Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research
After six Nobel Prizes, the invention of the transistor, laser and countless contributions to computer science and technology, it is the end of the road for Bell Labs' fundamental physics research lab.
Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software.
The idea is to align the research work in the Lab closer to areas that the parent company is focusing on, says Peter Benedict, spokesperson for Bell Labs and Alcatel-Lucent Ventures.
"In the new innovation model, research needs to keep addressing the need of the mother company," he says.
That view is shortsighted and may drastically curtail the Labs' ability to come up with truly innovative discoveries, respond critics.
"Fundamental physics is absolutely crucial to computing," says Mike Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society. "Say in the case of integrated circuits, there were many, many small steps that occurred along the way resulting from decades worth of work in matters of physics."
Bell Labs was one of the last bastions of basic research within the corporate world, which over the past several decades has largely focused its R&D efforts on applied research -- areas of study with more immediate prospects of paying off.
Without internally funded basic research, fundamental research has instead come to rely on academic and government-funded laboratories to do kind of long-term projects without immediate and obvious payback that Bell Labs used to historically do, says Lubell.
Most of the scientists working in the company's fundamental physics department have been reassigned, says Benedict. Nature, which first reported the news, says just four scientists are left working the fundamental physics department in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Benedict wouldn't confirm or deny that.
Computing and wireless technologies owe much to advancements in physics, though the connection may not always be immediately apparent. An example is the Global Positioning Systems or GPS.
For instance, an integral element of GPS are atomic clocks, which stemmed from the creation of the hydrogen maser.
The hydrogen maser, or hydrogen frequency standard, uses the properties of a hydrogen atom to serve as a precision frequency reference.
"GPS is based on very accurate timing mechanisms," says Lubell. "So the measure of time and the frequency standards that are used to do it date back to research in optical pumping which led to the development of hydrogen maser."
In the past Bell Labs was the place where such fundamental research that impacts the fields of both computing and physics could meet.
Bell Labs was founded in 1925 by Walter Gifford, then president of AT&T. AT&T, a monopoly, established Bell Telephone Laboratories, popularly known as Bell Labs, as a joint venture with Western Electric, AT&T's manufacturing subsidiary.
The Labs became the Mecca for researchers in science, computers and mathematics. Deregulation, however, forced AT&T in 1995 to spin off Bell and other parts of the company into Lucent Technologies. The move marked a shift in fortunes for the research arm as research budgets came to be trimmed and Alcatel-Lucent faced increasing pressure from stockholders.
"Bell Labs could do the kind of fundamental research it did in the past because it was functioning as part of a monopoly," says Lubell. "With that gone the landscape changed dramatically."
In recent years, Bell Labs' physics unit had its share of controversy when researcher J. Hendrik Schön was found to have published data in the area of molecular-scale transistors between 1998 and 2001 that had been manipulated and falsified.
That's a long way from where the Labs once stood with its position as a Nobel Prize magnet.
In 1937, Bell Labs researcher Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter.
Nearly twenty years later, in 1956 came the Nobel prize for inventing the transistor and it was shared by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Bell scientist Walter Brattain.
In the seventies, Bell Labs won two Nobel prizes in physics back-to-back in the years 1977 and 1978. Philip Anderson shared the Nobel for developing an improved understanding of the electronic structure of glass and magnetic materials. The next year Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were feted for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation.
Former Bell Labs researcher Steven Chu shared the Nobel in 1997 for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. A year later Horst Stormer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui were awarded a Nobel for the discovery and explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect.
In the last few years, Lucent has sold its semiconductor business and that means research in areas connected to that had to be scaled back, especially in areas such as integrated circuits and Microelectromechanicals Systems (MEMS).
Meanwhile, Alcatel-Lucent continues to hack away at its jewels. Though Murray Hill in New Jersey, the company's U.S. headquarters, and the site of many great scientific discoveries remains safe, Alcatel-Lucent has sold its Holmdel campus. Holmdel's technological contributions include contributions to Telstar, the first communications satellite and Chu's Nobel Prize-winning work.
Still for fundamental physics research there will be life after Bell Labs, though it will be dependent on the whims of the federal government.
