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Bell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs was originally the research and development arm of the United States Bell System, and was the premier corporate facility of its type, developing a range of revolutionary technologies from telephone switches to specialized coverings for telephone cables, to the transistor.In 1925, Walter Gifford (president of AT&T) established the separate entity called Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc., which took over work previously conducted by the research division of Western Electric's engineering department. Bell Labs was 50 percent owned by Western Electric, and 50 percent owned by AT&T.
The work done by Bell Labs was broadly divided into three categories: research, systems engineering and development.
Research created the theoretical underpinnings for telecommunications. It covered subjects such as mathematics, physics, material sciences, behavioral sciences, and computer programming theory.
Systems engineering concerned itself with conceiving the highly complex systems that make up the telecommunication network s.
Development, by far the largest of Bell Labs' activities designed the specific systems -- both hardwareHardware is equipment such as fasteners, keys, locks, hinges, wire, chains, plumbing supples, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts, especially when they are made of metal. In the United States, hardware has been traditionally sold in " hardware stor and softwareComputer software (or simply software refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. Program software performs the function of the program it implements, either by directly providing instructions to th -- needed to build the Bell System's telecommunications networks.
- In 1933Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s Years: 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 See also 1933 in aviation 1933 in film 1933 in literature 1933 in mu, Karl Jansky in his work for Bell Labs investigating the origins of static on long distance communication s, discovered that radioFor other uses see: radio (disambiguation Radio is a technology that allows the transmission of signals by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of light. Radio waves Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, and are waves were being emitted from the centre of the galaxyThis article is about a celestial body. For alternate meanings see galaxy (disambiguation). Spiral Galaxy ESO 269-57 is about 150 million light-years away and 200,000 light-years across. Stars are almost always found in collections called galaxies togethe -- the founding of radio astronomyRadio astronomy is the study of celestial phenomena through measurement of the characteristics of radio waves emitted by physical processes occurring in space. Radio waves are much longer than light waves. In order to receive good signals, radio astronomy, though Bell did not pursue this, being more focused on the problems of telecommunications.
- The transistor was invented by Bell Labs in 1947Events January January 1 British mines nationalized January 1 Nigeria gains limited autonomy January 1 The Canadian Citizenship Act went into effect January 3 Proceedings of the United States Congress are televised for the first time. January 10 United Na. The people responsible for the discovery, John Bardeen, William Bradford Shockley, and Walter Houser Brattain, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.
- Claude Shannon, working as a research mathematician, published " A Mathematical Theory of Communication" ( 1948) in the Bell System Technical Journal, which in part built on earlier work in information theory at Bell Labs by Nyquist and Hartley.
- Bell Labs developed the photovoltaic cell.
- Erna Schneider Hoover invented a computerized switching system for telephone traffic while working at Bell Laboratories.
- Bell Labs was also the original home to the UNIX operating system and the C programming language, developed by Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, and Ken Thompson in the early 1970s, as well as the C++ programming language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in the 1980s.
- Bell Labs developed Plan 9 in the late 1980s and early 1990s and continues to today.
After the 1984 divestiture agreement with the government that broke up AT&T, Bellcore was split off from Bell Labs to provide the same R&D functions for the newly created local exchange carriers.
In 1996 AT&T spun off Bell Labs, along with most of its equipment-manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies. AT&T retained a smaller number of researchers to form AT&T Laboratories .
In 2002 Jan Hendrik Schön, a German physicist, was fired from Bell Labs after his work was found to contain fraudulent data; it was the first case of fraud in the lab's history. Over a dozen of Schön's papers were found to contain made up or altered data, including a paper on molecular-scale transistors that was hailed as a breakthrough.
At its height, Bell Labs had research and/or development facilities all over the country, but mostly concentrated in New Jersey. Among the locations were:
Bell Labs is currently located in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
