr. Walter Massey-Director National Science Foundation.
* "Live from AT&T Bell Laboratories" (Spring 1993, Episode 3) Broadcast April 28, 1993, David Heil and Arno Penzias present scientific and technological ideas or products segments by renowned research scientist to teachers and students in a live PBS showing. Students in San Francisco Exploratorium and The Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, La Villette, Paris. Text-to-speech, EO communicator, microchips, clean-room, Kelley Purkey Siegal with Science High School students winning a US First Chairman's Award, Joel de Rosnay-Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, Jugglers Tim Furst and Rhys Thomas with Ron Graham-Mathematician, Guy Story-Scientist/Musician Computing Research and lead singer in music video, Ryshard Horowitz-photographer and Ilona Jones-Bell Labs Art Director-poster project digital photo montage (Penn/Teller and digital Karamazov Brothers.) Segments, "The Worm Turns," "Penn and Teller," "Fellowship," "Magic" Bell Labs music video, "Penn and Teller" performing magic with scientists.
* "Live from AT&T Bell Laboratories" (Fall 1993, Episode 4) Broadcast September 29, 1993, David Heil and Arno Penzias present scientific and technological ideas or products segments by renowned research scientist to teachers and students in a live PBS showing. President Bill Clinton, former MTV VJ Martha Quinn, and Penn and Teller are featured. Segments have Bell Labs Research Director, Greg Blonder, Researcher Marcia Grabow, engineer Amy Puls, and Math professor Arlie Petters. (58 minutes VHS)

Programs

On May 20, 2014, Bell Labs announced the ''Bell Labs Prize'', a competition for innovators to offer proposals in information and communication technologies, with cash awards of up to $100,000 for the grand prize.

Bell Labs Technology Showcase

The Murray Hill campus features a exhibit, the Bell Labs Technology Showcase, showcasing the technological discoveries and developments at Bell Labs. The exhibit is located just off the main lobby and is open to the public.

See also

* Bell Labs Holmdel Complex
* ''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

References

Further reading

* Martin, Douglas
Ian M. Ross, a President at Bell Labs, Dies at 85
''The New York Times'', March 16, 2013, p. A23
*
* Gleick, James. ''The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood''. Vintage Books, 2012, 544 pages. .

External links

*
*

Bell Works
the re-imagining of the historic former Bell Labs building in Holmdel, New Jersey

Timeline of discoveries as of 2006Nokia Bell-Labs Timeline


Bell Labs' Murray Hill anechoic chamber




* ''[https://www.publicartinpublicplaces.info/bell-communications-1961-by-anthony-b-heinsbergen Bell Communications Around the Globe]'', public art sculpture, Los Angeles, California

The Idea Factory
a video interview with Jon Gertner, author of "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by Dave Iverson of KQED-FM Public Radio, San Francisco

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