Increasingly, long-term research is being carried out in universities and national laboratories with federal grants, says Lubell.
For Bell Labs, yet another chapter in its storied history of comes to a close taking the once iconic institution closer to being just another research arm of a major corporation.
Photo: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invented the transistor in 1947. (Alcatel-Lucent/Bell Labs)
That's actually pretty sad to hear. I understand why they're doing it, but it's still not a great reason. I got into my field of work because of these people and what they were doing in their respective times. Sad to know that the quicker buck is being weighed over the long term. Another nail...
Alas some other company or country will follow in the footsteps acquire various people who are leaders. Sometimes companies don't see the long term gains for short term costs. They want the quick buck when the 20 year payback could be orders of magnitude more.
Look at Xerox PARC for example, Apple and Microsoft owe a lot to Xerox
What a bunch of jerks! VERY, VERY, SAD. But I guess on the 1th we're all getting sucked into a black hole right? (CERN)
We already know everything about physics! On to something more interesting.
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
I'm notthe kind of guy that comments a lot about these blog entries... but this one deserves a HUGE sign about Epic Failure for the Alcatel Lucent guys. Dorks... like money over science is ever going to win...
I know ... let's get Bell to buy the labs back!
One of the most pressing needs in computer science is to find a solution to the memory bottleneck. This is especially true now that the industry has adopted the multicore processor in which multiple cores try to read and write to the same address space at the same time. We need a mechanism that will allow any number of simultaneous random accesses to menory without contention and/or performance issues. In my opinion, there are two avenues of research that may lead to a breakthrough in memory technology: quantum tunneling and optical memory. Bell Labs and industry labs would do well to provide serious funding for fundamental research in these areas. As everyone knows, managing multiple caches while doing load balancing is a monumental pain in the butt. A breakthrough would eliminate the need for caches and would simply processor architecture tremendously. It would revolutionize computing.
Transforming the TILE64 into a Kick-Ass parallel Machine:
http://rebelscience.blogspot.com/2008/08/transforming-tile64-into-kick-ass.html
Where does A-L management think the innovations will come from? USA industry has been successful because of its ability to develop new technologies. Outsourced R&D should not be the foundation of a high-tech corporation's long-term plan.
Thomas Bayster, that was the first thought I had. More indication that the US has become a third world country. Excellent article today in the NYTimes reflecting this. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/opinion/27friedman.html
hi
Serves the *ssholes right. Close the money losing side of the business. Concentrate on the core business - commercial prostitution. Auction all the patents and historic documents on eBay and raise some more cash. Keep the shareholders happy. Raise the salaries of the board members. Don't invent - copy, or better yet - steal. Don't create - stay in the middle of the road...
That's capitalism, baby, capitalism - capisci?
Creativity don't count jack sh*t - it doesn't end with "ism".
Paul
All hail quarterly returns! If it doesn't immediately help my dividend then there's no reason to keep it!
The real tragedy here is that American business hasn't created more labs of this caliber and that we've let our position in research infrastructure remain so tenuous.
Let's get back to work!
welp, we are now witnessing the start of the demise of the US' R&D muscle.
you think stopping basic R&D would make a company more profitable? hah! the basic problem is management being short sighted! time to do massive layoffs at the management level.
this is the latest chapter, perhaps one of the final chapters, of bell labs' decline over the last 25 years, but it all dates back to the at&t breakup in the early 80's: deregulation dried up the profits that paid for the breadth of bell labs research.
yet it also removed at&t's stranglehold on consumer and business telecoms, which enabled the explosive growth in telecom choices that we enjoy today.
the doomsayers who lament the loss of bell labs overstate their case: today, companies like ibm, intel, and microsoft continue to fund research at the cutting edge of science.
This is a bad, bad idea. One great researcher once told me, that for every dollar you spend on research, you could expect to earn $400 on the long term. Something tells me A-L will be regretting this when they get bought by an Indian firm 20 years form now.
All of the steps in the demise of Bell Labs make economic sense. As a previous poster noted, the only reason that Bell Labs existed as a research powerhouse is that it was funded by a monopoly. Ma Bell could afford to think long term and take risks.
