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The rise and fall of Bell Labs
This August marks the anniversary of a key milestone in optics and telecommunications. It has been 50 years since the publication in Physical Review of the scientific paper that described the concept and design of one of the greatest modern inventions — the laser.
The ideas in “Infrared and optical masers” by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes of Bell Telephone Labs, as it was then known, underpin the core technology in all of today’s fibre-optic networks, although it wasn’t until glass fibres with very low loss appeared that laser-based communication became a valid alternative to copper wires.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the laser, Lucent Technologies, the parent company of Bell Labs, issued a press release and threw a party in honour of scientists who had made significant contributions to the development of the laser. This time around, not only did the event pass without comment, but it turns out that Alcatel-Lucent is pulling out of basic physics and semiconductor research altogether.
Nature reported the news initially, which was picked up by Wired in this stunning but rather sad photo story. Read it and weep, as Bell Labs becomes just another corporate R&D division, with research aligned to product development.
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