OMG Flashback memories of my internship there.
It really should be turned into a tech museum or something.
Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
31–40 of 60 posts
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#32I grew up in Monmouth County and I think back fondly on all the old Bell Labs folks who stayed in the area. They were my soccer coaches/math teachers/friendly old folks in the neighborhood, and it wasn't until I was in high school did I fully understand the brilliant minds I was lucky enough to learn from.
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#33I went to Holmdel High School, and my girlfriend’s dad was a researcher at this facility, he invented a delta wave modulation technique in the 60’s that was (is?) used by NASA for certain spaceship comms. I got to visit him once or twice here, it was truly an inspiring building with all of the open air quality and glass everywhere. Really part of another era, where AT&T sunk billions into the labs just for pure resea…
I share the sentiment but there are companies doing this - it’s just in different domains than telephony. Deepmind, OpenAI, etc, fusion research, SpaceX. There are lots of long bets on hard tech. If anything it’s a proliferation, although Bell labs is no longer a thing. My hope is that we can establish a similar model for biology, since many challenges in that domain are pre-commercial but not at the appropriate scal…
sir, i must respectfully disagree - bell labs is still a thing
disclaimer - i work there as a senior researcher and we still do world class research, so pls don't portrait us as a thing of the past just yet, thx :)
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#34And they're tearing down the antenna: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/save-big-bang-antenna/
The Horn antenna is at Crowford hill not Holmdel (confusing because they are both in the Holmdel township).
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#35Note that the complex is now Bell Works and quite busy now. There are a number of tech companies there and importantly Nokia Bell Labs relocated from Crawford Hill to Bell Works ~2-3 years ago (this is also the reason why there is talk about dismantling the Horn Antenna, which is on the Crawford Hill site, which IIRC was sold recently).
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#36I worked there for two years. It's quite beautiful now, a bunch of companies, and has a Montessori, an escape room, golf simulator, and a food court.
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#37God, it’s painful to see this. So much happened there. I read about it decades ago and dreamed of working there.
I ended up working at Microsoft’s Building 2, which was just as good. It was a giant plus sign, lined with individual offices and nestled in a veritable forest. I worked with some of the greatest minds in computer science, and they were all kind, helpful, brilliant people.
I knew at the time it was special, knew it wouldn’t last forever, and cherished every day there. It’s gone too.
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#38Nice to look at but I can hear voices, conversions and footsteps echoing everywhere...
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#39I worked here - my first job in the US, via a contracting agency, for a few weeks until I totalled my then-girlfriend's car, broke my arm, and could no longer commute from Philadelphia.
Worst programming job I ever had. My assigned task: change the constant that limited how many forwarding steps a phone could follow in one of their private telephone routing systems, from 32 to 64. That meant: change the macro/definition in a .h file, update the documentation string.
Planned time for this change: 1 week.
There's a reason those telephone switches written in C actually worked so reliably, but oh god, not the life for me.
Did I mention the office^H^H^H^H^H^Hcloset I had to work in.
Very happy to never come close to this vision of programming ever again.
Re: Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (2019)
#40I went to Holmdel High School, and my girlfriend’s dad was a researcher at this facility, he invented a delta wave modulation technique in the 60’s that was (is?) used by NASA for certain spaceship comms. I got to visit him once or twice here, it was truly an inspiring building with all of the open air quality and glass everywhere. Really part of another era, where AT&T sunk billions into the labs just for pure resea…
> Really part of another era, where AT&T sunk billions into the labs just for pure research. If only corporations could be a far seeing today.
I think it's only fair to mention that AT&T's motives here weren't entirely selfless: the value of much of their research was really only realized by the public as a result of a 1956 consent decree. Before that, it was largely locked behind patents; the consent decree forced them to license their research without royalties (and forbade them from competing in non-telecommuncations domains).