Now, Lucent simmply can't compete in its marketplace if it spends bucks on research that isn't focused on it's product offerings. It's as simple as that. It makes sense. It's the only choice. And, yes, it is sad.
Our country's big problem with this stuff is that we're not filling in the gaps left by the demise of groups like Bell Labs. If we're going to fully embrace the free market philosophy (which, like it or not, is where we are and where we'll stay), then we also have to acknowledge that the free market does not reward long-term or theoretical research. Because of this, any company that plans to stay afloat isn't going to allocate any resources to it. That's an inescapable result of the economic philosophy we've chosen.
Once we accept this, we then need to realize that, in this type of economy, the government is the only other organization that has the means and motive to fund long term and theoretical research. Problem is, gov't research funds are drying up (just when we need them most) and, on top of that, the decisions on where to spend them are starting to look more and more like those made by corporations.
So the end result: Bell Labs closes, CERN opens in Europe, we have half-excavated abandoned supercollider excavations in North Texas, China has a growing space program, we have a Shuttle fleet going into mothballs and a vague promise of a new space program that someone else's administration will have to figure out how to fund.
We're proving very well that the government can be run like a business. Problem is, it needs to be run like a government.
Mon ami, we French know what's best for America. We own a large percentage of your drinking water systems, and much of your technology, such as Alcatel-Lucent.
Perhaps, when we start selling Peugeot's in the US again, you'll buy it.
I pay my respects to the Bell Labs and long time Lucent Microelectronics / Western Electric people who are hopefully happy and retired by now, in spite of the way many were treated and coerced into 'early retirement'.
You guys helped build the Future, and many companies today are standing on your shoulders as they make new innovations today.
I personally had the privilege of working with many fine engineers in Reading Fab years ago and was there just long enough to know just how smart and capable they were before the *jackasses* at the top of Lucent decided to butcher the company for the pension fund and the IP (IMHO).
Why else would you want to turn one of the greatest companies on Earth into a 'fabless foundry'?
Reading Fab, for example, could have, with a little foresight become a foundry for BCDMOS and later, solar wafers. (at least Madrid Fab is Solar with BP now). Reading is just an empty super fund site.
The second chip plant ever built...GONE. The wall of achievements and innovations on the ground floor behind glass should go to a museum, as it is a piece of history.
To All the Bell Labs and long time Lucent Microelectronics / Western Electric people:
THANK YOU for your years of service to the Technology Industry and to this COUNTRY.
To the leaders and top executives who organized and oversaw the decay/dis-assembly of a once great company:
00100
If you can't read Binary, call one of the Engineers you discarded, I'm sure they'll be happy to translate it for you.
Bell Labs started dying in the eighties. I'm surprised it took so long.
*
The difference between a corporate lab like Bell Labs and a university or government lab, is that the scientists in the corporate lab don't spend a tenth of their time lining up next year's grant money. Sometimes the budget may be cut or a project eliminated, but the scientists know that they have a job and a budget year after year. That seems to be the exception rather than the rule in the public realm. Try researching something done by a professor at a University. They publish some good stuff and then it stops. So you search the journal databases and a year after the research you were interested in stops, they start publishing in a related but different subject. Their prior work is left uncompleted. Doesn't matter that they were close to finishing something, it just stops and they start on something different. That is what happens when the grant money runs out and they need new grant money. Oftentimes the people handing out the next grant don't care about the current research project, their mission is something else and the professor has to go where the funding is.
The final nail in the coffin that is Bell Laboratories, arguably the greatest research institution ever assembled. I will always have fond memories of working in Murray Hill where I started my career, and have succeeded because of it. The scientists and technicians I worked with were all great. I am still honored and humbled by working with and under some of the most renowned researchers of the time. All that talent is now spread far and wide over the planet. RIP
As for the role of government research in mitigating this tragic loss, we have this quote from one of the co-conspirators of the party that's been running this country for the past 7+ years (not counting the Republican congress of the '90s):
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." — Grover Norquist
See Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (http://www.amazon.com/Wrecking-Crew-How-Conservatives-Rule/dp/0805079882/).
Why pay for basic research when the government will do it for you? The concept of "on the dole" has permeated the highest levels of our society. And then ... and THEN ....
