https://njbmagazine.com/njb-news-now/nokia-bell-labs-hq-is-moving-from-murray-hill-to-new-brunswick/

I loved going to that facility and seeing the history on display in the main building. I was let go in 2019 from the IH campus in Illinois. I still bristle at "Nokia Bell Labs." Yes, they bought it but taking credit for its legendary innovations rubs me wrong.

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The Indian Hill facility in Naperville is slowly being demolished, the 2001 addition is the first.

https://preview.redd.it/tz667oj8f60c1.jpg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=705c48e067e35e5ec4ef248bfb7d7d21ffc72a3c

Jon Gertner's "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" is a really nice (although dense) historical account of the role Bell Labs played in American history if you're interested in knowing more about them.

I myself did not know about Bell Labs until my university studies. Although it was often hidden in subtext or stuffed away in references, a lot of the theory and technologies behind my studies (computing science) had an origin at Bell Labs. Examples include Unix, which is probably the most important operating system philosophy in the world. So did the C programming language, the Plan9 operating system, Lex and Yacc as compiler-construction tools, and even interesting chess algorithms (King-Rook-King optimal play strategy). UTF-8, the character encoding scheme that is practically standard everywhere now, also came from the Labs. This got me immensely interested. How could this one place be a source of so much important research? So I read and really appreciate Gertner's book for giving me that insight.

Ultimately, Bell Labs is probably one of the most influential organizations in 20th century America. They were pivotal in AT&T's telephone network infrastructure, critical to the second world war, and essential to the Government in the cold war that followed it. Transistors, satellites, mobile phones, optic-fiber - All of this have an origin at Bell Labs. This extends beyond computing to physics and mathematics too. There are many Nobel prize's awarded to the work done at Bell Labs that wasn't strictly focused on physical technologies. Even now, almost 40 years since it was dismembered, influential members of the computer-science community still have an origin there.

I suppose I am still simply in awe at how much we owe to Bell Labs without even knowing it. It's not taught to school-children in history, it's not really celebrated or acknowledged, and it seems to have gone just as it came (it now rests with Nokia after moving about and exchanging hands a bunch of times, but it'll never be what it was since the AT&T breakup).

I guess I'm writing this in hopes others will be inspired to learn more about the laboratory, and form an appreciation for what it's members did for the world so that they aren't so easily forgotten.