Bell Labs Origins and Historical Locations
– Bell Labs was originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories.
– It was founded in January 1925.
– The laboratory was located at 463 West Street in New York City.
– In the 1960s, the laboratory and company headquarters were moved to New Jersey.
– Nokia acquired Bell Labs in 2016.
Alexander Graham Bell’s Personal Research after the Telephone
– Alexander Graham Bell used the Volta Prize to fund the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
– The laboratory focused on the analysis, recording, and transmission of sound.
– Bell used his profits for further research and education.
– The Volta Bureau was founded at his father’s home in Washington, D.C.
– Bell constructed a new building in 1893 to house the lab.
Early Antecedent and Formal Organization
– The Bell Patent Association was formed by Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Sanders, and Gardiner Hubbard.
– Bell Telephone Company was formed in 1877.
– The Mechanical Department was created by the American Bell Telephone Company in 1884.
– American Bell held a controlling interest in Western Electric.
– AT&T and its subsidiary took control of American Bell and the Bell System.
– The first Bell Laboratory was established in 1925 at 463 West Street in New York.
– Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. was organized to consolidate development and research activities.
– Ownership was shared between Western Electric and AT&T.
– The company had 3600 engineers, scientists, and support staff.
– The headquarters were officially relocated to Murray Hill, New Jersey in 1967.
Bell Labs Locations
– Holmdel, NJ: Built in the 1930s. Currently used as an exhibit and the building is sold. Known for its horn antenna used for Big Bang theory.
– Red Hill, NJ: Located at exit 109 on the Garden State Parkway. Formerly housed Bell Labs researchers. Now in use by Memorial Sloan Kettering.
– Indian Hill, IL: Built in 1966. Currently used by Nokia. Developed switching technology and systems.
– Indian Hill New, IL: Built in 2000 by Lucent Technologies. Located at 1960 Lucent Lane, Naperville, IL. Sold by Nokia for $4.8 million in April 2023.
– Murray Hill, NJ: Built in 1941-1945. Currently used by Nokia. Developed the transistor, UNIX operating system, and C programming language.
Bell Labs Contributions and Innovations
– Quality Control: Walter A. Shewhart proposed the control chart. Basis for statistical process control (SPC) and Six Sigma.
– Radio Astronomy: Karl Jansky discovered radio waves emitted from the center of the galaxy in 1931.
– Television and Sound: Experimental high fidelity, long playing, and stereophonic recordings of the Philadelphia Orchestra were made in 1931 and 1932. Stereo signals were transmitted live from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. in 1933.
– Speech Synthesis: The vocoder and the Voder, the first electronic speech synthesizer, were developed in 1937.
– Transistor Invention: The first transistor, a point-contact germanium device, was invented in 1947.
– Photovoltaic Cell: Developed by Russell Ohl in the early 1940s.
– SIGSALY: The first digital scrambled speech transmission system developed by Bell Labs in 1943.
– Negative Feedback System: Invented by Harold Black in the 1930s.
– Hamming Codes: Invented by Richard Hamming in 1947 for error detection and correction.
– Information Theory: Claude Shannon published ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication’ in 1948, a founding work in information theory.
– Bell Labs Calculators: Model I, Model II, Model III, Model IV, Model V.
– Developments in the 1950s: Binary code systems, N-carrier system, wire spring relay, zone melting, Karnaugh map, TRADIC computer.
– Innovations in the 1960s: Charge-coupled device (CCD), gas laser, electret microphone, Telstar spacecraft, Indian Hill electronic switching systems center.
– Advancements in the 1970s: C programming language, central office technology, coax-22 cable, tactile force-feedback system, improved task priority system.
– Notable Discoveries and Inventions: Modern solar cell, MUSIC computer program, laser, metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), cosmic microwave background.
– Contributions to Computer Graphics and Animation: Computer-animated movies, BEFLIX animation language, digital computer art, prototype interactive page-layout system, personal computing revolution. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 Finnish company Nokia. It is headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and operates a global network of laboratories.
 Logo since 2023 | |
 Headquarters in Murray Hill, New Jersey, formerly the corporate headquarters of Lucent | |
| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Telecommunication, information technology, material science |
| Founded | January 1925 (as Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.) |
| Headquarters | Murray Hill, New Jersey, U.S. |
Key people | Peter Vetter, Thierry Klein |
| Parent | AT&T Corporation (1925–1996) Western Electric (1925–1983) Lucent (1996–2006) Alcatel-Lucent (2006–2016) Nokia (2016–present) |
| Subsidiaries | Nokia Shanghai Bell |
| Website | bell-labs.com |
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. Ten 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. 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 New Jersey. Nokia acquired Bell Labs in 2016.
