“The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by Jon Gertner, Penguin Books, NY, 2012. This 412-page paperback tells the story of Bell Labs, the research arm of AT&T or Ma Bell. Bell Telephone was established from Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in 1876. Western Electric became the manufacturing arm of the Bell system (in 1881 after founding as a manufacturer of telegraph equipment and at one time one-third owned by Western Union). Bell Labs was formed in 1925 from the research department of Western Electric, originally located on West Street in New York City. The lab had achieved significant success and became sizeable. It was owned equally by Western Electric and AT&T and supervised by its own board of directors. (The well known Murray Hill, NJ campus was constructed beginning in 1942.)
The need for a research department came from increasing competition as the Bell patents expired. Theodore Vale envisioned a single universal telephone system with compatible technology that could interconnect. A long distance service that could complete transcontinental phone calls was to be the basis of this national network. He wanted it completed for the San Francisco World's Fair in 1914. That became possible when Bell perfected Lee DeForest's audion tube (aka vacuum tube) and used it to make a practical amplifier.
Bell staffed its research labs with the best scientists from Ivy League universities. It developed relationships with universities to recruit the best. Often they were hard working individuals from small towns who were gifted and got into top universities. Physicists were especially sought for their theoretical knowledge, but experimentalists were also valued. A range of other disciplines were also on staff providing experts to consult on almost any problem.
Bell Labs is perhaps best known for the invention of the transistor. The limitations of the vacuum tube were well known. They were difficult to manufacture, used large amounts of power, generated much heat, and burned out. A solid state device offered advantages. Ideas circulated as early as 1939, but research was delayed by the needs of World War II. After the war, first success was achieved by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain on Dec 16, 1947. William Shockley soon came up with the junction transistor, which was announced on June 30, 1948. Fearing antitrust action and to grow volumes and reduce cost, the technology was licensed to others including Raytheon, RCA and GE. Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in 1956.
Electronics research for military applications has always been a major part of Bell Labs, but much of the work is still secret. War time efforts included the development of synthetic crystals used as filters after natural supplies became unavailable, extensive work on radar, manufacture of the cavity magnetron, the essential component of small, microwave radar equipment, and radar controlled guns used to shoot down V-1 rockets. Crytopgraphy/code breaking research is part of the Bell expertise. In 1949, AT&T was named manager of Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, NM, the lab that did nuclear weapons research. Later came the Nike ground to air antiaircraft, missile system (1953) and the Dew line (1954), the northern radar network used to detect a possible attack from across the Arctic. Bell recognized early on the potential for digitized signals to deliver high quality sound with less distortion than traditional analog methods.
The transistor required numerous advances in materials science. Semiconductor materials, germanium and silicon, had to be made at very high purity. Trace impurities made performance unpredictable. Techniques to grow large crystals and melt refining/zone refining were developed. The original transistor used germanium, but use of more abundant silicon was established in Jan, 1954. Diffusion doping methods were developed in 1955. Photolithography for photographic mass production of semiconductors soon followed. Photovoltaic solar cells were invented at about the same time.
William Shockley left Bell Labs to set up his own semiconductor company with financing from Arnold Beckman, inventor of the pH meter, one of the first electronic laboratory instruments. His management style and extreme politics interfered, but others recruited for his company later founded Fairchild Camera and Intel.
Expertise in microwave electronics came from work with radar. A practical microwave relay system for long distance was in service by 1951. A transatlantic telephone cable was laid successfully in 1956. Another important technology, the traveling wave tube, invented at Oxford, was adapted to provide broad band amplification for communications.
In 1956, antitrust threatened to separate Western Electric from AT&T. In a settlement, Bell agreed not to enter the computer or consumer electronics businesses and to license its patents to competitors.
Bell Labs played a key role in the development of communications satellites. Their potential for long range communications as with Europe was recognized as early as 1954. Lack of suitable rockets prevented development until the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Echo, the first communications satellite, was a passive satellite designed to reflect a signal to a receiving antenna. It was launched on August 12, 1960. As part of the Echo project, a large steerable horn antenna was constructed at the Bell Labs rural research site at Holmdel, NJ. It was later used for experiments proving the big bang theory, which won another Nobel Prize for Bell Labs. Telstar, the first satellite to receive and retransmit signals, was launched in 1962.
Charles Townes' invention of the maser at Columbia University in 1954, was followed by additional development at Bell Labs in 1957. The ruby laser was invented at Hughes Aircraft in 1960. Bell personnel soon invented the gas laser and showed that it could be used for communications. When optical fibers were invented at Corning Glass Works in 1971, Bell entered a patent sharing agreement with Corning. The first test of a fiber optics system was run in Atlanta in 1975.
