Bell Labs - The Company that Invented the Future

[@CuriousDroid]

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[@hfidek8286]

did you say Mohamed atalla instead of martin atalla?

[@dahawk8574]

Excellent video. It would have been even better to at least mention the Monopoly aspect, and how they were able to consistently be cutting edge with innovation, when that is counter to the typical attributes of a monopoly. ...and whether the AT&T breakup was the downfall of the once greatness of Bell Labs. Whether the govt anti-trust action might have done more harm than good, at least as it pertains to Bell Labs.

[@misterhat5823]

Nord. The insecure VPN. Thumbs down.

[@KK4CNM]

What I really want to know is, where do you get these wonderful shirts?

[@fLaMePr0oF]

"Even though the UK is no longer part of the EU any more I still get blocked by some websites" MASSIVE non-sequitur.. I'm surprised and disappointed that you agreed to read this bullshit ad script that is firmly targeted at the ignorant xenophobe crowd :/ Apologies for my first comment being negative (as is sadly often the case) I really do appreciate what you do, I highly rate your content and will continue to do so

[@tonenuff]

My step father was a physicist at Bell Labs in Holmdel for over 40 years. He held 27 patents through them and was the person who designed the original articulating arm that held the laser for the first laser eye surgery. Art Ashkin was his good friend and use to come by the house often. At the time I thought what he did was neat, but being a boy never fully understood the scope of what went on there. It wasn’t till much later in life, and really learning the history, did I know. To my step father, it was just work, it was just what he did…

[@chrisschene8301]

I also worked at the Holmdel labs 1977 to 1980

[@tonenuff]

@@chrisschene8301 what did you work on while you were there?

[@chrisschene8301]

@@tonenuff modems. Data phone ii.

[@skattyopt]

Amazing thanks for sharing 👍

[@randylahey1232]

Sure bud

[@DiRF]

My father's engineering career started at Bell Labs in New Jersey… he always spoke very fondly of his time there.

[@b5627]

I hope you don't mind my saying, your father is a high caliber, bona fide badass

[@DiRF]

@@b5627 His career took him all over some of the finest engineering firms in the country... Harris, Lockheed, General Atronics, Texas Instruments. Shortly after his work at Bell Labs, he interviewed for, but ultimately turned down, a position at Xerox PARC. He specialized in shortwave and cellular signal creation, transmittal and acquisition.

[@LunaCryptic]

My father was an engineer with Bell as well from the late fifties to early eighties and also enjoyed his time there.

[@kokomo9764]

Yes, my father worked for Bell Labs in the 50s until 1982 when he retired. He was a PhD in Electrical Engineering. In fact, Bell was the only company he ever worked for.

[@chrisschene8301]

I loved Bell labs, but in my role I was a technical associate. I worked with all PHDs pretty much as their programmer and experimenter, but to be at the top in the labs, a PHD was pretty much required. I was sort of a "little fish in a big pond." I worked around people who I considered "giants" , so I moved on to other companies where I could be a regular fish in a regular pond. I worked with the UNIX team, as we used UNIX and the PWB (Programmers work bench) to do our development on Dataphone II modems that my team developed. We did use PDP11 computers. I is pretty amazing that Linux looks pretty much like the UNIX I worked on at BTL. BTL was a national treasure, but it was a cutting edge research and development environment, filled with the most brilliant people I have been blessed to know, but I am not so sure BTL was equipped to move into the cut-throat commercial world. They were brilliant nerds, but not cut out for the commercial world.

[@jimpad5608]

When I graduated from engineering college in 1975 I started doing field testing for Bell Labs. The system they designed had two parts: a control system based on a dec pdp11 minicomputer running a custom designed real-time operating system and hundreds of remote testing systems based on an Intel 8008 processor (the second one designed by Intel). From the engineers at Bell Labs I learned how to design computers from the chips up and operating systems. The on-the-job experience of working with the folks at Bell Labs led me to eventually working as an applications engineer for HP Labs taking theories and creating products. HPL and IBM Labs are also now gone. All were victims of short-term focused bean-counters and hence the decline of USA innovation.

[@ericvosselmans5657]

It's weird how the US is self-destructive in that way.

[@Outland9000]

@@ericvosselmans5657 I dont think it's just the USA.

[@ericvosselmans5657]

@@Outland9000 I am from western Europe. We are self-destructing even faster.

[@raphaelcardoso7927]

IBM labs is alive and well in Switzerland

[@drachenfels6782]

@Jim Pad, it was a product of its times, large monopolies, that made enough money to go around. But monopolies ended hence singular entities to support research in them. It's not lost, but not as concentrated either, the side effect is somewhat slower innovation and somewhat faster and cheaper adoption.

