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Bell Labs Timeline

By makaylakahan

  • 1870

    1870
    Alexander Graham Bell founds Volta Laboratory, the original Bell Labs.

  • 1922

    Hearing Aids were first being developed by the scientists and innovators at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.

  • 1925

    1925
    Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. that is now called Bell Labs was first created. During this time 4,000 scientists and engineers started working there.

  • 1927

    Herbert Ives who was the head of a team at Bell Labs was able to send television images from Washington to New York.

  • 1934

    1934
    AT&T Research Department connected laboratory research and communications into Bell Laboratories

  • 1947

    1947
    One of the most important inventions developed by Bell was founded called the Transistor, which was invented by John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain.

  • 1954

    1954
    The first ever solar cell was invented at Bell Labs

  • 1969

    1969
    UNIX, the computer operating system was created by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson.

  • 1972

    1972
    Language C was developed to replace language B in the UNIX which was invented by Dennis Ritchie.

  • 1984

    A huge change happened for Bell Labs when AT&T Corp. removed itself due to a sell off with the U.S. Government, therefore leaving Bell System alone.

  • 1996

    1996
    AT&T split into three different companies and Lucent Technologies was created which manufactured telephones

  • 2006

    Lucent Technologies which was a parent company of Bell Laboratories merged with Alcatel-Lucent.

  • 2008

    Bell Labs broke the record of fastest broadband internet speed.

  • 2015

    2015
    Nokia aquired Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6 billion.

  • 2018

    2018
    In the 1980's Arthur Ashkin worked on the optical tweezer, but it wasn't until 2018 that he won a nobel prize for his success on them.