Bell was not invincible. One that failed is Picturephone (1964). People seemed to like the idea, but the system failed to gain acceptance. One that got away was integrated circuits (1960). Bell probably had the capability, but others put the pieces together first. Bell had a long history of anti-semitism. That changed only in 1940 when the first Jews were hired in the lab. The first women were hired at the same time to replace men who were drafted. (But one suspects few of these women had PhDs.)
A major development of 1964 was digital electronic switching. Previously dial telephone exchanges used of electromechanical relays. They were large, mechanical and required maintenance. Electronic switching was much smaller, more reliable and allowed additional features such as call forwarding and call waiting. Digital technology also led to the development of the Unix computer language.
Mobil communication had been of interest from the 1920s, but available radio frequencies limited the service to only a few users. Bell developed radio sets for tanks and airplanes during World War II. (Motorola invented the handie-talkie carried by soldiers.) Car phones became available after the war. The basic cell phone system using low power, short range transmitters in a hexagonal cell arrangement was proposed by Bell scientists in 1947. Its implementation required computer power to successfully handoff calls to the next transmitter as the phone moved through an area. And it awaited allocation of frequencies by the FCC. The system was first used to provide phone service on the Metroliner traveling between New York City and Washington, DC in 1966. Intel's integrated circuit 4004 microprocessor was an important contributor in that it made computing power small and portable. So was electronic switching technology. AT&T submitted its proposal to the FCC in December, 1971, and about the same time agreed to limit participation to the cell phone network leaving the production of cell phones to competitors, especially Motorola, whose commercial radio communications systems for police, fire, taxis, etc might be threatened. A first test was run in Chicago in 1978.
Competition to the Bell phone system's long distance network began in the late 1960's when MCI constructed its own microwave relay system. In 1971, the FCC required that AT&T connect with MCI. In 1974, the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against Bell and Western Electric. Agreement was reached in 1982 to divest the local telephone operating companies as Baby Bells while AT&T would retain Long Lines and be released from the 1956 consent degree that blocked participation in computers and other industries. Western Electric and Bell Labs were retained and were now free to pursue other business, but they were used to captive customers and had no marketing experience.
In 1996, AT&T decided it needed to focus. Western Electric was spun off as Lucent, which had headquarters at Murray Hill. Most of Bell Labs went with Lucent. For a while Lucent prospered in the dot com boom, but in 2000 the market collapsed. Large fiber networks had been constructed in anticipation that the internet would soon require them, but much of that fiber was under utilized and dark. In the collapse that followed, thousands were laid off including many at Bell Labs. In 2005, Lucent merged with Alcatel to become Alcatel-Lucent. Bell Labs continued under new management with a focus on entrepreneurial pursuits, but it was a shadow of its former self. Nature magazine published an article on the new Bell Labs reporting that it had only four researchers doing basic physics research.
Clearly Bell Telephone was a major innovator in the early development of electrical equipment and electronics. Others were apparently GE, Westinghouse, Marconi, and RCA. Western Union's contributions have been elusive. On the West Coast, Federal Telegraph (some time employer of Lee DeForest) and Litton Industries are usually named as pioneers.
This book is a nicely done. It is covers the subject in clear, non-technical language. Although the focus is Bell Labs and AT&T technology, Gertner also provides a history of AT&T. It does include much on the personal lives and careers of key individuals. I found only a few omissions. The story of talking movies is omitted. Apparently it was Western Electric who developed movie sound systems as an application of the amplifier. (In 1924, Western Electric's talking movie system came to market. Vitaphone Corporation was formed to market the technology; Warner Brothers was the first customer.) Gertner identifies Southern Bell Telephone as the acquirer of AT&T, which then changed its name to create the new AT&T. In reality it was Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. Strangely there is no mention of the other surviving Bell Company, Verizon, successor of Bell Atlantic/New York Telephone. Photographs. References. Bibliography. Index.
Related Books:
“Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric,” by Stephen B. Adams and Orville R. Butler, Cambridge University Press, NY, 1999.
“Empire of The Air: The Men Who Made Radio,” by Tom Lewis, HarperCollins, New York, 1991.
“Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard built the world's greatest company,” by Michael S. Malone, Penguin, NYC, 2007.
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- AlejReviewed in Spain on August 22, 2020
story of Bell Labs focusing on key personalities and Technologies
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- RahulReviewed in India on May 25, 2025
Almost a spiritual text for Budding Engineers
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase - il MarconistaReviewed in Italy on July 17, 2017
Wonderful book: must read for every Telecom/Electronics/Computer Science student and engineer
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