The History of Wireless Everything
Halfway between Brooklyn and Montauk, a steel cupola propped up on wooden legs once looked out over the Long Island…
2 Computer Science Profs + 1 Room + 30 Minutes of Conversation = Geek Gold
Professor Brian Kernighan is computing heavyweight: he worked at Bell Labs, helped develop Unix and was one of two…
Beautiful Video Explains How Light's Been Harnessed For Communication
Whether you have fiber supplying Internet access to your home or not, you use optical systems to send and receive…
How It Felt to Work at Bell Labs in the 60s
Just 45 miles outside New York City in Murray Hill, New Jersey sits Bell Labs: the birth place of lasers, transistors,…
The Price For A Videophone in 1955 Was $44,000 Adjusted for Inflation
We’ve been imagining a future of ubiquitous videophones for over a century. And today it’s considered no big deal that…
What It Was Like to Work at the Birthplace of Cellphones and Lasers
A semi-rural New Jersey community about 45 miles outside of New York City seems like an unlikely home for the most…
Bell Labs Could Send Sign Language Over The Phone - In 1979
Back in the good ‘ole days before the internet and Yo and Meerkat and Snapchat, we had one way to talk to people in…
How Bell Labs Is Reinventing the Future All Over Again
In 1964, a pair of Bell Labs researchers in New Jersey pointed the world's largest radio telescope to the skies and…
Inside Bell Labs, Where the Future is Being Built
Inside Bell Labs almost 70 years ago, the invention that defined the 20th century was born: The transistor. On a recent…
The Birthplace of the Cellphone Is Being Turned Into a Mall
Think Apple’s forthcoming Cupertino headquarters is the first corporate space ship to touch down in America? Not so: In…
A Brief History of the Videophone That Almost Was
The videophone is one of those technologies that more or less snuck up on us. Promises that one day you'd not only be…
Cameras in the Future Might Not Need Lenses
Every camera you've ever used in your life has a lens that focuses incoming photons on to a light-sensitive surface.…
The Cellphone Turns 40 Today
Forty years ago today, senior Motorola engineer Marty Cooper made one very important phone call. From midtown…
Windows 8's Great Great Grandfather Was a Real Jerq
Why Xerox never chose to capitalize on the groundbreaking GUI developments made at its Palo Alto Research Center may…
The Surprisingly Sophisticated Computer Graphics Behind the 1977 Yellow Pages
They're a waste of paper these days, but back in 1977 the Yellow Pages were an essential communications tool. And in…
The Holmdel Horn: The Most Important Radio Antenna Ever
In 1964, two researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories were desperately attempting to pin down a source of…
How Bell Lab's Radar Dismantled the Axis Powers
In 1937, the notion of beaming radio waves off distant objects was barely more than speculation, yet in just six years…
Why Do We Use The Term Cellular Phone Instead of Mobile Phone?
If I asked you about your phone, would you call it a cell phone or a mobile phone? Does it really matter what you say…
The Transistor Was Almost Called the Iotatron
When Bell Laboratories wrapped up work on the transistor in 1948, they let 25 employees vote on the name. And for some…