[@paulhaynes8045]

Great to see another CD video, when there's a gap it always worries me these days. A classic Droid video, as well - something I never knew I didn't know anything about! With most YT channels, you know pretty much what you're going to get, but with CD it's always an interesting surprise. Thanks, Paul.

[@earlyriser8998]

Bell labs was the 'gold standard' for research labs as I was growing up.

[@James_Bowie]

I don't know how a 'next Bell Labs' could emerge in the 21st century. The business paradigm has changed substantially. Bell Labs grew organically at the pace of business in the 20th century.

[@kain0m]

Sadly, that's the truth. Gross margin and ROI focus have ruined these kinds of investments in the future. Few companies are willing to take the risk of investing in grass roots research if there isn't a business plan attached to it. For big companies it seems like less risk to just buy up-and-coming ideas, at the cost of progress for all of us.

[@gman6081]

Bell Labs wanted to learn, discover and create things that enhanced "our" way of life. Sadly there will never be another like it. Greed, $$$$, ROI, and productivity is all anyone can think about now....that window of brilliance that brought us all the cornerstones of modern technology that we take for granted today has long since slammed shut.

[@awesomeferret]

Myths and legitimate concerns about capitalism is actually what will prevent it. Bell Labs is a reminder of a lot of the good capitalism has brought the world and a lot of people don't like that. If something was to become as big as Bell, it would be broken up by modern antitrust legislation anyway. That's what happens when you have a society that is ashamed of existing.

[@RCAvhstape]

I grew up not too far away from Bell Labs. It was the kind of place I dreamed of working at some day. And they weren't the only one, lots of big companies used to have laboratories and did lots of in-house research decades ago.

[@DrJatzCrackers]

Whilst there are others, RCAs comes to mind. Elsewhere, PMG (became Telecom Australia and then Telstra here in Australia), The UKs British Telecom & BBC, Japan's NTT also had their own labs and researchers that contributed to their own company's success, the technology ecosystem within their respective countries and the technical world as a whole.

[@Bruh-wb3qw]

I’m not sure if there’s anything quite like Bell Labs today but coming from a younger generation, Elon Musk’s ventures remind me of that dream of the future

[@RCAvhstape]

Another example: a century ago the Pennsylvania Railroad had its own research division and did a lot of work optimizing and designing steam engines and other rail equipment. Many of their locomotives were designed and built in their own shops or the designs farmed out to contractors, they did their own signal technology and had lots of smart people on the payroll. The company ceased to exist around 1970.

[@chrisfuller1268]

@@Bruh-wb3qw I've heard Elon micromanages his companies - not good for innovation. The key to innovation is to give demonstrated creative people with practical experience their freedom while holding them to a high standard. This was always the formula for success from Edison until Wall Street bean counters took over and Asians were allowed to steal all new innovations.

[@Bruh-wb3qw]

@@chrisfuller1268 I dont know how true that is. Try micromanaging over 100,000 employees; you give him too much credit. His companies are leaders in the new space race and dominate global electric car manufacturing amongst many other things like research in neuroscience, AI, communications, infrastructure, etc. His companies are clearly sucessful and rapidly evolving so im not sure where you see innovation lacking here. What i have heard is that there is not a ton of hierarchy in his companies which i'd argue is probably good for innovation because you dont need a supervisors, superior to approve little things.

[@nasonguy]

I run a mid sized PBX (~3000 endpoints). Telephony is my day in day out business. The entire world of telephony has Bell Labs fingerprints all over it. It’s incredible the amount of innovation and influence they had on the world of telephony.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

They never understood the Internet, though. VoIP was a complete mystery to them.

[@nasonguy]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Oh yeah, 100%. Even though they helped immensely with technologies and data sciences that became the backbone of the internet and modern data networks. Even in VoIP systems the routing logic and even just what things are named has a lot of Bell tells.

[@nobodynoone2500]

MA Bell, Got the Ill Communications.

[@user-sn8oe5sb1b]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 That was more of a "don't bite the hand that feeds you" thing. The same happened in a lot of telcos back in the day. Big telcos had a solid business based on existing copper. That existing copper gave them an edge over possible competitors, and gave their business a solid backbone that old business people could understand. It was like real estate. So, communications tech that threatened that was *frowned upon*. They continued to do things the old school way, even when it was more expensive for them to do so than to switch to VoIP systems themselves for their own networks. "Let's not compete with ourselves" has been the doom of more than one large corporation, where management opposition to new tech they saw as disruptive to their own business meant the leaders of an industry ended up being the only ones not developing said tech. Like Blockbuster losing out on streaming or Microsoft losing out on the server business.

[@dachronicalalittlebitofeve6630]

Any jobs going? Uk based.