Deficits and recession ... the government is forced to cut spending. And where do they cut first? You guessed it -- basic research. This, of course, kills academic research as well, since the grants evaporate.
So, we are left with no research -- at least until some maverick business tycoon decides they can gain an edge by actually encouraging innovation. Problem is, by that time, all the scientists and technicians who were put out of work are retired or flipping burgers and don't want to rejoin the rat race only to have the same thing happen to them all over again. Of course, because university research was cut off, students are pursuing other venues because they have been told there is no future in research any more.
But don't worry ... China will provide us with all that we need.
OK, this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the loss of corporate basic research, from which so many of our scientific discoveries have derived (Did someone say, "Bell Labs"? This article says it all: http://www.bell-labs.com/history/laser/invention/cosmology.html .), will ultimately prove disastrous for the U.S. if not reversed.
Of course, perhaps we should not be too concerned after all. Within a few years CERN will be attempting to create a black hole that will eat the Earth, rendering all of this meaningless.
hmm- Instead of blowing taxpayer money on programs to help people who already have too many kids to have more, this money should help to fund programs like this!
Remember, certain groups of people evolved to reproduce early and in high numbers in response to an environment that tended to cull the population via disease, natural predators, etc. However, times and environments change, but genetic programming changes more slowly. To encourage heavy reproduction in a "new environment" that artifically removes nature's threats is isane, and the cause of much human suffering today.
@CW
The problem is the people who have been "running" the country for the last 7 years are NOT true conservatives. One only has to look at the expansion of government and the national debt to realize that, of course by calling themselves conservatives they have won votes and also given conservatism a bad name.
Philko -- Excellent post. The free market is fine, but a lot of people refust to acknowledge that it leaves some truck-sized holes in our society.
There's a parallel to the arts, I think. (I'm talking classical music or modern sculpture, not American Idol.)
Very sad indeed. Looking for a positive note... When all the corporate research is gone and fundamental discoveries only come from government and university labs will there be a more open flow of information with less patent/copyright issues?
I am not so sure the decision on Bell Labs basic research makes sense.
Basic research can be one of the lucrative areas of science if you get to patent some of the most fundamental technologies and bring the innovations first to market.
Relying on applied science alone leaves a massive uncertainty from licencing for a major company like Lucent Alcatel.
On the other hand, the short term thinking is a direct result of the quarterly results thinking that stems from the need to report to the stock market analyst crowd every quarter.
Joe, I agree. However, it would have been nice if more self-identified "conservatives" had actually thought about what that term was supposed to mean, and forcefully opposed the depredations of this administration and its cronies. I have to give credit to the editors and contributors to the American Conservative (www.amconmag.com), along with people like Bruce Bartlett ('Imposter') and Kevin Phillips ('American Theocracy') for making a serious effort in that direction.
The decline of communist totalitarianism has made way for a free market totalitarianism, which may prove every bit as dangerous, not least because has an inherent tendency to evolve into fascism.
[See the essay at http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html. No doubt it will annoy you, but it captures some essential elements of the perniciousness of certain recent political and economic developments in the U.S. and the world. Also see this from Umberto Eco: http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html]
Closer to the topic at hand, can someone offer some informed comment on AT&T Bell Labs intellectual property policies? My knowledge of them is fragmentary, but it seems that their openness is another reason why Bell Labs made such great contributions during the last century.
YOU FRAKKING IDIOTS!!!
Sad, so sad
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic:
Sometimes it takes a while to realize that the ship is going down, but events like this make the realization inescapable.
Soon America will be nothing but a Chinese Walmart outlet.
I'll bet someone raided the safe on the Titanic on their way out, just as the current American? corporations grab the money and run to Dubai.
If government had to fund and direct basic research, we'd never have gotten the transistor, fiber optics or, for that matter, indoor plumbing. Their motivations are inherently non-market driven.
Google, the new deep-pockets of the tech world should take up the mantle of basic physics research. How 'bout it Sergey/Larry/Eric?
Very Sad scenario. Again it's another backwards thinking managing director trying to increase his bottom line by killing the innovative group. Good one brainiac.
