Collaborate Disseminate
If you ever had the occasion to visit Bell Labs at Murray Hill, New Jersey, or any of the nearby satellite sites, but you didn’t work there, you were probably …read more Continue reading Bell Labs is Leaving the Building
You might expect Bell Labs would have state-of-the-art computers, and they did. But it is jarring to realize just how little that was in 1973, fifty years ago. If you …read more Continue reading Retrotechtacular: The Computer Center of 1973
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” That might be stretching things a bit, especially when the “paradise” in question is in New Jersey, but there’s a move …read more Continue reading Hackaday Links: December 11, 2022
With the never ending march of technological progress, arguably the most complex technologies become so close to magic as to be impenetrable to those outside the industry in which they …read more Continue reading Integrated Circuit Manufacturing At Bell Labs In 1983
In any era, the story of electronics has very much been about figuring out how to make something happen with what’s available at the time. And as is often the …read more Continue reading Retrotechtacular: The Forgotten Vacuum Tube A/D Converters of 1965
You may not know the name [Richard Hamming], but you definitely use some of his work. While working for Bell Labs, he developed Hamming codes — the parent of a …read more Continue reading Anti-Gravity, Time Travel, and Teleportation: Dr. Hamming Gives Advice
I’d be surprised if you weren’t sitting within fifty feet of one of James Edward Maceo West’s most well-known inventions — the electret microphone. Although MEMS microphones have seen a dramatic rise as smartphone technology progresses, electret microphones still sit …read more
Continue reading James West Began 40 Years at Bell Labs with World-Changing Microphone Tech
If you’ve ever used FaceTime, Skype, own a Magic Jack, or have donated money after a disaster by sending a text message, then you have Marian Croak to thank. Her leadership and forward thinking changed how Ma Bell used its reach and made all of these things possible.
Marian Croak …read more
When you think of the Unix and C revolution that grew out of Bell Labs, there are a few famous names. Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, and Brian Kernighan come to mind. After all, the K in both K&R C and in AWK stand for Kernighan. While Kernighan is no stranger …read more
Continue reading Unix Tell All Book From Kernighan Hits the Shelves
We see a lot of weird and esoteric stuff here at Hackaday, but even by our standards, Bell Lab’s Plan 9 operating system is an oddball. Named after the science fiction film Plan 9 from Outer Space, it was designed to extend the UNIX “everything is a file” mentality …read more