[@Liberty2357]

It was at its best when it was run by the innovators. My father worked in Homdel and I remember when he knew it was over. They had a parts department where people could take what they wanted for any reason be it personal or work related. The idea was that when you have smart people working for you to trust them that even if they are doing a personal project they are still improving their skills which is worth the price of parts. Then one day he said they started locking up the parts and keeping track when the MBA types got in control. That was the beginning of the end.

[@Bob-I-am]

By the time I retired from Bell Labs in 2001, the bean counters had changed the company and degraded the work environment. The changes could be traced back to 1984 when the company was split.

[@gman6081]

Sad how greed and $$$$ (and MBA types) pretty much suck the oxygen out of every room they enter. Aside from that.......Cheers to your dad for his contributions to our technological luxuries we enjoy today.

[@David-yo5ws]

I worked for HP. When they started mixing smart people with 'politically correct' people, they may have got diversity and new ideas, but the 'self driven smart people' then had to make up for the 'shortcomings' of the diverse group. This affected productivity and the managers started focusing on your dress and how they perceived you, rather than your results. Didn't matter you worked long hours or your weekends were 'lost' during travel for the company, you were judged and your pay scale rated on how they judged you. After 9 years I 'bit the bullet' and after another 5 years, bit through that bullet and got out of the company. The bean counters replaced managers with team leaders and it went down hill after that. If someone tells me to work smarter and not harder, I would question their sanity.

[@Liberty2357]

@@David-yo5ws what HP did to their calculator group is a crime against humanity.

[@David-yo5ws]

@@Liberty2357 When those 'bean counters' lose sight of what's in the books (real people), crazy things happen. The Test and Measurement that got re-invented to Agilent Technologies and was going to be set up in Australia, (around the same time as ACO) suddenly had their 'in progress' construction of their purposed building stopped. The bean counters decided it was cheaper to hire buildings and not own them. The builder did a deal with Agilent and went to the bank and got a loan to finish it, backed with a guarantee of some years rent. Bill and Dave would be rolling in their graves to see how their HP people are now treated.

[@MakeItWithCalvin]

I think there is something to be said about the bell labs model of doing things vs the rush it out and patch it up later methods we have now. While it is sad to no longer see Bell Labs for what it was, there is a lot we can learn from them and their ways of recruiting and managing projects.

[@calexico66]

Also, some developments were made without management being fully aware of what researchers were doing. Like Unix and C, nowadays management structures try to to kill such kind of thing.

[@samuelglover7685]

@@calexico66 Absolutely. Has *anything* come out of Silicon Valley over the last 20 years that's anywhere close to the significance of what Bell Labs produced in an "average" decade?

[@Renee_R343]

And the lack of research centers like Bell Labs, is what I believe to be one of the main reasons, technological innovation and breakthroughs have almost ground to halt. The breakthroughs form 2012-2022 amount to maybe 1 year in the 50's. And that sucks.

[@kentuckysmoose]

@@Renee_R343 is MIT college considered one or nasa? Im curious about what school would be best for ideas not being crushed and wants to really put the innovation before the money.

[@corey2232]

​@@Renee_R343 I don't think that's true at all. I just think people don't understand the complexity & future applications of those breakthroughs yet.

[@Shinzon23]

I would say especially up here in Canada because even though Bell Canada/Bell was split up decades ago, you can still find traces of its technology and software in all of the telecoms up here. I worked with Rogers and telus and a lot of the older hardware (switches and what not, the old electromechanical ones) were usually Bell labs stuff, and I even found Bell Labs "watermarks" in some of the really legacy software for both companies.

[@jtveg]

Thanks to all the engineers and geniuses at Bell Labs for inventing most of our modern information, technology and communications driven society, and thank you Curious Droid for sharing this video.

[@SimonEkendahl]

This channel is incredible. It supersedes most science-focused tv shows out there today. I would actually love if you made a video talking a bit about yourself, your backround and what you're doing outside of youtube etc. I reckon alot of people would like that! Truly I thank you for your amazing content and unparalelled quality you bring to the world. You take care!

[@ethelredhardrede1838]

When ATT spun off Bell Labs, I saw that as the end of ATT. Now ATT is just South Eastern Bell under a name purchased for name recognition. And the US is doing so well in private research. Because the bean counters destroyed Bell Labs.

[@alwayscensored6871]

Yep, seen this happen everywhere. Even my work is at the mercy of bean counters. Lucky I retire soon.

[@bobroberts2371]

Think of what even a local phone call cost in the 1980's and compare that to the cost most any phone call to anywhere today. Bell labs ( and the virtually bullet / nuke proof system ) existed because of the $$$ flowing into the company. Something else to think of. Bell Labs was inventing basic building block technology that was later integrated into other products or improved on by others, this is why there were so dominant. Things like the transistor , lasers and so on What new ground breaking basic technology has been invented in say the past 30 years?