Also Dave in Dallas, Americans never invented indoor plumbing it has been around since 1500 B.C, and Romans improved that in 432 B.C and also take into consideration that Mayans also had plumbing and Dentists and surgeons.
We as Americans have not contributed a great deal just reinvented the wheel a number of times, I think it's called efficiencies, or improvements.
No, it was not killed by the stockholders: the little old ladies and the institutional investors holding the AT&T stock known simply as "T;" they were satisfied with the return and security and innovation that was the envy of the world.
It was killed by the analysts and churners and "Mergers and Acquisitions" parasites who sucked the life out of it. The short-termers and those who chose to enrich themselves with their stock options by draining -- not adding to the energy of the flywheel of discovery killed it.
The lion's share went to the pigs.
China can achieve the sole ultra-superpower status within 30 years when with its awesome economic power and high technologies it could deploy the most formidable military power. And with such an invincible military power it could globalize the world in China’s image of universal justice, peace, and prosperity.
With the largest population in the world and the second largest territory in the world, China should be able to develop an economy that is 5 times the economy of America even if per capita productivity is the same. China should also be able to develop more advanced technologies given its absolute number of genius level people is some 5 times more than that of America. Therefore, China should be able to develop the most advanced and the biggest economy in the world to make China the richest and the most powerful. But America and Europe as well as India, Brazil, and other big countries also have the basic ingredients to become much more advanced than they are now. So the world will probably become multi-polar with more checks and balances. But since China will be the sole ultra-superpower it will surely play the role of leader rather than ruler.
Dave -
It's easy to recite the tired old "government can't do anything" line. Why don't you take a REAL look at how many advances in pure research have happened ONLY because of government funding (Internet and Genome Sequencing easily come to mind). It only took me about 30 seconds of Googling to find http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/, which lists a LOT of positive results of DOE research expenditures.
One of the purposes of a national government should be to do what's best for the long term interests of the country, regardless of whether they're in the short term interests of individual citizens or corporations.
And as far as Sergey/Larry/Eric setting up some basic physics research goes: Google is a public company - if they started spending bucks on research whose results couldn't be used to sell ads, there'd be some board changes really quick.
"China ... its absolute number of genius level people is some 5 times more than that of America"
Got any research to support that? (Or were you hoping that the simple fact that nobody called you on it would prove your point for you?)
It's been over for a long time at Bell labs. Most of the exodus started in the late 80s and early 90s.
If you can't refute the reasonable expectation that genius is normally distributed, or gold medal grade athletes, then you have no argument. The trick is to find and cultivate these people, and the institutional base is key. China is at the early stage of development. The article may indicate an opposite trend in America, but in any case the potential numbers are out of America's control.
Kool Kev and Philco: good points, mostly. But since I've worked in both the government and industry, I'd have to give industry the edge when it comes to actually getting an idea out to the masses where it can have some impact.
Granted, the Internet came to us via the government(DARPA), but something as off-the-wall as Google or Yahoo couldn't have been directed, or even envisioned by any government.
Central control and creative energy are frequently natural enemies.
As a Western Electric employee for most of my career, I can recall the many projects of a "practical nature" that we and Bell Labs worked on as a team. There was one call "White Alice" which, for the first time, provided safety to all of North American against possible enemy missile launches. Then came the advanced Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, another joint project, that provided even greater safety. And as I type this, resting on a corner of my desk is a lucite letter opener, gifted to me on the day that Telstar was launched. All of our employees swelled with pride on that day and how well I remember it today! The demise of Bell Labs may have been due to economic factors but we have to ask ourselves if future generations will be better off because the world's best and most creative technical facility was allowed to become extinct. I think not!
liang -
I overlooked the word "absolute" in your post. I withdraw my comment - you're right.
I also agree that the real challenge is identifying the potential geniuses and nurturing them, but I find it hard to believe that China's going to do a worse job than the US is currently doing.
Dave (in Dallas) -
I'll definitely agree that industry does a better job than government at taking a discovery and bringing it to market. But I'm not suggesting that gov't take on that role. Gov't should "open the territory" through basic and long-term research, then make the results available to all. Industry should take it from there.
