Talk:Bell Labs
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Inaccurate, in my view, to credit Kernighan with development of UNIX and C if another 5 - 10 contributors are not also credited. UNIX and C were mostly work of Thompson and Ritchie. True, Kernighan is co-author of the book, but not co-author of the language.
Posting this in discussion instead of as edit because I'd like to hear other views from people who were at Bell Labs at the time, as I was.
[edit] Book on Bell Labs?
Are there any good books on the Bell Labs or its history?
The Rape of Ma Bell: The Criminal Wrecking of the Best Telephone System in the World (Hardcover) by Constantine Raymond Kraus, Alfred W. Duerig ISBN: 081840468X
There's also A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System, in several volumes, all quite long and detailed. Looking at Amazon.com [1], they seem to be mostly out of print now; I have only two of the volumes. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 15:00, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
According to research i'm doing on the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, Penzias and Wilson of the Bell Labs managed to make the connection for this discovery in 1965. The discovery that pushed the (hot) Big Bang theory of the universe to the fore, helped create some of the current questions in modern cosmology and won them a Nobel Prize in 1978.
See sources such as The Big Bang, David M. Harland; Ripples in the Cosmos, Michael Rowan-Robinson.
[edit] Early computers
I listed early computers built by Bell Labs. I hope to add details later. Bubba73 03:00, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] BTL is now all "Bell Labs"
I've been using this bit of wiki: Bell Telephone Laboratories to link everything to Bell Labs and not BTL (which redirects to BL). BL was bigger by leaps and bounds on what links here, and BTL had like 20 ... done for now ... now if I could get a handle on the Bell disambig / what links here page. Anyone can help, just use bell where appropriate!--Rbeas 04:39, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] name origin
Wasn't the parent company (and hence weren't the labs) named after Alexander Graham Bell? No mention of him can I find here. Carrionluggage 06:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] cleanup
I think that I will create a category for all of the articles about Bell innovations. How about Category:Bell Laboratories developments? Cacophony 08:07, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
- Huh, what else needs to be cleaned up? Article looks sort of fine to me. Someone needs to explain what needs to be cleaned.--Gary King 03:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
- The whole thing still looks a mess - There are too many lists, the article needs some actual context rather than lists; and there are also too many red links so those pages need to be created as well. — Wackymacs 07:55, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
- I took my own crack at a cleanup. I changed 'history' to 'timeline', since that is what it is. There are so many highlights - I think the timeline could be shorter or a whole lot longer - or not at all, especially where Bell Labs itself maintains a timeline that is far more detailed. Perhaps someone could turn the timeline into a series of paragraphs - maybe decade by decade. That might work better. But there also needs to be info on the biz side - who provided leadership and so forth. Verne Equinox 01:14, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
- The whole thing still looks a mess - There are too many lists, the article needs some actual context rather than lists; and there are also too many red links so those pages need to be created as well. — Wackymacs 07:55, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] LEDs
Upon reading this article I read that the LED was invented at Bell Labs, however the article on LEDs states nothing of Bell and instead mentions GE.
- Well, I read a major article in Bell Laboratories Record a long time ago, but I can't say for certain that the article asserted the claim that Bell Labs invented them outright. The question may hinge on who invented the first LED of any kind, who invented the first visible LED, and so on.
- Atlant 19:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
- Ahh, there's the claim on the Bell Labs "timeline of discoveries" webpage [2]:
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- 1962
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- Light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Used practically everywhere from traffic lights to scientific imaging systems.
- Atlant 19:16, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
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- According to the "Learn About Light - History of Light" page on GE's website [3]:
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- 1962 Light Emitting Diode (LED)
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- Invented by GE. Electricity is transformed into light inside a solid crystal of semiconductor material.
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- Dustin 21:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Nearly a century of innovation
I think the title of this section looks more like something that goes in a brochure than an encyclopedia. Can we change the title to "Achievements" or something like that? Somebody else probably knows a better title. --Whiteknox 13:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Science
AG Bell is covered in the linked AT&T article. As far as I see, the main defect in this lovely brochure is that it omits almost all the work of Bell Labs. CO2 laser, radio astronomy and information theory are all good things, but the main job of the thousands of workers was engineering. They mostly designed equipment. There should be a link or links to articles about carrier current, crossbar, cable insulation, microwave radio relay and other mainstream work. The brochure is all about science, while the actual institution was mostly about engineering. Jim.henderson 16:18, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Why So Little Mention of Lucent Technologies and Where Did That "Current Logo" Come From?
When I go to http://www.bell-labs.com/ I see that Bell Labs is a part of Lucent Technologies. But there is little mention of that here. Why isn't the Lucent logo used? Where can you see the "current logo" currently being used? -- 20 October 2006
[edit] 1949
What's so special about a teleprinter in New Hampshire controlled from New York? Weren't teleprinters already in service for half a century or more? Jim.henderson 02:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
So, having found a more reliable report in the George Stibitz biography, I used a link to replace the inaccurate mention that someone supplied here. Jim.henderson 18:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Dead Links
It seems all of the Links on this page and the entirety of Wikipedia that originally went to pages on Bell Labs's website now need to be either updated or removed completely. Bell Labs's website is now under Alcatel-Lucent's. NcSchu 22:53, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- Must have been a glitch. All the links work now and haven't been changed.
- Jim.henderson 20:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] What about the other Bell Laboratories?
Does anything need to be said about this one?
I'm not sure whether I'm serious or not... Dpbsmith (talk) 02:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (Deutschland) 1926
First patent for Transistor. 212.95.99.129 03:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