[@goodun2974]

I noticed a wall of plaques in the video that said "Nokia Bell Laboratories". The buying up of legacy companies by upstarts with investor backing invariably cheapens the original brand as the new management cannibalizes the company assets and spins off subsidiaries for cash, all to please the investors with high stock prices and short-term returns. Innovation ceases when extraction begins.

[@chrisschene8301]

My first post university job was at bell telephone laboratories in Holmdel New Jersey. Two Nobel prizes were awarded to bell labs researchers while I worked there. Reporters just to call around to all the bell labs telephone exchanges as the reporters were searching for someone who could contact the prize winners. I received several phone calls from reporters looking Phineas

[@donmoore7785]

My dad worked for Western Electric and Bell Labs from 1927 to 1969. He started at that building in NYC, and later in Whippany and Holmdel. It must have been so exciting to be a part of that period of tremendous technological and engineering advancement. I worked for Lucent in the late 1990s and it was a shadow of the company's past.

[@jcret510]

Shame what Lucent did to their workers

[@shailmurtaza9082]

@@jcret510 what do you mean?

[@jcret510]

@@shailmurtaza9082 they messed with employee pensions and retirement accounts and locked them so employees couldn’t withdraw funds after having fraudulently reporting revenue in a similar way to Enron. Employees lost millions and I even see a lawsuit for $1.2billion. Had an uncle who worked for ATT then Lucent when it was spun off and he lost millions in retirement due to all of it and is still working now into his 70s just to someday retire.

[@shailmurtaza9082]

@@jcret510 I see! That is horrible

[@karlhungus5554]

@donmoore7785 - I came to work for Lucent through an acquisition in 1999, as the telecom/internet bubble was still inflating. All these years later, I'm still disgusted by those who were "leading" Lucent at the time and how they destroyed such a magnificent company, hurt so many amazing employees, and lined their own pockets along the way. Seeing "Nokia Bell Labs" now makes me queasy.

[@johnburns4017]

*Honeywell* developed an operating system naming it Multix. Unix is a pun on that being derived from Multix.

[@franciscovarela7127]

"The Idea Factory" by Jon Gertner is a great read for anyone interested in Bell Labs history. As mentioned by others here the innovative work done by people at Bell Labs was mind blowing.

[@jarthuroriginal]

You are correct. Reading the book now. Took me back to my high school days as a lab assistant in physics. Time meant nothing as I played with home made solar cells and parabolic mirrors.

[@williamromine5715]

Being 80 years old, I was around for many of the hay days of AT&T and Bell Labs. It was an amazing time. The downfall came when the big wigs at AT&T got greedy. They allowed the breakup of the buisiness so they could get on the money train. President Reagan was ready to stop the antitrust action, but management agreed to the breakup. So the nation lost an amazing company, with all of its attributes and advancements, and AT&T became just another ho hum company. Such a shame. Great video, as usual. Thanks.

[@florin3161]

so i think that you may the one who saw alien technology from wich...you all smart persons give us so much...copied technology or invented but after model...you saw in artefacts send there by...BIG BOYS....so GUES what now ther are smarter BOYS then there but in other companys...so is there the....HIGH TECH goes....to be copied...

[@jannek5757]

I really didn´t know they were behind SO MANY innovations! Great video!

[@samuelglover7685]

Breaking up Bell Labs was one of the great unrecognized acts of corporate vandalism of the last quarter century. In general our "job creating" owner class isn't interested in producing anything new. They just want to set themselves up as rentiers, and squeeze the juice from the work of others.

[@jamescarnevale3312]

Reestablishment of a new Bell Labs like capability will only be possible if we return to a culture that values excellence and accomplishment over identity and aggrievement.

[@Trygon]

I was employed by AT&T briefly earlier this year, and stumbled across all this while I was trying to learn more about where I worked. Nobody in the company today is aware of any of this, aside from the one guy who maintains the 'AT&T Archives' playlist here on youtube. It's utterly baffling to me that the USA once had an engine of technology, money, and even culture, and just... Decided it wasn't worth it. I understand Bell Labs was ultimately a corporate entity, but it boggles the mind to think that government can't agree to keep discovering all the new tech that put us at the top, once upon a time. We proved that putting a bunch of smart people in a place where they can self-actualize works, so what even is the problem?

[@maynardburger]

Well I'd argue the US is still the leading country in the world for tech innovation. But really, innovation isn't what it used to be because most innovations have been thought up by now. It's now mostly down to a case of 'who can actually do it?'. And the challenges involved often require massive resources thrown at things with huge confluences of science+tech fields all working towards a larger goal. So yea, it's about execution rather than ideas nowadays. And there's only so many companies that have the capabilities and resources to really compete anymore to solve so many of these really complex problems.

