Bell Labs is an American industrial research and development (R&D) company, currently operating as a subsidiary of Finnish technology company Nokia . With a long history, Bell Labs is 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, throughout the 20th century. Ten Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
50-668: Bell Laboratory may refer to: Bell Labs , also known as the Bell Laboratories, the large research organization created by American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1925, or Bell Laboratory , also known as the Volta Laboratory and the Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory, created in Washington, D.C. by Alexander Graham Bell in 1880. Topics referred to by
100-624: A universal language . However, although heavily promoted at the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan, Italy in 1880, after a period of a dozen years or so in which it was applied to the education of the deaf, Visible Speech was found to be more cumbersome, and thus a hindrance, to the teaching of speech to the deaf compared to other methods, and eventually faded from use. In 1887, his son, Alexander Graham Bell, sold off
150-517: A dozen diphthongs : World English , which was similar to the International Phonetic Alphabet , and also Line Writing, used as a shorthand form for stenographers . Melville's works on Visible Speech became highly notable, and were described by Édouard Séguin as being "...a greater invention than the telephone of his son, Alexander Graham Bell ". Melville saw numerous applications for his invention, including its worldwide use as
200-770: A lecturer on philology at Queen's College, Kingston, Ontario ; and in 1881 he moved to Washington, D.C. at the suggestion of his son Graham, where he devoted himself to the education of the deaf by the use of Visible Speech in which the alphabetical characters of his linguistic invention were representative graphic diagrams for the various positions and motions of the lips, tongue, mouth, etc., as well as other methods of orthoepy . Prior to departing Scotland for Canada Melville Bell had published at least 17 works on proper speech, vocal physiology, stenography and other works. Besides instructing at Queen's College he also lectured in Boston, Montreal, Toronto, London, and other universities including
250-594: A nearby property. In 1928, a 15-acre (6.1 ha) site in Chester Township, New Jersey , was leased for outdoor tests, though the facility became inadequate for such purposes. In 1930, the Chester location required the purchase of an additional 85 acres (34 ha) of land to be used for a new outdoor plant development laboratory. Prior to Chester being established, a test plot was installed in Limon, Colorado in 1929, similar to
300-567: A relatively distant role with the Bell System as a whole, but continued to pursue his own personal research interests. 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,
350-762: A series of 12 lectures at Boston's Lowell Institute . When the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall (later King George V and Queen Mary) called on Brantford for a visit, Melville was asked to greet the dignitaries at the public event. He became a Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland, the Royal Scottish Society of Arts , and the American Association for the Advancement of Science , as well as obtaining memberships in other societies. Alexander Melville Bell
400-760: A shack in Montauk, Long Island . That same year, tests were performed on the first transoceanic radio telephone at a house in Arlington County, Virginia . A radio reception laboratory was established in 1919 in the Cliffwood section of Aberdeen Township, New Jersey . Additionally for 1919, a transmission studies site was established in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania that built, in 1929, the coaxial conductor line for first tests of long-distance transmission in various frequencies. On January 1, 1925, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
450-659: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Bell Labs 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
500-665: 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
550-644: The Hubbard • Bell • Grossman • Pillot Memorial , alongside his wife and other members of the Bell and Grosvenor families. The Bell House at Colonial Beach, Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. The voice of Bell, reciting a sentence from Hamlet , can be heard at the Smithsonian Institution , as extracted from an 1881 graphophone recording. The following are some of
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#1732852300945600-551: 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 January 1954, Bell Labs built one of the first completely transistorized computer machines, TRADIC or Flyable TRADIC, for
650-573: The Summit, New Jersey , chemical laboratory was nearly 10 years established in a three-story building conducted experiments in corrosion, using various fungicides tests on cables, metallic components, or wood. For 1929, land was purchased in Holmdel Township, New Jersey , for a radio reception laboratory to replace the Cliffwood location that had been in operation since 1919. In 1930, the Cliffwood location
