Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home::Bell Labs — whose researchers pioneered everything from transistors to lasers — is moving out of its headquarters in Murray Hill after 80 epic years.
Bell Labs isn’t what it was when the received all those Nobels. Think tanks are all in the past IMO.
I read “The Idea Factory” about Bell Labs, focused mostly on inventing the transistor, but it included their consolidation into this lab and just how state of the art it was. The book implied that it was the first corporate “campus” designed more like a university than a factory or office.
The book really made me understand that AT&T / Bell Labs was the hot tech firm of the early 20th century, long before getting to computing advances (C, UNIX) I was more familiar with.
This is a big point of pride here in NJ. Sad to see it go, although it’s not what it used to be.