[@johnburns4017]

_"It's utterly baffling to me that the USA once had an engine of technology, money, and even culture, and just... Decided it wasn't worth it."_ Just like the British rocket programme. Ahead in many aspects dropping the programme overnight. Look up _Black Knight_ and _Megaroc_ on Mark Felton's channel.

[@Chris-hx3om]

@@maynardburger "....because most innovations have been thought up by now." Really? If the 20th Century has taught us one thing, it's that discovery and invention are increasing, not decreasing. What's holding innovation and invention back isn't a lack of people willing and capable, but the bean-counters at the top of these sorts of organizations... Everything now needs to be 'profitable' in the short-term. We have lost the ability to think long-term, and realise that those sorts of small investments now may not show 'results' for years, but will yield orders of magnitude more than the current philosophy of pushing every cent out of everything in the short-term and it's going to bite us! Hard! (If it isn't already doing so)

[@tolep]

AT&T was essentialy a monopoly so it had all the resources to run Bell Labs.

[@johnburns4017]

@@tolep The private monopoly was broken up. You will find that funding for most inventions comes from public money. The outfit maybe private but pubic grants are given. The Internet was a joint development between DARPA in the USA and the National Physics Labs in the UK. The NPL invented the key components, the router and packet switching. Both public bodies and publicly funded.

[@samsonsoturian6013]

Asianometry has several great videos about chip making. It involves insanely expensive lasers that require a truck-sized piece of equipment to work, but are so accurate they can cut a germ in two.

[@9Achaemenid]

All cell towers in BC made by Sweden plus 80% of the worlds cellural antenna made by Ericsson in Sweden.

[@rharris22222]

I had a professor of economics in the 80's who had been at Bell Labs in the late 60's or early 70's. He said one time that one of the great things about working at Bell Labs is that they supported researchers so well. "If you're a physicist they build you a lab to work in. If you're an economist they hand you a yellow legal pad." I wish I had been sharp enough to realize just what a bit of dry self depreciating humor that really was, but of course, I was just a dumb kid and was only moderately amused.

[@slartibartfast7921]

Interesting to me, how many of these discoveries and inventions were achieved by pairs of people, as opposed to singular. Was that just how the working situation operated, or did these individuals just benefit from bouncing ideas off each other?…… even more interesting if you consider they were mainly working in the field of COMMUNICATION 🙂

[@kain0m]

I find working with someone who has opposite talents to me is the most productive - not just bouncing ideas, but actually complementing each others weaknesses. I'm someone who can "make it work", but I often need a partner that can fill in the nitty gritty details. It's much more efficient than working with someone just like yourself.

[@slartibartfast7921]

@@kain0m That makes total sense. 👍🏻

[@brick6347]

No way you could have something like Bell Labs in today's political climate. For every engineer you'd have 150 HR minions wandering round with rainbow flags and tweeting about diversity.

[@Coolgiy67]

Bell labs is a thing of legend. I hope another one spawns up so I can be apart of it.

[@malcolmmutambanengwe3453]

You could be the one to create it. Just saying.

[@samuelglover7685]

You won't see anything like it coming out of the "job creators" who make the decisions now. They're a lot more interested in asset stripping than creating anything new and useful.

[@samuelglover7685]

@@malcolmmutambanengwe3453 If you're saying Bell Labs emerged from the work of *one* person -- did you watch the video?

[@awesomeferret]

In an age where it's trendy for capitalists to think they hate capitalism, that will never happen. Modern antitrust laws would get in the way too.

[@awesomeferret]

@@samuelglover7685 did YOU? It literally did... I know what you mean, but the way you wrote it is a bit misleading, since what you actually wrote is very untrue (it's undeniable: Bell Labs only existed because of one man, Alexander Graham Bell).

[@CM-re1vm]

Another quality video. May I make a request? I would love to see a video about the Voyager spacecraft. I think you would knock it out of the park!

[@bobroberts2371]

Here you go, see these 2 vids, both on the " Guy Collins Animation " channel " Voyager " " Secret Video #3 - Voyager "

[@CM-re1vm]

@@bobroberts2371 I've never turned down an opportunity to watch anything about Voyager and I'm not going to start now. I find myself watching The Farthest documentary from 2017 again and again.

[@holz_name]

Only a small clarification. C++ is not a replacement for C. C and C++ are two different standards that are independent and both are used today for different applications. C is usually used for hardware close applications like drivers and operating systems. C++ have extensions like object oriented programming and exceptions and is used more in desktop applications. C and C++ are both general purpose software languages so you can use C++ for hardware and C for desktop applications.

[@samuelgibson780]

Thanks. I was going to say it if nobody else did! Still a good video even with some small errors though. Keep it up, Curious Droid! Rocking channel.

