Bell laboratories

Abstract

Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where the Transistor (1947), Information Theory (1948) and Error-correcting codes (1949) were invented was of course a dream place to start one's career as a mathematically inclined physicist. I am not implying that people at other times and other places cannot enjoy their work as much as we did. But there is a general perception that Bell Labs was something special—a “national resource.” This did not come about by accident: Bell management decided early on that freedom to pursue one's own ideas and stable long-term funding were the best well-springs of innovation.—I do hope that industrial research at some future time will see the light again and not limit research to short-range goals and immediate profit. Some of the greatest advances in the past have come from taking the long-range view.