The gov't definitely could not have produced a Google or Yahoo, even if that had wanted to. BUT, neither of those companies could have been created if the gov't hadn't created the 'net.
And speaking of the 'net, if a private company had created it, we would have ended up with a medium that had a gatekeeper who more likely than not would have stifled innovators like Google and Yahoo. Having the gov't do the basic research ensures that the results are equally available to all (at least in theory ;-)
Unfortunately, the problem is that as soon as the gov't tries to spend money on the long-term public good, the short-term special interests do everything in their power to divert the funds to themselves. And these days, their "power" is pretty extensive.
Since I only a visitor at the Labs a few times, so I'm not so nostalgic that I feel Holmdel should be preserved at all costs, or maintained in its condition as a national shrine to Penzias et al,
However, I've seen this pattern before at another "national treasure" - Xerox PARC made the same decision in the early 80s (only research with potential to be commercialized within 2 years) - this led to an exodus of PhD talent to DEC, Universities like MIT and Stanford.
What is PARC doing today? It's not part of Xerox. If you believe government can't do useful basic research, then propose a hybrid solution:
One idea:
If a company wants to utilize the R&D tax credit for the internal R&D, make that credit contingent on them putting 1% of their profits into am R&D pool to sponsor basic Research at Universities. That way you avoid 'basic' research turning into contaminated.
Guys, it makes sense that with at least 5 times the population, China would have at least 5 times the genious level people (proportional ratio assumed).
I'm going to hazard a guess however, from watching China, that it will not be the powerhouse the US has been in the past. Considering how research and development have made us great, and how a certain amount of openness is required to achieve the information sharing to capitalize on it...China simply cannot open up in order to function on that level. They'll stay at their level, never rising above, because of their inherent lack of openness.
all this wailing and lamentation is off target.
at its peak, in 1982, the entire bell labs budget was $1.6B, equivalent to $3.6B today.
only a small fraction of that was devoted to basic research (area 11), and only a tiny fraction to basic physics.
federal support for cancer research is $5B annually. NSF funding is about $6B per year.
if you want to piss and moan and wail and rend your clothes, think about the $10B PER WEEK we spend on iraq.
EVERY WEEK we spend twice the annual budget devoted to curing cancer on a misguided adventure in fantasy and lies.
forget about basic physics research at bell labs. it never amounted to much, and that slack has been taken up by others, like intel and ibm.
but worry -- a lot! -- about washington, which has squandered trillions from our national treasure (money borrowed from china, in essence), to enrich war profiteers, oil companies, and the very middle east sheiks that attacked us on 9/11.
Perfect, the wonderful invisible hand of the market delightfully at work. Only question: when will you rubes let me kill the rest of research in the US?
This is very sad. During my studies I always dreamed about the opportunity to see Bell Labs form the inside. And then I got this once in a lifetime opportunity to work there ! Every day when we passed the reception in Murray Hill we felt great and proud, every visit to Holmdel campus was unique experience.
Killing fundamental Physics research work is stupid, very stupid decision.
Check this babe under water:
http://www.bangbull.com/details/30287-BE4/Sexy_babe_under_water
Heartrending stuff. I think it's a very bad idea.
A small correction to the article: the 1995 spinoff ("trivestiture") wasn't related to regulatory pressures; it was pitched as "unlocking shareholder value."
Divestiture happened in 1984, as part of the settlement with the DoJ antitrust suit.
I used to work at several of the Holmdel satellites, and then at Murray Hill. I was very proud to be working alongside some of the great research scientists of our day. I'm sorry to see this fundamental research go by the wayside.
It is a travesty that this once great institution is being run into the ground by Pat Russo, Jeong Kim, and the other idiots who have no respect for the heritage and innovation of Bell Labs. They have sacrificed this place for their salaries and golden parachutes, paving the way for America to become a bystander in technological development. All of our technical knowledge is being offshored to China and India, while these fat bastards live out their lives as millionaires. We are doomed as a nation, as we will buy the technology other people will make.
