Bell Laboratories was, and is, regarded by many as the premier research facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including
radio astronomy, the
transistor, the
laser,
information theory, the operating system
Unix, the programming languages
C and
C++,
solar cells, the
charge-coupled device (CCD), and many other optical, wireless, and wired communications technologies and systems.
1920s In 1924, Bell Labs physicist
Walter A. Shewhart proposed the
control chart as a method to determine when a process was in a state of statistical control. Shewhart's methods were the basis for
statistical process control (SPC): the use of statistically based tools and techniques to manage and improve processes. This was the origin of the modern quality control movement, including
Six Sigma. In 1926, the laboratories invented an early
synchronous-sound motion picture system, in competition with
Fox Movietone and
DeForest Phonofilm. In 1927, a Bell team headed by
Herbert E. Ives successfully transmitted long-distance 128-line television images of
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover from Washington to New York. In 1928 the
thermal noise in a resistor was first measured by
John B. Johnson, for which
Harry Nyquist provided the theoretical analysis; this is now termed
Johnson-Nyquist noise. During the 1920s, the
one-time pad cipher was invented by
Gilbert Vernam and
Joseph Mauborgne at the laboratories. Bell Labs'
Claude Shannon later proved that it is unbreakable. In 1928,
Harold Black invented the negative feedback system commonly used in amplifiers. Later,
Harry Nyquist analyzed Black's design rule for negative feedback. This work was published in 1932 and became known as the
Nyquist criterion.
1930s at
Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1932 In 1931, a foundation for
radio astronomy was laid by
Karl Jansky during his work investigating the origins of static on long-distance
shortwave communications. He discovered that radio waves were being emitted from the center of the
galaxy. In 1931 and 1932, the labs made experimental high fidelity, long playing, and even stereophonic recordings of the
Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by
Leopold Stokowski. In 1933,
stereo signals were transmitted live from
Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. In 1937, the
vocoder, an electronic speech compression device, or codec, and the
Voder, the first electronic
speech synthesizer, were developed and demonstrated by
Homer Dudley, the Voder being demonstrated at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Bell researcher
Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with
George Paget Thomson for the discovery of
electron diffraction, which helped lay the foundation for
solid-state electronics.
1940s , a
point-contact germanium device, invented at Bell Laboratories in 1947 In the early 1940s, the
photovoltaic cell was developed by
Russell Ohl. In 1943, Bell developed
SIGSALY, the first digital scrambled speech transmission system, used by the
Allies in
World War II. The British wartime codebreaker
Alan Turing visited the labs at this time, working on speech encryption and meeting
Claude Shannon. Bell Labs Quality Assurance Department gave the world and the United States such statisticians as
Walter A. Shewhart,
W. Edwards Deming,
Harold F. Dodge,
George D. Edwards, Harry Romig, R. L. Jones, Paul Olmstead, E.G.D. Paterson, and
Mary N. Torrey. During World War II, Emergency Technical Committee – Quality Control, drawn mainly from Bell Labs' statisticians, was instrumental in advancing Army and Navy ammunition acceptance and material sampling procedures. In 1947, the
transistor, arguably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by
John Bardeen,
Walter Houser Brattain, and
William Bradford Shockley (who subsequently shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956). Also in 1947,
Douglas H. Ring of Bell Labs introduced the idea of using hexagonal "cells" to reuse frequencies in mobile
radiotelephony, laying the theoretical groundwork for modern
cellular networks. The same year,
Richard Hamming invented
Hamming codes for
error detection and correction. For patent reasons, his result was not published until 1950. In 1948, "
A Mathematical Theory of Communication", one of the founding works in
information theory, was published by
Claude Shannon in the
Bell System Technical Journal. It built in part on earlier work in the field by Bell researchers
Harry Nyquist and
Ralph Hartley, but went much further. Bell Labs also introduced a series of increasingly complex calculators through the decade. Shannon was also the founder of
modern cryptography with his 1949 paper
Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems.
