Bell Labs: Transistors, Unix, Shannon's Bits and the Echo of the Big Bang

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Bell Labs traces back to the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs that France awarded Alexander Graham Bell in 1880, which funded his Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. In 1925, AT&T and Western Electric formed Bell Telephone Laboratories at 463 West Street in New York City with 3,600 staff. AT&T's government-sanctioned monopoly paid for long-range research. In the 1930s Karl Jansky, chasing static on transatlantic radio, traced a hiss to the center of the Milky Way and founded radio astronomy. In 1947 John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley built the point-contact transistor from germanium, replacing hot, fragile vacuum tubes.

The lab invented the practical solar cell in 1954 to power remote relay stations, operated the first continuous gas laser in 1960 and launched Telstar, the first active communications satellite, in 1962. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson found the cosmic microwave background, earning a Nobel Prize. Claude Shannon's 1948 paper founded information theory and coined the term bit. Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created Unix in 1969, Ritchie wrote C in 1972, and Bjarne Stroustrup later developed C++. After the 1984 AT&T breakup, the lab passed to Lucent in 1996, Alcatel-Lucent in 2006 and Nokia in 2016.

• The Holmdel complex in New Jersey, designed by Eero Saarinen, had a water tower shaped like a three-legged transistor.
• In 2008 Bell Labs announced it was leaving fundamental physics and basic science for applied research.
• Its honors include 11 Nobel Prizes, five Turing Awards, a Grammy and a 1937 Academy Award for a cinema sound horn.
• Emmy Awards recognized its work on digital television, fiber optic cables and the CCD image sensor.
• Nokia Bell Labs now focuses on AI, 6G and applied quantum physics and plans a new headquarters in New Brunswick, New Jersey.