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Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

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Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#31

Post by GlibMonkeyDeath »

photochemsyn wrote: post #28

This article - a retrospective puff piece - entirely neglects the circumstances leading to the loss of relevance of Bell Labs. It's explained in the autoposy of one of the greatest scientific frauds (fabricated nanoelectronic devices made of organic carbon materials e.g. pentacene) of the past few decades [1]: > "For over half a century, Bell Labs had been owned by the telephone monopoly AT&T and had plenty of money…

The farmer lost his monopoly on wheat, so he couldn't feed that wildly expensive goose any more. It isn't greed when the farmer would go out of business feeding his goose, especially when those golden eggs wouldn't necessarily help his farming business directly.

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#32

Post by mk_stjames »

Lyngbakr wrote: post #21

I'm currently halfway through The Idea Factory: Bell Labs & the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner. The stories and characters behind all the inventions and ideas are absolutely fascinating, as is the culture they cultivated there. Definitely recommended!

I came here to recommend this book as the title of this article mirrors its title's key descriptor.

It's one of my favorite books; throughout my time reading it I would periodically put it down and just sit with awe in imagining the science and the work happening there throughout the years depicted.

I need to sit down and read it again; but I'm afraid to, as in a way it just gives me this odd sense of mixed unfounded nostalgia and jealousy and a bit of dread for not being a part of something similar anymore.

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#33

Post by chrispeel »

kilroy123 wrote: post #22

Is there a Bell Labs of today? If so who or where?

It's called "the internet".

People from around the world can collaborate easily on incredibly projects such as Linux or OpenRISC. Or on closed-source projects as used by FAANG companies.

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#34

Post by photochemsyn »

GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #31
photochemsyn wrote: post #28

This article - a retrospective puff piece - entirely neglects the circumstances leading to the loss of relevance of Bell Labs. It's explained in the autoposy of one of the greatest scientific frauds (fabricated nanoelectronic devices made of organic carbon materials e.g. pentacene) of the past few decades [1]: > "For over half a century, Bell Labs had been owned by the telephone monopoly AT&T and had plenty of money…

The farmer lost his monopoly on wheat, so he couldn't feed that wildly expensive goose any more. It isn't greed when the farmer would go out of business feeding his goose, especially when those golden eggs wouldn't necessarily help his farming business directly.

I think that what happened is Bayh-Dole legislation passed c.1980 which allowed corporations to exclusively license patents generated with taxpayer funds at public and private universities, so they lost their incentive to maintain large privately-funded research centers, which used to be valuable because they'd have exclusive control of any patents. A side-effect of Bayh-Dole was the gradual conversion of academic institutions into for-profit commercial operations, especially in the STEM fields like chemistry, engineering, medical research, etc. - with accompanying declines in academic integrity, open data sharing, etc.

Eliminating Bayh-Dole would mean university-based patents generated with taxpayer funds would be available to any interested party under a non-exclusive licensing program, and then corporations would again be incentivized to maintain private research centers - which IIRC also served a tax-writeoff function for AT&T in Bell Lab's heyday.

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#35

Post by user_7832 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #23
user_7832 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your suggestions! I'm currently in The Netherlands but I'll keep these in mind (though they sound more "math-ey" than engineering-ey but that's fine).

>though they sound more "math-ey" than engineering-ey Isn't math necessary for most real-world engineering, and even in CS research? And what were you expecting? You asked for a cutting edge Bell-Labs type of R&D place, and that's what research is all about, even in CS. You'll work with a lot of new yet-unproven theoretical concepts for which you need a lot of math to prove they have a high chance of working in pract…

It really depends on what you're looking at. Disclaimer, I'm a mechanical engineer and not a CS guy. A lot of the stuff if you're doing say quantum computing is understandably math heavy. But if you're say designing a flying kite-like generator, it's more "engineering math", if you know what I mean? (Which is what I'm comfortable with)

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#36

Post by user_7832 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #26
user_7832 wrote: post #2

I have a question for anyone in an R&D/Bell Labs-esque place - are there any good recommendations for similar places to work, particularly outside the US? "Old" Google apparently was, but going by what ex-googlers have been saying it hasn't been the case for a long while now.

Any prestige research lab - MS, Google, OAI, etc.

Thanks, that seems to be the trend here

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#37

Post by lgkk »

I have walked those halls and let me tell you it feels spooky in a good way to know a lot of groundbreaking work was done there.

During the time I was on campus it was mostly empty. There were old computers still inside some rooms. I felt like I had been transported to the 80s or 90s in one hall and some halls even more decades in the past.

Really grand. I can’t imagine what it was like in its heyday.

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#38

Post by wills_forward »

chicagoengineer wrote: post #11
LeonardoTolstoy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in the UK Deepmind seemed to be that way to me when I applied. A lot of research groups doing hard research in a wide array of fields, cutting edge AI stuff, a core team of SEs developing in house programs for researchers, and research engineers for productionization. And no, I didn't get the job lol. I've heard mixed things about it as a company but GResearch (also UK) seemed like an interesting R&D softw…

I work at a very successful HFT. It’s a special place, but we’re not advancing the state of the art in fundamental science like the Bell Labs/Microsoft Researches of the world.

Citadel or Jump?

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#39

Post by ghaff »

photochemsyn wrote: post #34
GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The farmer lost his monopoly on wheat, so he couldn't feed that wildly expensive goose any more. It isn't greed when the farmer would go out of business feeding his goose, especially when those golden eggs wouldn't necessarily help his farming business directly.

I think that what happened is Bayh-Dole legislation passed c.1980 which allowed corporations to exclusively license patents generated with taxpayer funds at public and private universities, so they lost their incentive to maintain large privately-funded research centers, which used to be valuable because they'd have exclusive control of any patents. A side-effect of Bayh-Dole was the gradual conversion of academic in…

It's also the case that corporate labs that genuinely did research tended to be a byproduct of companies that were essentially monopolies to some degree in some way. Even if a bit idealized, Bell Labs was certainly like this. (From an old movie. Ma Bell: We don't care we don't have to we're the phone company.)

At least some of the 80s vintage corporate labs like DEC were being increasingly folded into the broader engineering organizations as their parents became less dominant. Essentially corporate research labs are a creature of organizations that have some long-term play money. Or at least that's the idea. I'd note that some of the current work going on in quantum computing has a lineage that dates back to some pretty fundamental research done in corporate labs in the 1960s.

Re: Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home

#40

Post by Scubabear68 »

Not just Murray Hill, but all of their offices were special.

I went to Holmdel High and my girlfriend’s dad was a distinguished engineer at the Holmdel Bell Labs installation, we drove by regularly (loved the transistor water tower), and got to visit him inside the building a few times. It was awe inspiring as an 18 year old to enter into such a sacred hall of engineering and science. I had a strong engineering bent since I was little, but knowing such a towering figure cemented it (inventor of Adaptive Delta Modulation).

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