Calculators • Model I: A
complex number calculator, completed in 1939 and put into operation in 1940, for doing calculations of
complex numbers. • Model II: Relay Computer / Relay Interpolator, September 1943, for interpolating data points of flight profiles (needed for performance testing of a gun director). This model introduced error detection (self checking). • Model III: Ballistic Computer, June 1944, for calculations of ballistic trajectories. • Model IV: Error Detector Mark II, March 1945, an improved ballistic computer. •
Model V: General-purpose electromechanical computer, of which two were built, July 1946 and February 1947 •
Model VI: 1949, an enhanced Model V.
1950s The 1950s also saw developments based upon
information theory. The central development was
binary code systems. Efforts concentrated on the prime mission of supporting the Bell System with engineering advances, including the N-carrier system, TD
microwave radio relay,
direct distance dialing, E-
repeater,
wire spring relay, and the
Number Five Crossbar Switching System. In 1952,
William Gardner Pfann revealed the method of
zone melting, which enabled semiconductor purification and level doping. In 1953,
Maurice Karnaugh developed the
Karnaugh map, used for managing of
Boolean algebraic expressions. In January 1954, Bell Labs built one of the first completely transistorized computer machines,
TRADIC or Flyable TRADIC, for the United States Air Force with 10,358 germanium point-contact diodes and 684 Bell Labs Type 1734 Type A cartridge transistors. The design team was led by electrical engineer Jean Howard Felker with James R. Harris and Louis C. Brown ("Charlie Brown") as the lead engineers on the project, which started in 1951. The device took only 3 cubic-feet and consumed 100 watt power for its small and low powered design in comparison to the vacuum tube designs of the times. The device could be installed in a B-52 Stratofortress Bomber and had a performance up to one million logical operations a second. The flyable program used a Mylar sheet with punched holes, instead of the removable plugboard. In 1954, the first modern
solar cell was invented at Bell Laboratories. The Bell Labs scientists that are credited for inventing the solar cell are Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson. In 1955,
Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick discovered semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide. In 1956
TAT-1, the first
transatlantic communications cable to carry telephone conversations, was laid between Scotland and Newfoundland in a joint effort by AT&T, Bell Laboratories, and British and Canadian telephone companies. In 1957,
Max Mathews created
MUSIC, one of the first computer programs to play
electronic music.
Robert C. Prim and
Joseph Kruskal developed new
greedy algorithms that revolutionized
computer network design. In 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors; the first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface. They showed that silicon dioxide insulated, protected silicon wafers and prevented dopants from diffusing into the wafer. In 1958, a technical paper by
Arthur Schawlow and
Charles Hard Townes first described the
laser. Following Frosch and Derick research,
Mohamed Atalla and
Dawon Kahng proposed a silicon MOS transistor in 1959 and successfully demonstrated a working MOS device with their Bell Labs team in 1960. Their team included E. E. LaBate and E. I. Povilonis who fabricated the device; M. O. Thurston, L. A. D’Asaro, and J. R. Ligenza who developed the diffusion processes, and H. K. Gummel and R. Lindner who characterized the device. K. E. Daburlos and H. J. Patterson of Bell Laboratories continued on the work of C. Frosch and L. Derick, and developed a process similar to Hoerni's
planar process about the same time. J.R. Ligenza and W.G. Spitzer studied the mechanism of thermally grown oxides, fabricated a high quality Si/
SiO2 stack and published their results in 1960.
