One of the most productive research and development concerns in the United States during the twentieth century, Bell Telephone Laboratories, commonly known as Bell Labs, produced numerous inventions that shaped communication, commerce, and everyday life during the twentieth century.

The venture that became known as Bell Labs grew out of Western Electric, the manufacturing division of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). In 1925, AT&T president Walter Gifford established the Bell Telephone Laboratories division to assume the duties of the electrical engineering department of Western Electric, which had been responsible for a number of early advances in telephone technology. From its inception, Bell Labs employed some of the world’s most prominent scientists, producing some of the most dramatic technological advancements of the twentieth century. Among its early inventions were the facsimile (fax) machine, long-distance television transmission, the solar energy cell, and stereo radio broadcasts.Bell Labs

With the outbreak of World War II, Bell Labs refocused its research on the war effort, but it produced a number of inventions during the postwar era that revolutionized modern communications and commerce. Among the most dramatic of these inventions were the Transistortransistor, invented in 1947, and theLaserlaser, first described in a paper by Charles Townes and William Schawlow in 1957. The transistor made possible the use of smaller, higher-quality, and more durable audio equipment and communications devices, while the laser led to the development of numerous technologies, including laser surgery, highly accurate measuring and timekeeping devices, compact discs (CDs), and digital versatile discs (DVDs).

One of the most significant and controversial technological achievements of Bell Labs was the development of Cell phonescellular telephone technology during the 1970’s. Several companies worked simultaneously on developing cellular communications during the late twentieth century–including the Motorola Corporation, which produced the first practical handheld cellular telephone–yet the federally sanctioned domination of the telephone industry that the Bell System enjoyed during this period led to the granting of federal approval to Bell Labs to implement its Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) during the late 1970’s, giving it a significant advantage over its competitors. Despite this controversy, Bell Labs continued to dominate the evolution of cellular telephone technology during the 1980’s.

The establishment of Bell Labs symbolized the decreasing role of the individual inventor and the rise of the corporate research laboratory in the development of new technology. Although individual scientists continued to receive credit–and often fame and fortune–for their inventions, technological advances increasingly came to fruition under the financing and supervision of corporations.

Bell Labs’ parent company, AT&T Technologies, was renamed Lucent Technologies in 1996 and was downsized following a financial downturn in the telecommunications industry during the early twenty-first century. Lucent merged with the French telecommunications company Alcatel in 2006 to form Alcatel-Lucent. The Bell Laboratories division subsequently remained operational but drastically scaled down, as many of its locations across the United States were closed.

• Endlich, Lisa. Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
• Gehani, Narain. Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel. Summit, N.J.: Silicon Press, 2003.

Antitrust legislation

Alexander Graham Bell

Electronics industry

Telecommunications industry