700-590: The University of Edinburgh , and from 1865 to 1870 at the University of London . Melville married Eliza Grace Symonds (b. 21 September 1809, Alverstock, Hampshire d. Georgetown, Washington, D.C., US 5 January 1897), the only daughter of a British naval surgeon . In 1868, and again in 1870 and 1871, Melville lectured at the Lowell Institute in Boston , Massachusetts, US after having moved to Canada. In 1870 he became
750-570: The Volta Laboratory in Melville's backyard carriage house. Due to the limited space available at the carriage house, and with the assistance of Melville who contributed US$ 15,000 (approximately $ 510,000 in today's dollars), Graham had his new Volta Bureau building constructed close by in 1893. Melville Bell died at age 86 in 1905 due to pneumonia after an operation for diabetes, and was interred in Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Cemetery adjacent to
800-444: The charge-coupled device (CCD), and many other optical, wireless, and wired communications technologies and systems. 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
850-402: The thermal noise in a resistor was first measured by John B. Johnson , for which Harry Nyquist provided the theoretical analysis; this is now termed Johnson-Nyquist 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. In 1928, Harold Black invented
900-702: 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,
950-497: The United States Air Force with 10,358 germanium point-contact diodes and 684 Bell Labs Type 1734 Type A cartridge transistors. The design team was led by electrical engineer Jean Howard Felker with James R. Harris and Louis C. Brown ("Charlie Brown") as the lead engineers on the project, which started in 1951. The device took only 3 cubic-feet and consumed 100 watt power for its small and low powered design in comparison to
1000-597: 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 . 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
1050-400: 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. 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. After the invention of the telephone, Bell maintained
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#17328523009451100-760: 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
1150-411: The board of directors was John J. Carty , AT&T's vice president, 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. In the early 1920s, a few outdoor facilities and radio communications development facilities were developed. In 1925,
1200-593: The center of the galaxy . In 1931 and 1932, the labs made experimental high fidelity, long playing, and even stereophonic recordings 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 ,
1250-530: The decade. Shannon was also the founder of modern cryptography with his 1949 paper Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems . 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
1300-572: The first transatlantic communications cable to carry telephone conversations, 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 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors;
1350-429: The first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface. They showed that silicon dioxide insulated, protected silicon wafers and prevented dopants from diffusing into the wafer. In 1958, a technical paper by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes first described the laser . Alexander Melville Bell Alexander Melville Bell (1 March 1819 – 7 August 1905)
1400-434: The former locations have been scaled down or closed. Bell's Holmdel research and development lab , a 1,900,000-square-foot (180,000 m ) structure set on 473 acres (191 ha), 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
1450-532: The intellectual assets owned by the Volta Laboratory Association. Graham used the considerable profits from the sale of his shares to found the Volta Bureau as an instrument "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf". Graham's scientific and statistical research work on deafness became so large that within the period of a few years his documentation engulfed an entire room of
1500-597: The later Bell Laboratories locations in New Jersey were Holmdel Township , Crawford Hill , the Deal Test Site , Freehold , Lincroft , Long Branch , Middletown , Neptune Township , Princeton , Piscataway , Red Bank , Chester Township , 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
1550-401: The location performed precision frequency-measuring apparatus, field strength measurements, and conducted radio interference. 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
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1600-482: The negative feedback system commonly used in amplifiers. Later, Harry Nyquist analyzed Black's design rule for negative feedback. This work was published in 1932 and became known as the Nyquist criterion . 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
1650-558: The one in Gulfport. The three test plots at Gulfport, Limon, and Chester were outdoor facilities for preservatives and prolonging the use of telephone poles. Additionally, in 1929, a land expansion was done at the Deal Labs to 208 acres (84 ha). This added land increased the facility for radio transmission studies. The beginning of 1930s, established three facilities with radio communications experiments and chemical aspects testing. By 1939,
1700-497: 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 went much further. Bell Labs also introduced a series of increasingly complex calculators through