1960s On October 1, 1960, the Kwajalein Field Station was announced as a location for the
Nike Zeus test program. Mr. R. W. Benfer was the first director to arrive shortly on October 5 for the program. Bell Labs designed many of the major system elements and conducted fundamental investigations of phase-controlled scanning antenna arrays. In December 1960,
Ali Javan, PhD physicist from the University of Tehran, Iran with help by
Rolf Seebach and his associates
William Bennett and Donald Heriot, successfully operated the first
gas laser, the first continuous-light laser, operating at an unprecedented accuracy and color purity. In 1962, the
electret microphone was invented by
Gerhard M. Sessler and
James E. West. Also in 1962,
John R. Pierce's vision of
communications satellites was realized by the launch of
Telstar. On July 10, 1962, the Telstar spacecraft was launched into orbit by NASA and it was designed and built by Bell Laboratories. The first worldwide television broadcast was July 23, 1962 with a press conference by President Kennedy. In Spring 1964, the building of an electronic switching systems center was planned at Bell Laboratories near Naperville, Illinois. The building in 1966 would be called Indian Hill, and development work from former electronic switching organization at Holmdel and Systems Equipment Engineering organization would occupy the laboratory with engineers from Western Electric Hawthorne Works. Scheduled for work were about 1,200 people when completed in 1966, and peaked at 11,000 before October 2001 Lucent Technologies downsizing occurred. In 1964, the
carbon dioxide laser was invented by
Kumar Patel and the discovery/operation of the
Nd:YAG laser was demonstrated by Joseph E. Geusic
et al. Experiments by
Myriam Sarachik provided the first data that confirmed the
Kondo effect. The research of
Philip W. Anderson into electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems led to improved understanding of metals and insulators for which he was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1977. In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the
cosmic microwave background, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978. Frank W. Sinden, Edward E. Zajac,
Ken Knowlton, and
A. Michael Noll made computer-animated movies during the early to mid-1960s.
Ken Knowlton invented the computer animation language
BEFLIX. The first digital computer art was created in 1962 by Noll. In 1966,
orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a key technology in wireless services, was developed and patented by R. W. Chang. In December 1966, the
New York City site was sold and became the
Westbeth Artists Community complex. In 1968,
molecular beam epitaxy was developed by J.R. Arthur and A.Y. Cho; molecular beam epitaxy allows semiconductor chips and laser matrices to be manufactured one atomic layer at a time. In 1969,
Dennis Ritchie and
Ken Thompson created the computer operating system
UNIX for the support of telecommunication switching systems as well as general-purpose computing. Also, in 1969, the
charge-coupled device (CCD) was invented by
Willard Boyle and
George E. Smith, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009. From 1969 to 1971,
Aaron Marcus, the first graphic designer involved with computer graphics, researched, designed, and programmed a prototype interactive page-layout system for the Picturephone.
1970s The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the
personal computing revolution. In the 1970s, major central office technology evolved from crossbar electromechanical relay-based technology and discrete transistor logic to Bell Labs-developed thick film hybrid and
transistor–transistor logic (TTL), stored program-controlled switching systems;
1A/
#4 TOLL Electronic Switching Systems (ESS) and 2A Local Central Offices produced at the Bell Labs Naperville and Western Electric Lisle, Illinois facilities. This technology evolution dramatically reduced floor space needs. The new ESS also came with its own diagnostic software that needed only a switchman and several frame technicians to maintain. About 1970, the coax-22 cable was developed by Bell Labs. This coax cable with 22 strands had a total capacity of 132,000 telephone calls. Previously, a 12-strand coax cable was used for L-carrier systems. Both of these types of cables were manufactured at Western Electric's Baltimore Works facility on machines designed by a Western Electric Senior development engineer. In 1970,
A. Michael Noll invented a tactile, force-feedback system, coupled with interactive stereoscopic computer display. In 1971, an improved task priority system for computerized
telephone exchange switching systems for telephone traffic was invented by
Erna Schneider Hoover, who received one of the first
software patents for it. In 1972,
Dennis Ritchie developed the compiled programming language
C as a replacement for the interpreted language
B, which was then used in a
worse is better rewrite of UNIX. Also, the language
AWK was designed and implemented by
Alfred Aho,
Peter Weinberger, and
Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories. Also in 1972,
Marc Rochkind invented the
Source Code Control System. In 1976,
optical fiber systems were first tested in
Georgia. Production of their first internally designed
microprocessor, the
BELLMAC-8, began in 1977. In 1980 they demonstrated the first single-chip
32-bit microprocessor, the
Bellmac 32A, which went into production in 1982. In 1978, the proprietary operating system
Oryx/Pecos was developed from scratch by Bell Labs in order to run AT&T's large-scale
PBX switching equipment. It was first used with AT&T's flagship System 75, and until very recently was used in all variations up through and including Definity G3 (Generic 3) switches, now manufactured by
Avaya.
