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.
The Laboratories and national defense
The Laboratories makes its services available to the armed forces for work to which it is uniquely suited. It specializes in military communications and those instruments of war that depend heavily on communications and electronics.
In carrying out its military responsibilities, the Laboratories follows the same time-tested pattern that guides its Bell System activities. Its military work grows out of research, fundamental development, systems engineering, and finally specific development and design.
Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey
Reliability and trouble-free operation throughout long life are objectives of the Laboratories in designing new equipment and products for the Bell System. The same objectives are also very important in designing military equipment. Because of this similarity in the two fields, scientists and engineers in the Laboratories often divide their working days between Bell System and military problems. Personnel moves frequently between the two fields of endeavor. Thus the Laboratories’ long experience in the peacetime science of telephony helps strengthen the nation’s defense—and discoveries that grow out of military preparedness help strengthen and improve the nations telephone system.