[HN Gopher] Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prep...
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Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave
N.J. home
Author : andyjohnson0
Score : 140 points
Date : 2024-01-21 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nj.com)
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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.
| carterschonwald wrote:
| I was wondering the same myself. Albeit in the us or nyc. :)
|
| I've had middling success creating opportunities but that's
| very far from being in an environment where there so much
| interesting going on around you
| thatcat wrote:
| Freelance product design is a good field for this type work,
| but you don't really see it concentrated into a unified r/d
| location like bell had often.
|
| Also @dsgnr you're posts are currently hell banned
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thanks, product design is something I've also considered.
| I'd guess Apple/MS style companies are probably still the
| best bet, even though you're more restricted than what it
| probably was at Bell.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm sure a lot of people will reflexively run in the opposite
| direction but IBM still has a large research organization.
| dsgnr wrote:
| As a freelance product designer I'm always learning and always
| excited about work. There are so many interesting companies
| working on so many interesting problems.
| dleink wrote:
| What takes up most of your time? Do you work with vendors to
| create and then produce the product or just do the design
| phase?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Microsoft Research, though it has a reputation for coming up
| with great ideas that somehow never end-up in a shipping
| Microsoft product.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thanks, I've found some of their design guidelines have
| legitimately changing my worldview (eg situational
| disabilities).
| esafak wrote:
| For some that's a plus!
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| For me a negative:
|
| If I remember correctly, MSR worked on a practical
| implementation of Code-Contracts for C# which incorporated
| the (all-important) compile-time verification of method
| preconditions, postconditions, and class invariants
| (without the need for hand-written refinement-types, which
| is how we do things today): as I understand it, the
| compile-time part of system could support any assertion
| represented as a pure-function - think of it as C#'s take
| on Ada's assertions, improved tenfold, and it even shipped
| for a now-unsupported older version of C# and .NET:
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/debug-
| tra...
|
| ...and it was axed in .NET Core back in 2016 and hasn't
| been seen since:
| https://github.com/microsoft/CodeContracts/issues/409
|
| Had Microsoft put more backing behind it, then C# could
| present itself as a language to supplant Ada in safety-
| critical applications, and replace C/C++ in other
| applications.
|
| I have hope the feature will come back one-day - there are
| whole slews of bugs that can be eliminated (such as when
| passing EF entity types around with unintentionally null
| member-properties).
| esafak wrote:
| Isn't that replacement called F#?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| No.
| LeonardoTolstoy wrote:
| 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 software / math mix in
| the vein of investment banking. I applied there over ten years
| ago so YMMV at this point, who knows.
| chicagoengineer wrote:
| 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.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Sorry, what's HFT?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| High-frequency trading, I'd assume. Exploiting the stock
| market for profit.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Or providing liquidity to reduce transaction costs for
| everyone.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| How high are the costs and how much can you reduce them
| before you reach diminishing returns? Will it reach zero?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is pretty close to zero. Has anyone thought about how
| much a trade of a broadly traded security will cost them
| in recent times, or ever thought it would not happen near
| instantly?
| esafak wrote:
| How frequently do you think most people make such
| transactions?
| psychlops wrote:
| A huge black hole of mental energy spent slicing pennies
| and seconds, creating nothing.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| What are you advancing?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The number of digits in their bank account.
| wills_forward wrote:
| Citadel or Jump?
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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).
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> 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 practice and being better
| than existing solutions, before someone approves budget for
| the costly development and implementation of an actual
| product.
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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)
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Any serious place will only be looking for folks that are
| bonafide math geniuses in addition to their actual
| specialty.
|
| In the case of mechanical engineers, maybe 1 in 50
| bonafide geniuses in mechanical engineering are also
| simultaneously math geniuses. Just my personal hunch.
|
| There's really not that many serious places in the world
| comparable to Bell Labs in its heyday, so it's
| unrealistic to expect recruiting standards to be much
| lower.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Any prestige research lab - MS, Google, OAI, etc.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thanks, that seems to be the trend here
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I'm not sure how many, if any, are doing blue sky research
| (vs product-directed "research") any more the way that Bell
| Labs, IBM Watson and Xerox Parc used to do.
|
| Look at what's going on with ML/AI - DeepMind now merged with
| Google Brain seemingly with a product focus, FAIR now moved
| into a product group alongside Meta's GenAI group, Microsoft
| essentially outsourcing AI to OpenAI, OpenAI may as well call
| itself GPTCorp - a single-product commercial enterprise.
