Belshazzar

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For Handel's oratorio of this name, see Belshazzar (Handel).

Rembrandt's depiction of the biblical account of Belshazzar seeing "the writing on the wall". Note the text is vertical rather than horizontal.

Belshazzar (or Balthazar; Akkadian Bel-sarra-usur) was a prince of Babylon, the son of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon according to the Book of Daniel. Like his father, it is believed by many scholars that he was an Assyrian. In the Book of Daniel (chapters 5 and 8) of the Jewish Tanakh or Christian Old Testament, Belshazzar is the King of Babylon before the advent of the Medes and Persians.

Contents [show] 1 Contemporary Babylonian sources 2 Classical sources 3 Book of Daniel 4 Rabbinic literature 5 The Sacred Royal Feast 6 Belshazzar in popular culture 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

[edit] Contemporary Babylonian sources

The Nabonidus Cylinder proves Belshazzar's existence. (see List of artifacts significant to the Bible).

Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, who after ruling only three years, went to the oasis of Tayma and devoted himself to the worship of the moon god, Sin. He made Belshazzar co-regent in 553 B.C., leaving him in charge of Babylon's defense.^[1]
In the year 540 B.C. Nabonidus returned from Tayma, hoping to defend his kingdom from the Persians who were planning to advance on Babylon. In 538 B.C. Belshazzar was positioned in the city of Babylon to hold the capital, while Nabonidus, marched his troops north to meet Cyrus. On October 10, 539 B.C. Nabonidus surrendered and fled from Cyrus. Two days later, October 12, 539 B.C., the Persian armies overthrew the city of Babylon.

[edit] Classical sources

Herodotus refers to the last king of Babylon as Labynetos and claims that this was also the name of his father. Herodotus says that the mother of the younger Labynetos was the queen Nitocris whom he portrays as the dominant ruler. She is commonly thought to have been the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. Labynetos is generally understood to be a garbled form of the name Nabonidus and the younger Labynetos is often identified with Belshazzar. Opinions differ however on how best to reconcile Herodotus with the Babylonian sources and an alternative view is that the younger Labynetos is Nabonidus.
Josephus gives an account of Belshazzar largely paralleling the Book of Daniel but remarks that he was known to the Babylonians by the name Naboandelus. Bible scholars have viewed this as a corruption of "Nabonidus" which if correct may be taken either as confusion on the part of Josephus or a corroboration of the interpretation of the younger "Labynetos" of Herodotus as Belshazzar. Josephus, however, knew of Nabonidus and calls him "Nabonnedus" relating an account of his capture by Cyrus taken from Berossus. Josephus refers to the queen at the time (corresponding to the Nitocris of Herodotus) as the grandmother of Belshazzar which corroborates the alternative view that the younger "Labynetos" (son of Nitocris) is Nabonidus.

[edit] Book of Daniel

Daniel 5:1-4 describes "Belshazzar's Feast" in which the sacred vessels of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, which had been brought to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar at the time of the Captivity were profaned by the company. The narrative unfolds against the background of the impending arrival of the Persian armies.

"King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. 2 While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. 3 So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. 4 As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone."

In consequence of this, during the festivities, a hand was seen writing on the wall of the chamber a mysterious sentence mene mene tekel upharsin, which defied all attempts at interpretation. Some Rabbinic interpretations (notably the mention in the Babylonian Talmud) say that the words were written in code, one possibility was that it was an atbash cipher, another being that the written Aramaic and Hebrew looked very different, even though they were pronounced similarly. Still, their natural denotations of weights and measures were superficially meaningless: "two minas, a shekel and two parts.". In the verb form, they were: mene, to number; tekel, to weigh; upharsin, to divide—literally "numbered, weighed, divided". When the Hebrew Daniel was called in, he read and interpreted the words. The last word (prs) he read as peres not parsin. His free choice of interpretation and decoding revealed the menacing subtext: "Thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting". The divine menace against the dissolute Belshazzar, whose kingdom was to be divided between the Medes and Persians, was swiftly realized: in the last verse we are told that Belshazzar was slain in that same night, and that his power passed to Darius the Mede.