It is sad but NOT a defeat. Research is continuing in many organizations - in far greater breadth than those in which Bell Labs was involved. Bio, Nano, Astro come to mind, and they all depend upon the work done earlier by the Bell Lab researchers. More will be done in the future, in ways we cannot forecast. Some may come from China, Africa, or Greenland, but we will all benefit. Onward!!!
Typical. My company just laid off 500 R&D people. Companies don't want to do basic research themselves, and they hate paying taxes for publicly funded research as well. Talk about eating your seed corn.
Although I've known that for a while, I am deeply sad to hear that the Holmdel building has been finally sold (don't know when, maybe I am a little outdated on that). I acknowledge that during my time the building was already underused, more than half of it being empty. And since the building itself did not have an optimal design when it comes to heating and cooling only parts of it (you simply couldn't), then keeping it would only make economical sense in case you could occupy >80% of its facilities. Still, its selling marks a milestone in what is to come. Bell Labs has won almost all major prizes from its research areas, ranging from Nobel Prizes to Turing Awards (the "Nobel prize" of computer science). I really wished "the labs" could somehow declare independence from its current mother company and establish itself as an independent research laboratory -- Bell Labs has had some many mother companies that today it is hard to list them all. Of course AT&T is "the one" mother company. I will still remember my one-hour daily commute to Holmdel through the roads and streets of New Jersey, a calm trip that would allow me to think about my current research while driving. The walk around the small lake in front of the building with my team brainstorming on where the computer science field would takes us next. It was the type of people on that institution that defined it. I was very fortunate to encounter and interact with these people after we were all out of the labs, and our coffee time conversations would always come back to those times. If anyone has an idea of how to turn this around, let the world know. You deserve a Nobel Prize yourself.
The transistor, the laser, and fiber optics wouldn't be invented now. If that isn't a terrifying thought, think about it until it is.
What a sad time indeed.
I think it is about time that stock holders get rid of the highly paid CEO's and the like. Most of them are only concerned with making big profits that equal more money for their retirments and other perks. I was witness to the steady fall of Western Electric, AT&T Microelectronics, Lucent Technologies and lastly Agere Systems largly by narrow minded management that failed to think outsdide the box. Then take a large portion of those funds and feed it into R&D. When are these idiots going to learn that outsourcing everything to China etc is not the answer but the bigger problem.
This is no big whoop and simply a market correction. The research will certainly continue but in other venues. Look for more investment in academia which frankly is where the research should be anyway.
Why is it Bell Labs responsibility to fund physics research? Why doesn't everyone here put their money where their mout is, kick in ten million each and get the research back on track?
Oh, I see. Suddenly it's not that important.
Egads... lots of doom and gloom in this thread.
First off, let's not forget that when Bell Labs made all those wonder discoveries... the laser, transister and whatnot... AT&T (the Bells) was practically part of the US government, with no competition in either the local or long distance markets. It was a private company, but with a great deal of government oversight and intervention. I understand why this has had to go by the wayside, but I also lament the loss. But with that said, this is not the end for America as many commenters imply. It's actually an opportunity for some enterprising scientists, who understand capitalism and entrepreneurialism, to form a new enterprise to fill the gap. What I envision is some sort of basic R&D business that services as an out-sourced R&D for businesses that used to do it in house.
I don't know for sure if it was a bad thing, but thank the break up of AT&T for this move.
Of course the problem with govt funded research is the first thing that's cut in a recession. After all our greatest priority as a nation is to make sure all the SocSec/Welfare/Medicare is our #1 priority.... *rolls eyes*
The thing about Bell Labs was, in those areas of it, come in any holiday or weekend, and there's the same guys working away at their stuff. Their work was their hobby.
Now it's just their hobby.
Economics is, at its core, an exercise in popularity management. Science, on the other hand, is a process for understanding how everything really works, and many of the things it reveals (such as evolution) are deeply, permenantly unpopular, but no less true for being so.
The "scientists" who understand entrepreneuralism are seldom scientists at all, but con artists pretending to be scientists in order to take advantage of science's reputation for revealing the truth. Cold fusion, climate change, and intelligent design are all creations of these con artists, and salvos in what is shaping up to be a coordinated war upon the very foundations of science itself.