[@ArnoSchmidt70]

Ever heard about the Max-Planck Gesellschaft and its predecessor the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft? 15 Nobel Prize winners as KWG (until 1945) and 22 Nobel Prize winners as MPG (from 1945 until now). Seems to be another league.

[@blue387]

Can you do a video on the rise and fall of RCA? RCA invented many modern technologies

[@MrNeptunebob]

I would like a video about Westinghouse too, it was very sad in the Pittsburgh area to lose them.

[@jake9705]

16:40 -- WHHHHHYYYY would AT&T spin off Bell Labs if Bell was so incredibly productive, famous, and profitable?!

[@Ozoom1337]

A very interesting video! I would love to see a followup video on Xerox-Park! :D

[@MaxArceus]

Don't forget to click the Bell Labs notification, and subscribe

[@Platypi007]

If anyone wants a really interesting read about Bell Labs you should check out Jon Gertner's The Idea Factory.

[@DJaquithFL]

There's too much shortsightedness today for some imaginary places like "Eureka" to exist. Frankly, our government needs to offer brilliant people a haven to develop their ideas.

[@ProfSimonHolland]

wonderful Paul.

[@Johnnyybagodonuts]

I was just at the old bell labs a few months ago. Really cool feeling walking around knowing it was where our modern society stemmed from. Now its a glorified shopping center.

[@djpunisha29]

The start of our doom

[@DiviAugusti]

@@djpunisha29 The Unabomber? Is that you?

[@samuelglover7685]

@@DiviAugusti I think he's saying that the demise of Bell Labs was a loss, a disgrace -- which it was. What he's saying is pretty much the opposite of the Unabomber's fever dreams.

[@squiky-says5286]

You visited a repurposed building that was once a major Bell Labs location. Bell Labs left that location years before the building's current revival. Anyway, there's still a functioning Bell Labs location in Murray Hill. Still a lot of research being done there, though very little basic physics these days.

[@jerryheselwood]

I used to work at Lucent, they had a great museum at the HQ with the Bell Labs inventions

[@nicosmind3]

I've read about these guys before from a researcher, The Economic Laws of Research, which is a dry title for a great book. Though Bell Labs isn't the focus they did stick out to me (along with the Japanese government creating a scientific institution that had a 100% record of failure, and even tried to convince Japanese industry to stay away from cars and computer chips!)

[@ipissed]

What are those parenthesis doing? I need more to the story. Like you are going to explain your secondary thought. I feel like the birthday cake ran out and I was the last in line.

[@rcknbob1]

@@ipissed I suppose that, like me, you'll have to find the book. I bet it's at the library.😄😄😄😄 Edit: Mine doesn't, but it's available from Amazon.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Bell Labs was a groundbreaking place ... as long as it was funded by a Government-controlled monopoly. After that monopoly was broken up (during the Reagan era), it lost most of its brilliance.

[@ipissed]

@@rcknbob1 Or you can just Google it, how are you even on the internet without knowing how a search works? What are you 90? Time for a diaper change.

[@nicosmind3]

@@ipissed well I was going to write more, but the video was playing away and he mentioned stuff like "more Nobel Prizes" and a few other things so I assumed it'd be covered in the video. Another thing I thought was cool, though not unique to Bell Labs, was there's been a number of great scientists just given cart blanche to do whatever they liked, with the best science labs, and as free to share whatever they discovered, funded by the private sector! Their contracts actually said that! But it works out funding the best scientists with the best equipment cause of first mover advantage (one of the laws), and if you want to try and coast of second mover advantage (ie replication) you still need scientists at the top of their game where the breakthroughs are cause otherwise they won't understand it if it's too far ahead of their experience (you're not learning it from a book after all, and can't just set up a lab in a week and nail whatever breakthrough happened without experience, science ain't that easy). So yeah I found that surprising, how often scientists have an open contract to research whatever they want with the money behind them, and business just trusting sooner or later something profitable will come from it. It's not what you'd expect.

[@TinHatRanch]

That’s an awfully diverse group of individuals that invented modern civilization.

[@carbon_no6]

This pertains to everyone! I am responsible for every single act and invention that’s not caused negative consequences to humanity!As far as you know this is true!

[@schwenk929]

Sadly New Jersey is known more for "Jersey Shore " than as the birthplace of the modern age .

[@vladimirseven777]

Sooner or later every organization became plagued by bureaucracy. Despite most of bureaucratic proposals sound reasonable, like order of shifting paper from one stack to another faster, in the end it killing everything.

