A few milestones in research
Through the years Bell Laboratories has led progress in communications and electronics. No scientific achievement has had more far-reaching effects on communications than the Laboratories’ work in the development of the vacuum tube. Bell scientists were the first to devise a practical amplifier tube which, placed at intervals in long distance lines, restored the energy of weakening voice currents, making it possible to telephone from coast to coast.
The Laboratories was the first to develop automatic equipment that can “remember” telephone numbers and perform other complicated operations in the central office.
By means of filtering apparatus, developed by the Laboratories, one high frequency “carrier” can carry many speech currents at the same time. Largely because of carrier telephony, the Bell System has been able to reduce greatly the cost of long distance telephone service.
The Laboratories pioneered the development of coaxial cable and microwave radio-relay systems. Both can be used to transmit television programs and hundreds of telephone conversations.
Among the many other achievements of the Laboratories have been important contributions to the design of computers—the amazing electronic machines that can work out problems that might otherwise take months or years of work by mathematicians.
A few years ago, scientists at the Laboratories invented the transistor. This is a radically new device, simple in design and tiny in size, that performs most of the functions of the vacuum tube and does other things besides. Its effect on communications technology promises to be revolutionary.
Early in 1954, the Laboratories announced a device that realizes one of the ancient dreams of mankind—the Bell Solar Battery, which converts the sun’s light directly into useful amounts of electricity. Research that led to the transistor led also to the battery—and to a tiny and durable switch that one day may handle the automatic switching of your telephone calls, and other things not yet imagined.