1980s During the 1980s, the operating system
Plan 9 from Bell Labs was developed extending the UNIX model. Also, the
Radiodrum, an electronic music instrument played in three space dimensions, was invented. In 1980, the
TDMA digital cellular telephone technology was patented. In late 1981, the Bell Labs Research organization internal use of a terminal called Jerq led to the
Blit terminal being renamed by designers
Rob Pike and Bart Locanthi, Jr for the UNIX operating system. It was a programmable bitmap graphics terminal using multi-layers of opened windows operated by a keyboard and a distinguished red-colored three-button digitized mouse. It was later known as the AT&T 5620 DMD terminal for commercial sales. The Blit used the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, whereas the Teletype/AT&T 5620 Dot Mapped Display terminal used the Western Electric WE32000 microprocessor. The launching of the Bell Labs Fellows Award started in 1982 to recognize and honor scientists and engineers who have made outstanding and sustained R&D contributions at AT&T with a level of distinction. As of the 2021 inductees, 336 people have received the honor. Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were also Bell Labs Fellows for 1982. Ritchie started in 1967 at Bell Labs in the Bell Labs Computer Systems Research department. Thompson started in 1966. Both co-inventors of the UNIX operating system and C language were also awarded decades later the 2011 Japan Prize for Information and Communications. In 1982,
fractional quantum Hall effect was discovered by
Horst Störmer and former Bell Laboratories researchers
Robert B. Laughlin and
Daniel C. Tsui; they consequently won a Nobel Prize in 1998 for the discovery. In 1984, the first photoconductive antennas for picosecond electromagnetic radiation were demonstrated by Auston and others. This type of antenna became an important component in
terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. In 1984,
Karmarkar's algorithm for linear programming was developed by mathematician
Narendra Karmarkar. Also in 1984,
a divestiture agreement signed in 1982 with the American Federal government forced the breakup of AT&T, and
Bellcore (now
iconectiv) was split off from Bell Laboratories to provide the same R&D functions for the newly created
local exchange carriers. AT&T also was limited to using the Bell trademark only in association with Bell Laboratories.
Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. became a wholly owned company of the new
AT&T Technologies unit, the former Western Electric. The
5ESS Switch was developed during this transition. The National Medal of Technology was awarded to Bell Labs, the first corporation to achieve this honor in February 1985. In 1985,
laser cooling was used to slow and manipulate atoms by
Steven Chu and team. In 1985, the modeling language
A Mathematical Programming Language,
AMPL, was developed by
Robert Fourer, David M. Gay and Brian Kernighan at Bell Laboratories. Also in 1985, Bell Laboratories was awarded the
National Medal of Technology "For contribution over decades to modern communication systems". In 1985, the programming language
C++ had its first commercial release.
Bjarne Stroustrup started developing C++ at Bell Laboratories in 1979 as an extension to the original C language. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2018) for his work involving optical tweezers and their application to biological systems. In the mid-1980s, the Transmission System departments of Bell Labs developed highly reliable long-haul
fiber-optic communications systems based on
SONET, and network operations techniques that made very high-volume, near-instantaneous communications across the North American continent possible. Fail-safe and disaster-related traffic management operations systems enhanced the usefulness of the fiber optics. There was a synergy in the land-based and sea-based fiber optic systems even though they were developed by different divisions within the company. These systems are still in use throughout the U.S. today. Charles A. Burrus became a Bell Labs Fellow in 1988 for his work done as a Technical Staff member. Prior to this accomplishment, was awarded in 1982 the AT&T Bell Laboratories Distinguished Technical Staff Award. Charles started in 1955 at the Holmdel Bell Labs location and retired in 1996 with consultations to Lucent Technologies up to 2002. In 1988,
TAT-8 became the first transatlantic
fiber-optic cable. Bell Labs in Freehold, NJ developed the 1.3-micron fiber, cable, splicing, laser detector, and 280 Mbit/s repeater for 40,000 telephone-call capacity. In the late 1980s, realizing that voiceband modems were approaching the
Shannon limit on bit rate,
Richard D. Gitlin, Jean-Jacques Werner and their colleagues pioneered a major breakthrough. They invented DSL (
digital subscriber line), the technology that achieved megabit transmission on installed copper telephone lines, and this facilitated the broadband era.
