Who does today what Bell Labs did in the past? [telecom]

In reading old literature, I'm amazed at the enormous scope of research conducted by the pre-divesture Bell Laboratories. Anything and everything even remotely related to telecommunications was carefully studied by them. Because their work had benefit for the entire nationwide Bell System, the economies of scale of cost saving were great and cost-justified the lab.

With the Bell System broken and today's Bell Labs and other units (Bellcore) far, far smaller than the past, I was wondering who, if anyone, does that kind of research today?

Examples of Bell Labs research:

--medical -- instant blood test machines for workers in hazardous environments, such as lead smelters

--materials, plastic -- better insulation (less crosstalk/capacitance, easier wire threading, longer lasting, cheaper); toxicity tests of plastics, telephone set body shells, protective gear

--materials, metal -- contact points in switchgear, conductors, fuses, motor and relay windings, refining, scrap reuse, corrosion resistance, strength, cable strength

--traffic--toll, local, busy hour, peak, monitoring, recovery, planning

--switching--cheaper and higher capacity switches, lower maintenance. Components, such as circuit boards, ICs, frames.

--telephone sets: more efficient in terms of power consumption, reception, and transmission; more durable, cheaper to build; human engineer studies for ease of use and accuracy.

--computers--switching assistance for routing, AMA recording; maintaining cable records; billing records; repair records; traffic analysis, maintenance analysis

--transmission--cheaper and higher capacity media; wireless transmission and wireless sets.

Obviously external developments has changed what they do, but then there are new challenges.

Reply to
hancock4
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I'm a "retired but still quite active" 77-year-old life-long academic who had the extraordinarily good fortune to be active throughout much of my career, beginning in 1956 and continuing through and well beyond the breakup of the Bell System in the mid-1980s, in many of the areas of research in which the Bell Labs were also a premier institution. As a result, I had the equally good fortune to know many, many colleagues at Bell Labs, and to visit Murray Hill and Holmdel many times.

So, I can agree from direct experience that your assessment here is absolutely correct, and moreover that the technical accomplishments from Bell Labs were of equally immense benefit, not just for the Bell System, but for the entire nation. It is really an open question whether the economic benefits of the innovations in telephone services that resulted from the breakup exceed the hidden costs of the losses in technological development that came from the associated destruction of the Bell Laboratories.

The answer to your question (or at least, an off-the-cuff answer) is that no other really comparable industrial laboratories still exist today -- not IBM, not RCA, not GE, not any other major firms I can think of. To the extent that such broadly defined basic research is done in the U.S. today, the universities and a few privately funded institutes

-- the Hughes Medical Foundation institutes, as one example -- are among the major players. Some major companies in highly technical and economically important areas -- Intel, let's say, or big pharma -- do a lot of advanced technological development, and some basic research, but the basic research results tends to stay private and to be narrowly focused in areas of interest to them. And, of course, a great deal of innovation (but not a lot of underlying fundamental research) comes out of the whole venture capital/startup world.

In Germany and France, government-supported quasi private organizations like the Max Planck Foundation and CNRS do a fair amount of long-term and high-quality basic research. In the U.S. a few government-supported laboratories -- NIST, for example -- struggle to do the same; but all too many others -- NASA in spades, LLNL and Los Alamos in large part -- are much more self-protecting (and local job-protecting) boondoggles

The immense contributions that came from Bell Labs were funded in essence by a miniscule and essentially imperceptible (but very long-term stable) "tax" on every individual phone bill issued by the Bell System. The only other institution in the U.S. that might have been able to do more or less the same thing -- but, to their shame, didn't -- was the electrical utility industry. If Bell Labs was a giant, EPRI (the Electrical Power Research Institute) is a peanut.

Reply to
AES

I subscribed to the BSTJ for many years. Indeed, they did amazing things.

AMPS for one.

Another is the No 5 ESS, which is by far the best end office switch. The others do fine for POTS and basic calling features. But, if a major customer wants a C.O.-based "PBX" nothing comes close to the 5ESS.

Reply to
Sam Spade

I had the very good fortune of working at two Bell Labs sites when I was in college.

I was studying electrical engineering at Georgia Tech and participated in the co-op program where I worked at AT&T. There was special project involving teams from Bell Labs and the various regional offices of AT&T across the country. We had a guy up in New Jersey, but with his family back in Georgia he couldn't do it any more. So they asked if I wanted to go. I was running out the door with my one-way ticket to Newark before I could finish saying "Yes!".

I first worked at their Red Hill site and then the team moved to Middletown. I used to visit the Holmdel site periodically. I loved their technical library. I wanted to make a career out of Bell Labs. But by the time I graduated in 1992 it already wasn't the place I knew just two years prior. Some time in 1990 when I was there they announced Bell Labs would have to show a profit. That just stunned so many people there. They used to have the freedom to research and didn't have to worry about suits watching the finances. It was mesmerizing just to sit down at lunch and talk to these folks. They were very kind and loved talking about their careers and the things they had worked on. I was working late one evening and saw what appeared to be an AT&T 49 MHz cordless phone that had been run over by a tank. It was sitting in a chair. I followed the cord at least 100 yards into a lab where two engineers were running tests. They invited me in and told me their jobs were to destroy phones and see how well they continued to work.

I do think the nation, actually the world, greatly benefitted from the work performed at Bell Labs. As a consumer I do think we're better off with competition. Not trying to start a flame war, just my opinion. But I do think we need another Bell Labs. We do have a patchwork of university and quasi-government labs and they I'm sure are discovering wonderful things. But I would like to see a well-funded skunk works somewhere that hires the best engineers and scientists and just stand back and watch what they come up with.

John

Reply to
John Mayson

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