bell labs special report
FEATURE
Bell Labs: Reviving an icon
As the research arm of a monopoly, Bell Labs invented the communications world as we know it. But in today's competitive market, this venerable institution must redefine itself to survive...
SIDEBARS
MIMO: Alcatel-Lucent regains its balance
In 1998, Bell Labs researcher Gerald Forschini unveiled a wireless radio technology called Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time, or BLAST. BLAST divided up a wireless data stream into several sub-streams, which it would then transmit over separate but closely spaced parallel paths on the same radio frequency...
In search of the quantum computer
Bell Labs’ director of theoretical physics research Steve Simon is one such researcher that believes quantum mechanics can be applied to building a quantum computer, a device that could theoretically run circles around the binary computers of today -- at least for solving certain types of computing problems...
Stacking atoms
When Al Cho arrived at Bell Labs in 1968, he was given a desk and a pad of paper, and was then told to figure out what he wanted to research. It didn’t take him to long to decide. While many of his colleagues were tackling the hot new field of optical lasers, Cho decided focus on epitaxy, the science of growing the crystalline structures of semiconductors...
Better living through carbon
Bell Labs director of device physics research Art Ramirez spends his time playing with a lot of molecular models with arcane names such as pentacene, tetracene or buckminster fullerene. He’s trying to find a carbon-based molecular crystal that can be used to create inexpensive low-power microelectronics...
The spider and the cellphone
Unlike his colleagues in Murray Hill, Bell Labs technical staff member Sharad Ramanathan does his research in Boston, where he has access to Harvard University’s biology labs. There he watches spiders weave their webs and the embryonic cells of mice divide and grow...
Bell Labs Nobel Prizes in Physics
A listing of the Nobel Prizes Bell Labs has won during its storied past...
