Bell Labs

Where the avant-garde meets the rear guard.

Once one of the GreatResearchLabs, the most important research laboratory for ThePhoneCompany? (AT&T) when it was a monopoly, now part of Lucent Technologies.

Historically, the source of much important research, including InformationTheory due to ClaudeShannon, the transistor, high-temperature superconductors, wireless communications, and lots more.

It was one of the best GeekCentral?s in the world.

This is where the InventorsOfUnix created CeeLanguage and the UnixOperatingSystem, among other things, and later PlanNineFromBellLabs and InfernoOs.

Also the place where BjarneStroustrup invented CeePlusPlus.

The golden age of BellLabs seems to be over. With Lucent's troubles during the telecom meltdown, researchers have been leaving at a shocking pace. The spin off of Avaya and the microelectronics division further fragmented what remained after AT&T Labs and Bellcore were split off. BrianKernighan joined the faculty at Princeton, though at BellLabs once a week and during the summers. KenThompson left at the end of November 2001(?). The mood among those remaining (of which I'm currently one) is that it's the end of an era.

See http://www.bell-labs.com/history/ and http://www.bell-labs.com/topic/alumni/

And listen to the BellLabs song: http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/innovations_song/

A collection of interesting papers authored at Bell Labs can be found at http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/