The Greek historians Herodotus and Xenophon also record that there was a festival in the city of Babylon the same night it fell to the Persians.^[2]

This Biblical story is the source of the popular phrase "the writing on the wall" as a euphemism for impending doom that is so obvious only a fool would not see it coming. It also provides the origin for the similar expression "your days are numbered."

Daniel 5:1-4 calls Nebuchadnezzar the father of Belshazzar. The same claim is made in the deuterocanonical Book of Baruch, which most scholars believe to have been written around the same time, in the second century BC. This may simply have been a mistake on the part of the authors. Some Biblical commentators argue that the statement can be reconciled with extra-Biblical sources by interpreting the term to mean forefather or predecessor, as used elsewhere in Biblical texts, notably referring to the Patriarch Abraham as the father of King David. (The Hebrew word for father av is commonly used in the sense of forefather.)

For a list of artistic and musical references to the feast, see the article Belshazzar's Feast.

[edit] Rabbinic literature

Belshazzar appears in many works of classical Jewish rabbinic literature.
The chronology of the three Babylonian kings is given in the Talmud (Megillah 11a-b) as follows: Nebuchadnezzar reigned forty-five years, Evil-merodach twenty-three, and Belshazzar was monarch of Babylonia for two years, being killed at the beginning of the third year on the fatal night of the fall of Babylon (Meg. 11b).
The references in the Talmud and the Midrash to Belshazzar emphasize his tyrannous oppression of his Jewish subjects. Several passages in the Prophets are interpreted as though referring to him and his predecessors. For instance, the passage, "As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him" (Amos v. 19), the lion is said to represent Nebuchadnezzar, and the bear, equally ferocious if not equally courageous, is Belshazzar. (The book of Amos., nevertheless, is pre-Exilic.)
The three Babylonian kings are often mentioned together as forming a succession of impious and tyrannical monarchs who oppressed Israel and were therefore foredoomed to disgrace and destruction. The verse in Isaiah xiv. 22, And I will rise up against them, saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon name and remnant and son and grandchild, saith the Lord, is applied by these interpretations to the trio: "Name" to Nebuchadnezzar, "remnant" to Evil-merodach, "son" to Belshazzar, and "grandchild" Vashti (ib.). The command given to Abraham to cut in pieces three heifers (Genesis 15:9) as a part of the covenant established between him and his God, was thus elucidated by readers of Daniel as symbolizing Babylonia, which gave rise to three kings, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-merodach, and Belshazzar, whose doom is prefigured by this act of "cutting to pieces" (Midrash Genesis Rabbah xliv.).
The Midrash literature enters into the details of Belshazzar's death. Thus the later tradition states that Cyrus and Darius were employed as doorkeepers of the royal palace. Belshazzar, being greatly alarmed at the mysterious handwriting on the wall, and apprehending that some one in disguise might enter the palace with murderous intent, ordered his doorkeepers to behead every one who attempted to force an entrance that night, even though such person should claim to be the king himself. Belshazzar, overcome by sickness, left the palace unobserved during the night through a rear exit. On his return the doorkeepers refused to admit him. In vain did he plead that he was the king. They said, "Has not the king ordered us to put to death any one who attempts to enter the palace, though he claim to be the king himself?" Suiting the action to the word, Cyrus and Darius grasped a heavy ornament forming part of a candelabrum, and with it shattered the skull of their royal master (Cant. R. iii. 4).

[edit] The Sacred Royal Feast

Though the narrative and its details stand outside history, the setting of the feast at which the temple vessels from Jerusalem were desecrated has been remembered from actual Neo-Babylonian cult practice. In Babylon, the image of Marduk was served meals daily in a style befitting the divine king, including musical accompaniment and beautifully-arranged desserts of fruits. After the god's meal, water in a basin was brought and offered to the idol to wash its fingers. According to several extant descriptions, the dishes of food that had been presented to the image were then sent to the king for his consumption. The food had been blessed by its proximity to the god, and the blessing was now transferable to the king. One exception is recorded, on a tablet from Uruk, which mentions that the crown prince— this was Belshazzar— enjoyed the royal privilege.
The ritual importance of the god's sacred leftovers is illustrated in an inscribed claim of Sargon II:

"the citizens of Babylon [and] Borsippa, the temple personnel, the scholars [and] the administrators of the country who [had] looked upon him (Merodach-baladan) as their master now brought the leftovers of Bel [and] Sarpanitu [of Babylon and] Nabu [and] Tasmetu [of Borsippa] to me at Dur-Ladinni and asked me to enter Babylon"

(Oppenheim, pp 188ff)

Idols of conquered cities were ordinarily brought to Babylon and set in positions of reverence to Marduk within his temple. The Jews, having no idol of YHWH, had been forced to give up the vessels of Solomon's Temple, which, it appears, were used to serve Marduk's sacred repast, ritually shared by Belshazzar.

[edit] Belshazzar in popular culture

George Friderich Händel's Belshazzar is an oratorio composed in the late summer of 1744.
"Vision of Belshazzar" by the poet Lord Byron chronicles both the feast and Daniel's pronunciation.
In The Hand-Writing upon the Wall (1803), James Gillray caricatured Napoleon in the role of Belshazzar.
Robert Frost's poem, "The Bearer of Evil Tidings", is about a messenger from Belshazzar's court. After learning of Belshazzar's imminent overthrow, the messenger flees to the Himalayas rather than facing the monarch's wrath.
Emily Dickinson's poem "Belshazzar had a letter," #1459 from the Poems of Emily Dickinson is about Belshazzar's immortal correspondence. Her poem was written in 1879.
William Walton wrote an oratorio entitled Belshazzar's Feast.
The Space Liner Belshazzar, with the player character aboard, was disabled and boarded by Space Pirates in the early CD-ROM adventure game Spaceship Warlock.
Belshazzar was featured in season one episode two of the Nickelodeon game show "Legends of the Hidden Temple" entitled "The Golden Cup of Belshazzar". The Red Jaguars ran out of time in the Temple and was unable to win the game. The Golden Cup was located in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey.
Singer/Songwriter Johnny Cash wrote a song titled "Belshazar", based on the Biblical story. It was recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee in 1957.
The Jewish songwriter Harold Rome wrote, for the musical "Pins and Needles" in 1937, a gospel song, "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin," which made the analogy between Belshazzar and Hitler, saying the former "didn't pay no income taxes:/The big shot of the Babylon-Jerusalem Axis." Interpreting the writing on the wall, Daniel sums it up tersely: "King, stop your fightin' and your flauntin'./You been weighed, and you're found wantin'."
During the 1884 United States presidential campaign, Republican candidate James G. Blaine dined at a New York City restaurant with some wealthy business executives including "Commodore" Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, etc. This was featured in newspapers, with a drawing illustrating "The Feast of Belshazzar Blaine..." On the wall in the background was written "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin."
In the early 1970s, Esquire magazine, in its "Dubious Achievement Awards" section one year, showed a photo of nuns wearing habits with short skirts, commenting "MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN."
Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, liked to incorporate historical names into his pseudo-historical stories. He wrote a (non-Conan) adventure story, "Blood of Belshazzar" which Roy Thomas adapted into a Conan story in Marvel Comics' Conan the Barbarian #27 as "The Blood of Bel-Hissar". Howard also used the name of 'Nabonidus' (father of Belshazzar) in the Conan tale "Rogues in the House" which appeared in Marvel's Conan the Barbarian #11.
The Austin, Texas band Sound Team references Belshazzar with the lyric: "But I don't have to sleep at Belshazzar's house anymore / Gave up the center line" on the track "No More Birthdays" off their Movie Monster LP.
In the song Sleeping Awake by P.O.D. (from the Matrix Reloaded Soundtrack) the passage of the Writing on the wall on Belshazzar's feast and the interpretation of Daniel (as told in the Book of Daniel, chapter 5) is depicted in the second verse: "Can you see it? The writing / Can you tell me what it means? / Translate the symbols, Enigma / Expressions keep questioning me / The message is written, the meaning is missing / Won't anybody Listen? / Prophesy, interpretate the signs / Nothing is really what it seems"
Belshazzar is a main character in one of the four stories presented in D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (film).

[edit] See also

• Biblical archaeology (excavations and artifacts)
• Cylinder of Nabonidus
• List of artifacts significant to the Bible

[edit] References

1. ^ The Verse Account of Nabonidus
2. ^ Histories I.191; Cyropaedia VI.5.15-16; Gaston 2009, pp. 88–89.

[edit] Further reading

• Oppenheim, A. Leo (1977), Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Rev. ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226631869 .
• Gaston, T. E. (2009), Historical Issues in the Book of Daniel, Oxford: Taanathshiloh, ISBN 9780956154002 .

[edit] External links

• Jewish Encyclopedia: Belshazzar
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Baltasar

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belshazzar"

Categories: Babylonia | Chaldeans | Monarchs of the Hebrew Bible

Bell Labs

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Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey

Bell Laboratories (also known as Bell Labs and formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bell Telephone Laboratories) is the research and development organization of Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T).

Bell Laboratories operates its headquarters at Murray Hill, New Jersey, and has research and development facilities throughout the world.

Contents [show] 1 Origin and historical locations 1.1 Early namesake 1.2 Early antecedent 1.3 Formal organization 2 Discoveries and developments 2.1 1920s 2.2 1930s 2.3 1940s 2.3.1 Calculators 2.4 1950s 2.5 1960s 2.6 1970s 2.7 1980s 2.8 1990s 2.9 2000s 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Origin and historical locations

[edit] Early namesake

Main article: Volta Laboratory and Bureau

Bell's 1893 Volta Bureau building in Washington, D.C.

The Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory, also variously known as the Volta Bureau, the Bell Carriage House, the Bell Laboratory and the Volta Laboratory, was created in Washington, D.C. by Alexander Graham Bell.

In 1880, the French government awarded Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs for the invention of the telephone, which he used to found the Volta Laboratory, along with Sumner Tainter and Bell's cousin Chichester Bell.^[1] His research laboratory focused on the analysis, recording and transmission of sound. Bell used his considerable profits from the laboratory for further research and education to permit the "[increased] diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf".^[1]

The Volta Laboratory and the Volta Bureau were earlier located at Bell's father's house at 1527 35th Street in Washington, D.C., where its carriage house became their headquarters in 1889.^[1] In 1893 Bell constructed a new building (close by at 1537 35th St.) specifically to house it.^[1] The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972.^[2][3][4]

[edit] Early antecedent

In 1884 the American Bell Telephone Company created its Mechanical Department from the Electrical and Patent Department formed a year earlier.

[edit] Formal organization

In 1925 Western Electric Research Laboratories and part of the engineering department of the American Telephone & Telegraph company (AT&T) were consolidated to form Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., as a separate entity. The first president of research was Frank B. Jewett, who stayed there until 1940. The ownership of Bell Laboratories was evenly split between AT&T and the Western Electric Company. Its principal work was to design and support the equipment that Western Electric built for Bell System operating companies, including telephone exchange switches. Support work for the phone companies included the writing and maintaining of the Bell System Practices (BSP), a comprehensive series of technical manuals. Bell Labs also carried out consulting work for the Bell Telephone Companies, and U.S. government work, including Project Nike and the Apollo program. A few workers were assigned to basic research, and this attracted much attention, especially since they produced several Nobel Prize winners. Until the 1940s, the company's principal locations were in and around the Bell Labs Building in New York City, but many of these were moved to New York suburban areas of New Jersey.

Among the later Bell Laboratories locations in New Jersey were Murray Hill, Holmdel, Crawford Hill, the Deal Test Site, Freehold, Lincroft, Long Branch, Middletown, Princeton, Piscataway, Red Bank, and Whippany. Of these, Murray Hill, Crawford Hill, and Whippany remain in existence. The largest grouping of people in the company was in Illinois, at Naperville-Lisle, in the Chicago area, which had the largest concentration of employees (about 11,000) prior to 2001. There also were groups of employees in Columbus, Ohio, North Andover, Massachusetts, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Reading, Pennsylvania, and Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, Burlington, North Carolina (1950s–1970s, moved to Greensboro 1980s) and Westminster, Colorado. Since 2001, many of the former locations have been scaled down, or shut down entirely.

[edit] Discoveries and developments

Bell Laboratories logo, used from 1969 until 1983

At its peak, Bell Laboratories was the premier facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, the C programming language and the C++ programming language. Seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.^[5]

• 1937: Clinton J. Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter.
• 1956: John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley received the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the first transistors.
• 1977: Philip W. Anderson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing an improved understanding of the electronic structure of glass and magnetic materials.
• 1978: Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, a nearly uniform glow that fills the Universe in the microwave band of the radio spectrum.
• 1997: Steven Chu shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.
• 1998: Horst Stormer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect.
• 2009: Willard S. Boyle, George E. Smith shared the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Charles K. Kao. Boyle and Smith were cited for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor.

[edit] 1920s

During its first year of operation, facsimile (fax) transmission, invented elsewhere, was first demonstrated publicly by the Bell Laboratories. In 1926, the laboratories invented the first synchronous-sound motion picture system.^[6]

In 1924, Bells Labs physicist Dr. Walter A. Shewhart proposed the control chart as a method to determine when a process was in a state of statistical control. Shewart's methods were the basis for statistical process controlSix Sigma one. (SPC)—the use of statistically-based tools and techniques for the management and improvement of processes. This was the origin of the modern quality movement, including the

In 1927, a long-distance television transmission of images of the Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover from Washington to New York was successful, and in 1928 the thermal noise in a resistor was first measured by John B. Johnson, and Harry Nyquist provided the theoretical analysis. (This is referred to as "Johnson noise".) During the 1920s, the one-time pad cipher was invented by Gilbert Vernam and Joseph Mauborgne at the laboratories. Bell Labs' Claude Shannon later proved that it is unbreakable.

[edit] 1930s

Reconstruction of the directional antenna used in the discovery of radio emission of extraterrestrial origin by Karl Guthe Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1932.

In 1931, a foundation for radio astronomy was laid by Karl Jansky during his work investigating the origins of static on long-distance shortwave communications. He discovered that radio waves were being emitted from the center of the galaxy. In 1933, stereo signals were transmitted live from Philadelphia to Washington, DC. In 1937, the vocoder, the first electronic speech synthesizer was invented and demonstrated by Homer Dudley. Bell researcher Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with George Paget Thomson for the discovery of electron diffraction, which helped lay the foundation for solid-state electronics.

[edit] 1940s

The first transistor, a point-contactgermanium device, was invented at Bell Laboratories in 1947. This image shows a replica.

In the early 1940s, the photovoltaic cell was developed by Russell Ohl. In 1943, Bell developed SIGSALY, the first digital scrambled speech transmission system, used by the Allies in World War II. In 1947, the transistor, probably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Bradford Shockley (and who subsequently shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956). In 1947, Richard Hamming invented Hamming codes for error detection and correction. For patent reasons, the result was not published until 1950. In 1948, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", one of the founding works in information theory, was published by Claude Shannon in the Bell System Technical Journal. It built in part on earlier work in the field by Bell researchers Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, but it greatly extended these. Bell Labs also introduced a series of increasingly complex calculators through the decade. Shannon was also the founder of modern cryptography with his 1949 paper Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems.

[edit] Calculators

• Model I: A Complex Number Calculator, completed January 1940, for doing calculations of complex numbers. See George Stibitz.
• Model II: Relay Calculator or Relay Interpolator, September 1943, for aiming anti-aircraft guns
• Model III: Ballistic Computer, June 1944, for calculations of ballistic trajectories
• Model IV: Bell Laboratories Relay Calculator, March 1945, a second Ballistic Computer
• Model V: Bell Laboratories General Purpose Relay Calculator, of which two were built, July 1946 and February 1947, which were general-purpose programmable computers using electromechanical relays
• Model VI: November 1950, an enhanced Model V

[edit] 1950s

The 1950s saw fewer developments and less activity on the scientific side. Efforts concentrated more precisely on the Laboratories' prime mission of supporting the Bell System with engineering advances including N-carrier, TD Microwave radio relay, Direct Distance Dialing, E-repeaters, Wire spring relays, and improved switching systems. Maurice Karnaugh, in 1953, developed the Karnaugh map as a tool to facilitate management of Boolean algebraicsolar cell was invented at Bell Laboratories. As for the spectacular side of the business, in 1956 TAT-1, the first transatlantic telephone cable was laid between Scotland and Newfoundland, in a joint effort by AT&T, Bell Laboratories, and British and Canadian telephone companies. A year later, in 1957, MUSIC, one of the first computer programs to play electronic music, was created by Max Mathews. New greedy algorithms developed by Robert C. Prim and Joseph Kruskal, revolutionized computer network design. In 1958, the laser was first described, in a technical paper by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes. expressions. In 1954, The first modern

[edit] 1960s

In 1960, Dawon Kahng and Martin Atalla invented the metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET); the MOSFET has achieved electronic hegemony and sustains the large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs) underlying today's information society. In 1962, the electret microphone was invented by Gerhard M. Sessler and James Edward Maceo West. In 1964, the Carbon dioxide laser was invented by Kumar Patel. In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background, and won the Nobel Prize in 1978. Frank W. Sinden, Edward E. Zajac, and Kenneth C. Knowlton made computer-animated movies during the early to mid 1960s. In 1966, Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a key technology in wireless services, was developed and patented by R. W. Chang. In 1968, Molecular beam epitaxy was developed by J.R. Arthur and A.Y. Cho; molecular beam epitaxy allows semiconductor chips and laser matrices to be manufactured one atomic layer at a time. In 1969, the UNIX operating system was created by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. The Charge-coupled deviceWillard Boyle and George E. Smith. In the 1960s, the New York City site was sold and became the Westbeth Artists Community complex. (CCD) was invented in 1969 by

[edit] 1970s

The C programming language was developed at Bell Laboratories in 1970

The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the personal computing revolution. In 1970 Dennis Ritchie developed the compiled C programming language as a replacement for the interpretive B for use in writing the UNIX operating system (also developed at Bell Laboratories). The original version of UNIX awk was designed and implemented by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories.

In 1970, A. Michael Noll patented a tactile, force-feedback system, coupled with interactive stereoscopic computer display. In 1971, an improved task priority system for computerized switching systems for telephone traffic was invented by Erna Schneider Hoover, who received one of the first software patents for it. In 1976, Fiber opticsGeorgia and in 1980, the first single-chip 32-bit microprocessor, the BELLMAC-32A was demonstrated. It went into production in 1982. systems were first tested in

The 1970s also saw a major central office technology evolve from crossbar electromechanical relay-based technology and discrete transistor logic to Bell Labs-developed thick film hybrid and transistor-transistor logic (TTL), stored program-controlled switching systems; 1A/#4 TOLL Electronic Switching Systems (ESS) and 2A Local Central Offices produced at the Bell Labs Naperville and Western Electric Lisle, Illinois facilities. This technology evolution dramatically reduced the floor space required. The new ESS also came with its own diagnostic software that required only a switchman and several frame technicians to maintain. The technology was often touted in the Bell Labs Technical Journals and Western Electric magazine (WE People).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 1980s

Bell Laboratories logo, used from 1984 until 1995

In 1980, the TDMA and CDMA digital cellular telephone technology was patented. In 1982, Fractional quantum Hall effect was discovered by Horst Störmer and former Bell Laboratories researchers Robert B. Laughlin and Daniel C. Tsui; they consequently won a Nobel Prize in 1998 for the discovery. In 1983, the C++ programming language was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension to the original C programming language also developed at Bell Laboratories.

In 1984, the first photoconductive antennas for picosecond electromagnetic radiation were demonstrated by Auston et al. This type of antenna now becomes an important component in terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. In 1984, the Karmarkar Linear Programming Algorithm was developed by mathematician Narendra Karmarkar. Also in 1984, a divestiture agreement signed in 1982 with the American Federal government forced the break-up of AT&T: Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies) was split off from Bell Laboratories to provide the same R&D functions for the newly created local exchange carriers. AT&T also was limited to using the Bell trademark only in association with Bell Laboratories. Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., was then renamed AT&T Bell Laboratories, Inc., and became a wholly owned company of the new AT&T Technologies unit, the former Western Electric. The 5ESS Switch was developed during this transition. In 1985, laser cooling was used to slow and manipulate atoms by Steven Chu and team. Also in 1985, Bell Laboratories was awarded the National Medal of Technology "For contribution over decades to modern communication systems". During the 1980s, the Plan 9 operating system was developed as a replacement for Unix which was also developed at Bell Laboratories in 1969. Development of the Radiodrum, a three dimensional electronic instrument. In 1988, TAT-8 became the first fiber optic transatlantic cable.

[edit] 1990s

Lucent Logo, bearing the "Bell Labs Innovations" tagline

In 1990, WaveLAN, the first wireless local area network (WLAN) was developed at Bell Laboratories. Wireless network technology would not become popular until the late 1990s and was first demonstrated in 1995.^{[dubious – discuss]} Also in 1990, the AMPL modeling language was developed by Robert Fourer, David M. Gay and Brian W. Kernighan at Bell Laboratories. In 1991, the 56K modem technology was patented by Nuri Dağdeviren and his team. In 1994, the quantum cascade laser was invented by Federico Capasso, Alfred Cho, Jerome Faist and their collaborators and was later greatly improved by the innovations of Claire Gmachl. Also in 1994, Peter Shorelectron lithography, which prints features atoms wide on microchips, was invented by Lloyd Harriott and his team. The Inferno operating system, an update of Plan 9, was created by Dennis Ritchie with others, using the new concurrent Limbo programming language. A high performance database engine (Dali) was developed which became DataBlitz in its product form.^[7] devised his quantum factorization algorithm. In 1996, SCALPEL

AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment-manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies. AT&T retained a smaller number of researchers, who made up the staff of the newly-created AT&T Laboratories. In 1997, the smallest practical transistor (60 nanometers, 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first optical router was invented^{[dubious – discuss]} and the first combination of voice and data traffic on an Internet Protocol (IP) network was developed at the Laboratories.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}

[edit] 2000s

Logo of Alcatel-Lucent, holding the Bell Labs now

2000 was an active year for the Laboratories, in which DNA machine prototypes were developed; progressive geometry compression algorithm made widespread 3-D communication practical; the first electrically powered organic laser invented; a large-scale map of cosmic dark matter was compiled, and the F-15 (material), an organic material that makes plastic transistors possible, was invented.

In 2002, physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, was fired after his work was found to contain fraudulent data. It was the first known case of fraud at Bell Labs.

In 2003, the New Jersey Nanotechnology Laboratory was created at Murray Hill, New Jersey.^[8]

In 2005, Dr. Jeong Kim, former President of Lucent's Optical Network Group, returned from academia to become the President of Bell Laboratories.

In April 2006, Bell Laboratories's parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with Alcatel. On December 1, 2006, the merged company, Alcatel-Lucent, began operations. This deal raised concerns in the United States, where Bell Laboratories works on defense contracts. A separate company, LGS, with an American board was set up to manage Bell Laboratories' and Lucent's sensitive U.S. Government contracts.

In December 2007, it was announced that the former Lucent Bell Laboratories and the former Alcatel Research and Innovation would be merged into one organization under the name of Bell Laboratories. This is the first period of growth following many years during which Bell Laboratories progressively lost manpower due to layoffs and spin-offs.

As of July 2008, however, only four scientists remained in physics basic research according to a report by the scientific journal Nature.^[9]

On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software.^[10]

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[edit] See also

• Alcatel-Lucent—Parent company of Bell Laboratories
• Arun Netravali—Bell Laboratories engineer—former president of Bell Laboratories
• Bell Labs Holmdel Complex
• Walter A. Shewhart—Bell Laboratories engineer—"father of statistical quality control"
• George Stibitz—Bell Laboratories engineer—"father of the modern digital computer"
• "Worse is Better"—A software design philosophy also called "The New Jersey Style" under which UNIX and C were supposedly developed
• History of mobile phones—Bell Laboratories conception and development of cellular phones
• High speed photography & Wollensak—Fastax high speed (rotating prism) cameras developed by Bell Labs
• Sound film—Westrex sound system for cinema films developed by Bell Labs