1750-426: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Bell Laboratory . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bell_Laboratory&oldid=710830006 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
1800-523: 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 . Its alumni during this time include people like William Shockley , Dennis Ritchie , Claude Shannon and Willard Boyle . Bell Labs became a subsidiary of AT&T Technologies in 1984 after the Bell System
1850-464: The success of the newly named Bell Works site, but several large tenants had announced plans to move in through 2016 and 2017. Bell Lab's 1974 corporate directory listed 22 labs in the United States, located in: Nokia Bell Lab's 2024 website pictured 10 labs, located in: Also listed as research locations without additional information was Sunnyvale, California , US and Tampere, Finland . The Naperville, Illinois Bell Labs location near Chicago
1900-560: The test plot studies were established at Gulfport, Mississippi , where there were numerous telephone pole samples established for wood preservation. At the Deal, New Jersey location, work was done on ship-to-shore radio telephony. In 1926, in the Whippany section of Hanover Township, New Jersey , land was acquired and established for the development of a 50-kilowatt broadcast transmitter. In 1931, Whippany increased with 75 acres (30 ha) added from
1950-470: The vacuum tube designs of the times. The device could be installed in a B-52 Stratofortress Bomber and had a performance up to one million logical operations a second. The flyable program used a Mylar sheet with punched holes, instead of the removable plugboard. In 1954, the first modern solar cell was invented at Bell Laboratories. In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick discovered semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide. In 1956 TAT-1 ,
2000-665: Was a teacher and researcher of physiological phonetics and was the author of numerous works on orthoepy and elocution . Additionally he was also the creator of Visible Speech which was used to help the deaf learn to talk, and was the father of Alexander Graham Bell . Alexander Melville Bell was born in Edinburgh , Scotland , and studied under and became the principal assistant of his father, Alexander Bell (b. 3 March 1790, Fife, Scotland d. 23 April 1865, St. Pancras , north London ), an authority on phonetics and speech disorders. From 1843 to 1865 he lectured on speech elocution at
2050-458: Was broken up . After the breakup, its funding greatly declined. In 1996, AT&T Technologies was spun off and renamed to Lucent Technologies, who used the Murray Hill site as their headquarters. Bell Laboratories was split as well, with part of it going to AT&T as AT&T Laboratories . In 2006, Lucent merged with French telecommunications company Alcatel to form Alcatel-Lucent , which
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2100-495: Was considered the Chicago Innovation Center and hosted Nokia's second annual Algorithm World event in 2022. 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 ,
2150-438: Was doing research into the service providers. In 1896, Western Electric bought property at 463 West Street to centralize the manufacturers and engineers which had been supplying AT&T with such technology as telephones, telephone exchange switches and transmission equipment. During the early 20th century, several historically significant laboratories were established. In 1915, the first radio transmissions were made from
2200-498: Was ending its operations as Holmdel was established. Whereas, in 1930, a location in Mendham Township, New Jersey , was established to continue radio receiver developments farther from the Whippany location and eliminate transmitter interference at that facility with developments. The Mendham location worked on communication equipment and broadcast receivers. These devices were used for marine, aircraft, and police services as well as
2250-690: Was in turn acquired by Nokia in 2016. 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), 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 . The laboratory
2300-460: Was instrumental in advancing Army and Navy ammunition acceptance and material sampling procedures. In 1947, the transistor , arguably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by John Bardeen , Walter Houser Brattain , and William Bradford Shockley (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,
2350-478: Was married twice, first to Eliza Grace Symonds in 1844 with whom he had three children, and then to Harriet G. Shibley. In 1864 Melville published his first works on Visible Speech , to help the deaf both learn and improve upon their aural speech (since the profoundly deaf could themselves not hear their own aural pronunciations). To promote the language, Bell created two written short forms using his system of 29 modifiers and tones, 52 consonants , 36 vowels and
2400-420: 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 3600 engineers, scientists, and support staff. Its 400,000-square-foot (37,000 m ) space was expanded with a new building occupying about one quarter of a city block. The first chairman of
2450-427: Was the origin of the modern quality control movement, including Six Sigma . In 1926, the laboratories invented an early 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
2500-585: 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. This resulted in the founding of the Volta Bureau ( c. 1887 ) at
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