When I first entered the industry in the 70s, Bell Labs held an exalted place in the industry that was responsible for inventing and perfecting the technologies we all used. Bell Labs was founded and owned by the giant AT&T monopoly, and was operated with the brilliant concept of hiring the smartest people and letting them pursue research related to technology. Much of the research was funneled towards communication technologies, but covered a wide range of scientific and technical breakthroughs that benefited numerous industries.

Some of the key Bell Labs discoveries that benefited communications include:

• The Transistor. Transistors replaced bulky vacuum tubes and were the basis for the microelectronics revolution.
• Shannon’s Information Theory. This was the mathematical foundation of the digital age and defined how to treat data as a measurable entity (bits), and addressed data uncertainty, noise, efficient data compression, and transmission.
• Fiber Optics. Bell Labs researched optical waves and turned that research into a technology for transmitting large amounts of data using lasers. Bell Labs discovered and developed erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), which were crucial for boosting signals over long distances, and that led to the development of the internet backbone.
• The First Communications Satellite. Bell Labs designed and built Telstar, the world’s first communication satellite. This venture also included breakthroughs in solar cells and in travelling-wave tube transponders that amplified communications signals to reach Earth.
• The Cellular Network Concept. Bell Labs scientists developed the concept of arranging wireless networks into cells. The Lab went on to develop the technologies used for 1G, 2G, and 3G cellular networks.
• UNIX and the C Programming Language. Bell Labs developed early programming languages, which became the basis for modern programming.
• Digital Signal Processing (DSP): Scientists developed the concepts, algorithms, and hardware used to develop the first single-chip digital processor that has become the basis for chips used for most modern electronics.

 Bell Labs researchers earned nine Nobel Prizes and pushed the boundaries of physics, computing, and telecommunications. IEEE recently celebrated some of the achievements of Bell Labs in areas other than communications, which include:

• Molecular Beam Epitaxy. This was a chip-making process that is key to the manufacture of modern chips and lasers.
• Fractional Quantum Hall Effect. This physics breakthrough defined how electrons could become entangled, which led to the development of quantum computing.
• Convolutional Neural Networks. This is a specialized deep learning model inspired by the human visual cortex, which has become the basis for modern AI.
• Super Resolution Fluorescence Microscopy. This is a series of techniques that allow images to have resolution higher than the limits imposed by the diffraction limit of light, which has had major benefits in biological research.
• Charged-coupled Device. This is a light-sensitive integrated circuit that captures images by converting photons into electrons, and which is the basis for digital imaging, medical imaging, and modern astronomy.

Bell Labs is now owned by Nokia, which acquired the company when it purchased Alcatel-Lucent. Lucent was the technology spin-off formed at the breakup of AT&T into the Baby Bell companies.