/r/BellLabs

Photograph via snooOG

Bell Telephone Laboratories

Bell Telephone Laboratories

/r/BellLabs

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2

Would anyone be interested in adopting the /r/BellLabs subreddit?

I'm looking to add an additional active mod or two for continuity and engagement. send a modmail expressing interest.

https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/BellLabs

0 Comments
2024/11/05
18:50 UTC

3

Goodbye Murray Hill

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.

0 Comments
2023/12/12
17:09 UTC

3

Goodbye Indian hill

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

2 Comments
2023/11/13
20:40 UTC

3

Strowger Step System - SXSPhil - Updated for 2022

0 Comments
2022/07/06
22:49 UTC

4

AT&T Archives: Saul Bass Pitch Video for Bell System Logo Redesign

0 Comments
2022/01/23
03:34 UTC

3

A history of the legendary Bell Labs Holmdel facility designed by Eero Saarinen

0 Comments
2021/03/11
02:34 UTC

2

Suggested Reading: The Idea Factory

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.

0 Comments
2018/11/09
18:03 UTC

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