Bell Labs' History of Inventions

It's the birthplace of the transistor, the laser, the solar cell and the fax machine. Its researchers were the first to hear the echoes of the Big Bang. And now this American legend is part of a French company.

Bell Labs was founded in 1925 as the research arm of AT&T's national telephone business. Sixty years later, it was spun off as part of Lucent Technologies Inc., which on Thursday was acquired by Paris-based Alcatel SA.

Murray Hill-based Bell Labs employs about 9,000 researchers and engineers in seven countries, down from a peak of 24,000 in 1998 before Lucent drastically downsized.

Its scientists have collectively have won six Nobel Prizes in Physics, nine U.S. Medals of Science, seven U.S. Medals of Technology, two Draper Prizes and a Grammy award, for many achievements in sound technology.

The lab has been granted 32,031 U.S. patents, 15,000 of which are still active.

A look at some key advances:

—1925: First demonstration of a facsimile machine sending pictures over telephone wires.

—1926: First synchronization system for sound movies.

—1927: First long-distance television transmission, sending live images of President Hoover from Washington, D.C., to New York.

—1937: First electronic speech synthesizer (re-created human speech).

—1939: First binary digital computer.

—1947: John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley invent the transistor, leading to the electronic-age of portable radios, touchtone phones, computer microchips and color and high-definition television; they share 1956 Nobel Prize.

—1951: Direct dialing of domestic long-distance calls.

—1954: Solar battery cell to convert sunlight into electricity.

—1956: First transatlantic telephone cable, handling up to 36 calls.

—1958: Arthur Schawlow and brother-in-law Charles Townes invent the laser (short for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), now used in fiber-optic communications networks and as a cutting tool in surgery and industry. Each later won a Nobel related to the research.

—1962: Demonstrated cellular technology, tested the first paging system, produced the first orbiting communications satellite (Telstar I) and invented light-emitting diodes, now widely used in imaging systems.

—1965: Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson stumble upon cosmetic background radiation while using a highly sensitive ''horn antenna'' in radio astronomy experiments; they win 1978 Nobel Prize. The static noise they heard was the strongest evidence supporting the Edwin Hubble/George Lemaitre theory the universe was created in a ''Big Bang'' explosion.

—1969: UNIX operating system, software that made open computer systems possible and became the Internet's foundation.

—1979: Digital signal processor, enabling cellular phones and modems.

—1980: Digital cell phone technology.

—1988: First fiber-optic transatlantic cable, handling up to 40,000 phone calls at once.

—1992: Invented compression technology needed for digital radio.

—1995: First prototype system supporting wireless Internet.

—1998: First switch allowing Internet telephone traffic, faster Internet access.

—2005: First Internet Protocol transmission at 100 gigabits per second, 10 times the current speed and critical for future services such as IPTV.

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Source: Lucent Technologies Inc.

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