1990s Bell Labs' John Mayo received the National Medal of Technology in 1990. In May 1990, Ronald Snare was named AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow, for "Singular contributions to the development of the
common-channel signaling network and the signal transfer points globally." This system began service in the United States in 1978. In the early 1990s, approaches to increase
modem speeds to 56K were explored at Bell Labs, and early patents were filed in 1992 by Ender Ayanoglu, Nuri R. Dagdeviren and their colleagues. The scientist, W. Lincoln Hawkins in 1992 received the National Medal of Technology for work done at Bell Labs. Subsequently, the BLAST system proposed by
Gerard Foschini and colleagues dramatically expanded the capacity of wireless systems. This technology, known today as MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), was a significant factor in the standardization, commercialization, performance improvement, and growth of cellular and wireless LAN systems. Amos Joel in 1993 received the National Medal of Technology. In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named
Lucent Technologies. AT&T retained a small number of researchers who made up the staff of the newly created
AT&T Labs. Lucy Sanders was the third woman to receive the Bell Labs Fellow award in 1996, for her work in creating a
RISC chip that made more phone calls possible using software and hardware on a single server. She started in 1977 and was one of the few woman engineers at Bell Labs. In November 1997, Lucent planned a Bell Laboratories location at
Yokosuka Research Park in
Yokosuka, Japan for developing a third generation Wideband Code Division Multiple Access cellular system (
W-CDMA.) In 1997, the smallest then-practical transistor (60
nanometers, 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first
optical router was invented. Rudolph Kazarinov and Federico Capasso received the optoelectronics Rank Prize on December 8, 1998. In 2004, Lucent Technologies awarded two women the prestigious Bell Labs Fellow Award. Magaly Spector, a director in INS/Network Systems Group, was awarded for "sustained and exceptional scientific and technological contributions in
solid-state physics, III-V material for semiconductor lasers,
gallium arsenide integrated circuits, and the quality and reliability of products used in high speed optical transport systems for next generation high bandwidth communication." Eve Varma, a technical manager in MNS/Network Systems Group, was awarded for her citation in "sustained contributions to digital and
optical networking, including architecture, synchronization, restoration, standards, operations and control." In 2005,
Jeong H. Kim, former President of Lucent's Optical Network Group, returned from academia to become the President of Bell Laboratories. In April 2006, Bell Laboratories' parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with
Alcatel. On December 1, 2006, the merged company,
Alcatel-Lucent, began operations. This deal raised concerns in the United States, where Bell Laboratories works on defense contracts. A separate company, LGS Innovations, with an American board was set up to manage Bell Laboratories' and Lucent's sensitive
U.S. government contracts. In March 2019, LGS Innovations was purchased by
CACI. In December 2007, it was announced that the former Lucent Bell Laboratories and the former Alcatel Research and Innovation would be merged into one organization under the name of Bell Laboratories. This is the first period of growth following many years during which Bell Laboratories progressively lost manpower due to layoffs and spin-offs making the company shut down briefly. In February 2008, Alcatel-Lucent continued the Bell Laboratories tradition of awarding the prestigious award for outstanding technical contributors. Martin J. Glapa, a former chief Technical Officer of Lucent's Cable Communications Business Unit and Director of Advanced Technologies, was presented by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs President Jeong H. Kim with the 2006 Bell Labs Fellow Award in
Network Architecture, Network Planning, and Professional Services with particular focus in Cable TV Systems and
Broadband Services having "significant resulting Alcatel-Lucent commercial successes." Glapa is a patent holder and has co-written the 2004 technical paper called "Optimal Availability & Security For Voice Over Cable Networks" and co-authored the 2008 "Impact of bandwidth demand growth on HFC networks" published by IEEE. As of July 2008, however, only four scientists remained in physics research, according to a report by the scientific journal
Nature. On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas, including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software. In 2009, Willard Boyle and George Smith were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention and development of the
charge-coupled device (CCD). Rob Soni was an Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Fellow in 2009 as cited for work in winning North American customers wireless business and for helping to define 4G wireless networks with transformative system architectures.