Soon science will be viewed as untrustworthy as witchcraft, and twice as sinful, thanks to these con artists. Not that they will care, as most would rather be slaves in a dark age than mere citizens in an enlightened one, just for the slim chance of being able to set themselves above the law, untouchable and unimpeachable in every way save the passage of time itself.
This is what happens when you have salesmen, marketers, bankers, lawyers and accountants in charge. Flatliners all.
My own employer is trashing its R&D dept this month to replace it with a certified science-free "product focused group" as I type.
"Economics is, at its core, an exercise in popularity management."
Where do people come up with this stuff?
Amerikwa is a doomed nation.
"Amerikwa is a doomed nation."
Yes, I'm certain 'Amerikwa' will go the way of the 'Soveit Unionist' or 'The Britash Umpire'.
Alas, the decline and fall of the North American Empire continues unabated. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
QV Interview: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Carl Sagan, Charlie Rose)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afo3WT4A_K0
Truly a sad day. In elementary school, we screened a number of science films, all provided courtesy of Bell Labs. It helped reinforce my interest in science.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that UNIX, the computer operating system, was developed by computer scientists at Bell Labs, as were programming languages like C. Most of the telephone system for years ran through UNIX switches. UNIX was also critical to the minicomputer revolution of the 1980s, and a descendent of UNIX lies at the heart of Apple's OS X.
Well, as a veteran Bell Labber who was canned by one of its ill-formed spinoff companies after 26.5 years of hard, creative, and productive work, some part of my brain still has not enough bad things to say. It's amazing how one can go from not only being promoted but actually used as a role model for the new "chief engineer" position in 2000 (actually called Consulting Member of Technical Staff, for those of us who had been at a career ceiling for years and did not want to enter management), to being sacked in 2006, basically kicked to the curb without a word of explanation. My wife said at the time of that promotion dinner, "They really seem to have a lot of respect for what you are doing." My reply: "That could all change tomorrow." The change started about a year later, and took another 5 to complete. At least that got me to a small pension.
I'm teaching undergrads and a few grad students as of a couple weeks ago, new career path, less money, and not a lot of support for research, but so far, I am thoroughly enjoying this. It's nice to know I am doing something that will be used and, in some degree, appreciated.
Having gone through the job hunting grind for the last year and a half and gotten exactly this one offer after both an industry and academic search, I can guarantee that places such as Google Labs have in no way assumed the Bell Labs mantle. Google in particular tells interviewees nothing about what's going on or what they'll be doing, and appear to base their hiring criteria on the ability and willingness to shovel code, not to innovate. Given the fact that there is some measure of innovation coming out of Google, my guess is that they do thorough statistical analysis on both candidate qualifications and the current employee mix, so that they are not top heavy in innovators. The interviewers collect notes and fill out templates and pass them up to the people running statistics programs and making decisions. Google is fundamentally feeding a money making machine, and they are using statistical techniques to manage the humans. We see how quickly their touted "principles" fold when they want to do business with governments such as the Beijing regime, just like the U.S. telecom companies fold in government requests for illegal wire taps. Don't count on Google, Microsoft or IBM to accomplish anything similar to what Bell Labs accomplished. It's all application, and mostly ad placement at Google.
Yes, it appears that the kind of innovated mentality that led to a Bell Labs (supported, we must note, by the profit ceiling of a regulated monopoly) is not a popular mentality in 21st century corporate culture, or 21st century culture in general. It'll come back around. I don't have a clue how soon. And, it will go away again, too. Timing is everything.
'real' science has been on life support for some time now and this is a huge step toward pulling the plug.
Science has sold it's soul to corporate america and the only research done is that which they are paid to do. How much more proof is needed?
Ahaha. How embarrassing. The US scientific community might as well shoot itself in the face.
When I was a young boy, the company my dad worked for had the same "brilliant" idea. Ampex had developed the portable video tape recorder, but sold the patents to JVC and they marketed the VCR. The rest is history, and so is that which was Ampex.They were more interested in the "bottom line" and profits than in the product and advancing technology.
I said, when The Lab was spun off, that it was just a matter of time before it was reduced to anothe "cost center".
Yet another step in the demise of the US. Watch for the next Nobel prizes to come from China and developing nations.