Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

42 Bell Laboratoriesand the early adoption of the Internet. In 1987 Bell establishedthe Gordon Bell Prize for achievements in parallelprocessing.Bell began the 1990s in a new role, helping Microsoftdevelop a research group, where he was still working as of2008. Here Bell has developed what amounts to a new paradigmfor managing personal data, a project called MyLife-Bits. Its main idea is that pictures, e-mails, documents, andother materials that are important to a person’s life andwork should be organized according to their chronologicaland other relationships so they can be retrieved naturallyand virtually automatically, eschewing the often arbitraryconventions of traditional file systems and interfaces. In1992 Bell presciently told a Computer World interviewerthat “twenty-five years from now . . . computers will beexactly like telephones. They are probably going to be communicatingall the time.”Bell also retains a strong interest in the history of computing.He cofounded the Computer History Museum inBoston in 1979 and was also a founder of its successor, theComputer History Museum in Mountain View, California.Bell is a distinguished member of the American Academyof Arts and Sciences, American Association for theAdvancement of Science, the Association for ComputingMachinery (ACM), and the Institute of Electrical and ElectronicEngineering (IEEE). His awards include the IEEEVon Neumann Medal, the AEA Inventor Award, and theNational Medal of Technology (1991).Further ReadingGordon Bell Home Page. Microsoft Bay Area Research Center.Available online. URL: http://research.microsoft.com/users/gbell/. Accessed April 30, 2007.Slater, Robert. Portraits in Silicon. Boston: MIT Press, 1987.“Vax Man: Gordon Bell.” Computerworld, June 22, 1992, p. 13.Available online. URL: http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell//CGB%20Files/Computerworld%20Vax%20Ma n%20920622%20c.pdf. Accessed April 30, 2007.Bell LaboratoriesBell Telephone Laboratories was established in 1925 inMurray Hill, New Jersey: It was intended to take over theresearch arm of the Western Electric division of AmericanTelephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and was jointly administeredby the two companies. The organization’s principaltask was to design and develop telephone switching equipment,but there was also research in facsimile (fax) transmissionand television.The research that would have the greatest impact,however, would come from a relative handful of Bell scientistswho were given resources to undertake fundamentalresearch. In the 1930s Bell scientist Karl Jansky, investigatinginterference with long-range radio transmissions,discovered that radio waves were arriving from space,leading to the development of radio astronomy. Other BellLabs developments of the 1930s and 1940s included thevocoder, an early electronic speech synthesizer, and thephotovoltaic cell, with its potential application to solarpower systems.Several Bell Labs technologies would have a directimpact on the computer field. The transistor, developedby Bell Labs researchers John Bardeen, Walter Brattain,and William Shockley, would make a new generation ofmore compact and reliable computers possible. Informationtheory (see information theory and Shannon,Claude) would revolutionize telecommunications, signalprocessing, and data transfer. Work on the laser in the1960s would eventually lead to the compact disc (see cdromand dvd-rom). Other hardware contributions includethe charge-coupled device (CCD) that would revolutionizeastronomical and digital photography and fiber-optic cablesfor high-volume data communications.In software engineering the most important achievementsof Bell researchers were the development of the Cprogramming language and the UNIX operating system inthe early 1970s (see c; Ritchie, Dennis; and unix). Theelegant design of the modular UNIX system is still admiredtoday, and versions of UNIX and Linux power many serversand networks.New Corporate DirectionPerhaps ironically, AT&T’s near monopolistic position inthe telecommunications industry both provided substantialrevenue for fundamental research and shielded the labfrom competitive pressure and the need to tie research tothe development of commercial products. As a result, BellLabs arguably became the most important private researchinstitution in the 20th century. By the end of the 1980s,however, court decisions had reshaped the landscape of thecommunications field, and Bell Labs became a victim of thecompany’s change from monopolist to competitor.In 1996 AT&T divested Bell Labs along with its mainequipment manufacturing facilities into a new company,Lucent Technologies. A smaller group of researchers wereretained and reorganized as AT&T Laboratories. As the 2000sbegan these researchers made new achievements, includingtiny transistors whose size is measured in atoms, opticaldata routing (see optical computing) and nanotechnology,DNA-based computing (see molecular computing), andother esoteric but potentially momentous fields.In recent years, however, the organization has largelychanged its focus from long-term research in fundamentaltopics to the search for projects that can be quickly turnedinto commercial products—in essence the requirement thatthe Labs become a profit center. The merger of Lucent andanother communications giant, Alcatel, in 2006 has led torenewed concerns that consolidation and even tighter integrationof the Labs with corporate goals might come at theexpense of the kind of research culture that has inspiredthe Labs’ greatest breakthroughs.Further ReadingAlcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories. Available online. URL: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com. Accessed May 2, 2007.Bell Labs Technical Journal. Available online. URL: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com. Accessed May 2, 2007.Gehani, Narain. Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel. Summit, N.J.:Silicon Press, 2003.