2010s from 2016 to 2022 Gee Rittenhouse, former Head of Research, returned from his position as chief operating officer of Alcatel-Lucent's Software, Services, and Solutions business in February 2013, to become the 12th President of Bell Labs. On November 4, 2013, Alcatel-Lucent announced the appointment of
Marcus Weldon as President of Bell Labs. His stated charter was to return Bell Labs to the forefront of innovation in
Information and communications technology by focusing on solving the key industry challenges, as was the case in the great Bell Labs innovation eras in the past. On May 20, 2014, Michel Combes, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, announced the opening of a Bell Labs location in
Tel Aviv, Israel by summer time. The Bell Labs research team would be directed by an Israeli computer scientist and alum of Bell Labs,
Danny Raz. The Bell Labs research would be in 'cloud networking' technologies for communications. The location would have approximately twenty academic scientific background employees. In July 2014, Bell Labs announced it had broken "the broadband Internet speed record" with a new technology dubbed XG-FAST that promises 10 gigabits per second transmission speeds. In 2014,
Eric Betzig shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in super-resolved fluorescence microscopy which he began pursuing while at Bell Labs in the Semiconductor Physics Research Department. On April 15, 2015,
Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion. Their first day of combined operations was January 14, 2016. In September 2016, Nokia Bell Labs, along with
Technische Universität Berlin, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the
Technical University of Munich achieved a data rate of one terabit per second by improving transmission capacity and spectral efficiency in an optical communications field trial with a
new modulation technique. Antero Taivalsaari became a Bell Labs Fellow in 2016 for his specific work. In 2017, Dragan Samardzija was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow. In 2018,
Arthur Ashkin shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" In December 2021, Nokia's Chief Strategy and Technology Officer decided to reorganize Bell Labs in two separate functional organizations: Bell Labs Core Research and Bell Labs Solutions research. Bell Labs Core Research is in charge of creating disruptive technologies with 10-year horizon. Bell Labs Solutions Research, looks for shorter term solutions that can provide growth opportunities for Nokia. The Nokia 2022 Bell Labs Fellows were recognized on November 29, 2022, in a New Jersey ceremony. Five researchers were inducted to the total of 341 recipients since its inception by AT&T Bell Labs in 1982. One member was from New Jersey, two were from Cambridge, UK, and two were from Finland representing Espoo and Tampere locations. On November 28, 2023, the Nokia 2023 Bell Labs Fellows were recognized in a ceremony held in Finland. Six honorees were inducted to the total of 347 recipients. Two members were from Murray Hill, New Jersey, one from Munich, Germany, and three were from Finland representing two honorees from Espoo and one honoree from Tampere locations. The Murray Hill location honorees were Randeep Bhatia from Bell Labs Core Research, an author of 40 patent filings and Robert L. Willett from Bell Labs Solutions Research, a 35 year employee concentrating on 2D electron systems. On December 11, 2023, Nokia announced a state of the art research facility in
New Brunswick, New Jersey. The planned relocation of the 80 year old, Murray Hill New Jersey Bell Labs facility would take place before 2028. The new building would be LEED Gold certified. The Murray Hill location has had iconic research of various historical innovations for
AT&T Corp.,
Lucent Technologies,
Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia. On November 19, 2024, the Nokia 2024 Bell Labs Fellows were recognized in a ceremony held in Lisbon, Portugal. Five honorees were inducted to the total of 352 recipients that include 83 from the Nokia community. Alexei Ashikhmin from Bell Labs Solutions Research represented Murray Hill Bell Labs with more than 25 years as a coding theory researcher. Two honorees were from Finland representing Espoo and Tampere locations. Additionally, two honorees represented Nokia's Vimercate, Italy and Tokyo, Japan locations. The Nokia Bell Labs 10-story headquarters building, to be built in New Brunswick, New Jersey, had a groundbreaking ceremony on September 4, 2025. The construction is planned to be completed in 2027 and have 34,374-square-meters of space for optical communications, generative artificial intelligence, and quantum physics labs and offices. This building will be called the HELIX 2 building (Health and Life Science Exchange) and its location would allow academic talent from nearby universities for Nokia ventures and new startup partnerships. ==Accolades==