Bell Labs
Bell Labs is an American industrial research and scientific development company. Researchers from there are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others. Ten Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
Logo since 2023 | |
2012 aerial picture of the Murray Hill, New Jersey location, official Bell Labs headquarters since 1967 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Telecommunication, information technology, material science |
| Founded | January 1925 (as Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.) |
| Headquarters | Murray Hill, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Parent | AT&T Corporation (1925–1996) Western Electric (1925–1983) Lucent (1996–2006) Alcatel-Lucent (2006–2016) Nokia (2016–present) |
| Subsidiaries | Nokia Shanghai Bell |
| Website | bell-labs.com |
Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the Bell System telephone conglomerate. The laboratory began in the late 19th century as the Western Electric Engineering Department, located at 463 West Street in New York City. After years of conducting research and development under Western Electric, a Bell subsidiary, the Engineering Department was reformed into Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925 and placed under the shared ownership of Western Electric and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). In the 1960s, laboratory and company headquarters were moved to Murray Hill, New Jersey. Nokia acquired Bell Labs in 2016 as part of its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent.