What connects information theory, the transistor, the laser, satellite TV broadcasts, the solar cell, the UNIX operating system, the cell phone, fibre optics, Wi-Fi and radio astronomy? All were invented at one extraordinary institution. For six decades, from its founding in 1925 to the break-up of its parent company AT&T in 1984, Bell Telephone Laboratories (known colloquially as Bell Labs) produced not just these inventions, but many less well-known technologies underlying modern electronics and digital technology, as well as theoretical and practical breakthroughs in cryptography and other fields. Thirteen Bell researchers shared seven Nobel Prizes in physics for work done at the labs.
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