[@grazzitdvram]

Bell Labs is perhaps the most important organization for human civilization in the last 100 years and the conditions for its existence are gone and unlikely to ever come into existence again because for the most part is was a massive waste of money. Yes they did come up with amazing tech but it was based off the insane profits of a government sanctioned monopoly and favorable tax codes which allowed Bell to not only run Bell Labs but also to built a nuclear hardened communication network with redundancy across the entire USA

[@msamov]

What would you have the new (well funded) Bell Labs work on? Quantum Entanglement Communicators? Ooooo - how about thought recorders! That would be a good one! LOL.

[@01DOGG01]

I have a video from bell labs on my channel. It's called 'the incredible machine (1968)'. Amazing stuff!

[@nevertrusasmurf]

Great video; but the CMB is not(!) the light of the first stars! It is the first free moving light in the universe ever, long before stars.

[@samsonsoturian6013]

There's several competing theories

[@HT-zx8dn]

I graduated from Electrical Engineering in '83, then some Telecom work, then switched to the Software Engineering in 1986 and retired last year (2021). This video summarizes my whole life (Almost). Sigh...

[@orcaluv]

I worked for Lucent starting in 97. I do miss those days. Didn't last long after that though.

[@Trixter112]

Cool to hear the name of Harry Nyqvist. Since he came from the same village in Sweden as me (tot. pop. around 12 000 people) there is a small museum dedicated to his memory not far from where I live. :)

[@HaHa-gy5vg]

AT&T monopolized the long distance lines for a century, retarding technological progression for decades. Without that monopoloztion we would have had widespread Internet in the 1960's or earlier. Read Tim Wu's The Master Switch.

[@margarita8442]

The biggest was the MOSFET in 1959 !! we carry billions of these around in our smart phones

[@sengir3937]

A lot of people think, that Bell was the inventor of the telphone, but this isn't true. Bell was inspired by Johann Philipp Reis, who invented the telephone in 1861. Reis also "created" the word telephone.

[@adrianmuino3412]

I feel that Bell was a huge benefactor for the human kind, not just a company, not just a brand. By the way, how many Nobels Apple has?

[@johnburns4017]

They key was that Bell had a telephone monopoly in the USA. They used the profits to fund the labs - to make more money. Large monopolies can do this, as the British GPO Telephones did. Bell was a private monopoly and GPO a public one. GPO built the world's first electronic computer (Tommy Flowers), and optic fibre system in 1977, cell phones, amongst others. Bell's private monopoly was split up. The GPO was privatized.

[@5455jm]

It was the ideas factory; but the ideas were back engineered from items given to Bell by the Govt.; these items did not come from East Burgen N.J. or any other place on Earth. Not conspiracy theory but fact from a Bell Engineer and I can not say more than that.

[@AngeEinstein]

I often wonder what the world would look like if we would dedicate all the resources we now use for wars, fighting each other and preventing the other company from having success to research for all mankind.

[@chengong388]

You could improve your creditability by not taking sponsorship from these false advertising shady VPN services.

[@simonstergaard]

just remember, bell labs was first to publish the transistor, but europe actually did i first, but didnt publish, ... just take a look at that first transistor... usa version looks like SxxT

[@raedwulf61]

Great video. As a kid, I admired Bell Labs. When they became Lucent, it was just sad and I knew the glory had passed. What Nokia is doing with it is anybody's guess.

[@A3Kr0n]

There won't be another Bell Labs, that technology has been fleshed out. It's at a point where incremental advances cost billions of dollars and that's not going to get better.

[@v8pilot]

I worked for two years as an MTS at Bell Labs Holmdel. A wonderful experience. If you were curious about something, you could pick up the phone and a leading expert on the subject would happily explain things to you. You could walk down a corridor and the name on each door would be an internationally known researcher. To be employed there having a PhD was a prerequisite. But within Bell Labs, everybody (every man that is) was addressed as "mister".

[@HomeTipsAndTricks]

Absolutely wonderful. Thank you SO much for what you do. --Fink

[@aaaargl]

"click the *BELL* notification" nice pun!

[@LokiDaFerret]

I would have thought fibre optics would be up there on the list of things to mention in the beginning of your video.

[@Sauceyjames]

To think Bell labs was the good part of the company and AT&T, the dark side...

[@slemrijan]

Did you hear about the guy who invented the knock knock joke? He won the "no-bell" prize!

[@andychristiaens1810]

The amount of NordVPN sponsorship tells me nobody must be using this. The more commercials you see the less people are using it.

[@3Dimencia]

if you give people some slack to be creative instead of forcing some deadline they will almost always not disappoint..

[@RolandGustafsson]

Thank you for this excellent history lesson! It’s amazing to me how a few people and their discoveries can make such a difference! Have you done a video about John Goodenough??!! Now there’s an amazing person!

[@waynerussell6401]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oYObdHiJp86ae8k

[@everybodygotthat]

Hi Paul. Thanks for the video. Hope you're doing well these days.

[@timb8095]

If I recall correctly, you had Bell Canada and Northern Electric which became Bell Northern Research. I was told once that the term NERD came from Northern Electric Research Division!

[@lucianolizana446]

I always had such a big curiosity for bell labs, always present in most wikipedia pages of major technological events. Thanks from Santiago, Chile !

[@hamslicemcdooogle8080]

Bruh chill with the fabulous shirts, you’re making the rest of us look bad.

[@LeiCal69]

I was gonna say we need to recreate Bell Labs but it seems like they are already trying to figure it out.

[@obu90210]

Thank You very nuch! Another excellent video, full of new knowledge. I hope Your health is OK! All the best!

[@pallabkumarborahindia]

Awesome video. Thanks for making it

[@DFSJR1203]

Got to meet Nobel Prize Winner Arno Penzias at a local electronics store in Highland Park, New Jersey where he lived. He was very nice and actually spoke to me for about 1.5 hours. We talked about everything and anything. At the time he was in charge of Bell Labs.

[@davidb6576]

In 1858 there was a functional (if short lived) telegraph cable laid between America and Britain. After that failed, another was laid eight years later, so it's not quite right to call the Bell cable the first. Regardless, love these videos!

[@batman_2004]

Imagine if all the military budget were to for only research and development...

[@VoidHalo]

This is an amazing documentary about an amazing topic. Well played and well executed. By far one of my favourite topics you've covered. I'd LOVE to see documentaries about some of the fathers of the semiconductor industry like William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brittain who invented the BJT, or the less famous (I wonder why) Mohammed Atalla who invented the first working MOSFET. Which I would argue might be more groundbreaking than the BJT. But that's a tough contest. I could go on and on with names. Whether from Bell Labs, Fairchild, RCA or any of their competitors. Actually, it's a bit obscure, but I'd LOVELOVELOVE to see a video on the history of the 5400/7400 series, 4000 series and LM series of chips. Although that's a bit specialist for this channel maybe. It would make a fine trilogy of videos to compliment this one.

[@peterbrown7130]

Of course when the telephone was first invented it was totally useless- nobody else had one

[@blondie1169]

Bell , the company has gotten rich ripping everybody off.

[@SF-li9kh]

Man .. this is the dream. Trying out different things and being paid for it

[@nonamedpleb]

Great video. Although I am disappointed that you still spread the misconception that Bell invented the telephone. He and the companies in his name was integral to the widespread use of the device but he did not invent it.

[@terrancenorris9992]

Elisha Gray had a phone, but Bell patented first. Otherwise, it would have been GRAY SYSTEM. BELL LABS designed the copper-nickel sandwich coins for the U.S. MINT. At the time (1963-1964 our government wanted to discontinue silver minting, but there were millions of pay phones in use. The weight and size of quarters and dimes had to remain constant with silver coins. Fiat money was invented...😁

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

They were both racing to the patent office on the same day. Somehow, Gray’s application got held up, while Bell’s got through. Actually, neither one is officially recognized as the inventor of the telephone.

[@paul1e]

Great vid sir!

[@Wunderbolts]

My grandpa worked at bell labs with one of the guys who invented lasers

[@cultofape1000]

Great video as always, hope you are well. Small nitpick, c didn't become c++, c++ was a new programming language, based on c, which is still very much used today.

[@yogibarista2818]

Yes, it's a separate language, but the fact that C is effectively a subset of C++ makes it a 'built on the shoulders of' type of product.

[@wdwerker]

I had a cousin who worked for Bell/Western Electric and we lived near their test bed telephone exchange. We got the first touch tone phones and features like call waiting. Never knew there were so many non phone innovations from Bell. I guess there were benefits to the monopoly but they abused it with huge bills & fees.

[@ZeroHiking]

Awesome engineering video. More of such please! :)

[@mdouglaswray]

Jansky's name lives on in a unit name of spectral flux density. It's used early in the movie Contact.

[@SnoopyDoofie]

Dang, Paul left out the most important part about aliens giving us the transistor. lol

[@nicholas5623]

These guys in this video, all of them and then some. are the guys that laid the ground work for my modern life (1993) it's insane to think these were all just normal dudes going to work making history. I love it

[@markymark3572]

Now owned by Nokia since 2016 apparently

[@himselfe]

What the world really needs is well funded R&D facilities like Bell Labs, but that releases discoveries into the public domain and work purely for the advancement of humanity.

[@awesomeferret]

And... You explained in the last sentence why an RanD center should NEVER be forced to public domain anything. You clearly forgot how much innocent tech can be used for war.

[@WillN2Go1]

Bell Labs was in my youth equal to NASA in terms of being part of the future.

[@jamesodom4980]

Do we really need two full length ads plus a sponsorship?