|
| I guess it's not surprising given how short term the thinking
| is of today's publicly traded companies.
| potatolicious wrote:
| Eh, I don't think today's scene is altogether _that_
| different from back then. In every case you have a research
| organization tied to an _immensely_ profitable main
| enterprise. The vast majority of the work force works on
| the "product" side and only a small number of researchers
| are doing blue sky stuff.
|
| This describes Bell Labs and Xerox Parc, as well as modern
| counterparts like MSR and DeepMind. As always, only a very
| small portion of the work force gets to do blue sky stuff -
| the rest have to do the "mundane" bits of making money.
|
| Let's not be fooled by rose-tinted glasses here - even in
| its heyday Bell Labs was small fraction of the overall Bell
| operations, and likewise Xerox Parc an extremely
| prestigious but yet small slice of the overall enterprise.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > DeepMind now merged with Google Brain seemingly with a
| product focus, FAI
|
| I don't really agree that training massive causal LMs is a
| "product focus".
|
| I agree that there is an increasing product focus in orgs
| like OAI, but a lot of that is coming from new growth
| rather than trading off with base research.
| jebarker wrote:
| Disney Imagineering? I have no direct experience but I'm
| continually impressed by the technical innovations they make
| public and the effects they manage to achieve in their
| products.
| bargle0 wrote:
| What are you looking for? DOE national labs and similar
| institutions may fit the bill.
| deadly-penguin wrote:
| A government, or government funded, research lab. Mostly they
| want research scientists, but engineers also work in those
| places.
| eatonphil wrote:
| The new home is still NJ: New Brunswick.
|
| > When Nokia's research arm, Nokia Bell Labs, said in early
| December the company will move out of the Murray Hill campus over
| the next five years to relocate to a new tech hub being built in
| New Brunswick, the announcement spurred an outpouring of memories
| online from current and former employees.
|
| > Bell Labs' new headquarters will be located at the HELIX
| innovation center in New Brunswick. Originally known as "The
| Hub," the HELIX innovation center will be a large complex in the
| city's downtown on the site of the former Ferren Mall.
|
| More news on the real estate side of things:
|
| https://re-nj.com/legacy-moment-inside-the-landmark-deal-to-...
|
| I'm excited for New Brunswick here. Would love to see this small
| city develop. With relatively cheap cost of living, Rutgers,
| decent zoning (they've got a number of highrises and seem to be
| adding more), and being a few train stops away from NYC (and a
| direct bus IIRC?) it seems like a really compelling place to
| invest in.
| stn8188 wrote:
| I agree that investment in the city of New Brunswick seems like
| a great idea for the reasons you stated. At the same time, it
| just feels so grand and historic to walk the same halls as the
| likes of Shannon, and it's a bit sad that I may not be able to
| see it again. (I've only visited a handful of times to work on
| some joint projects though). Hopefully the new lab
| space/equipment will be very modern and efficient though! One
| last thought... Traffic is gonna be a bear for anyone driving
| in! It was miserable a decade ago when I was at Rutgers.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| NB resident here. It's still miserable, but removing stop
| lights on route 18 between landing lane and the turnpike made
| things excellent for folks getting to somerset/piscataway!
| ioblomov wrote:
| While I'm not saying Shannon never walked the halls of Murray
| Hill, his publishing _A Mathematical Theory of Communication_
| in 1948 meant that he was working at the lab's previous
| location in the West Village...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Laboratories_Building
| frozenport wrote:
| But "These chairs haven't been cleaned since Shannon worked
| here!"
| Lyngbakr wrote:
| 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!
| mk_stjames wrote:
| 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.
| diggan wrote:
| > and jealousy and a bit of dread for not being a part of
| something similar anymore.
|
| In some corridor, somewhere in the world, the next Bell Labs
| is currently under way and others will read books about it in
| the future. You just have to figure out where it is :)
| 101011 wrote:
| I heard about this book from hackernews a year or two ago. I'm
| not a big non-fiction fan, but I absolutely devoured that book.
| Strong plus one about Gertner's great work here.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Is there a Bell Labs of today? If so who or where?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Prestige AI labs. But for hardware? I am not sure.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Always interesting stuff being worked on at NIST and JILA in
| Boulder.
| chrispeel wrote:
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There are a few remaining, 3M has one, but much smaller.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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 to spend on
| science. But in 1984, the monopoly broke up, and after 1989,
| managers encouraged Bell Lab researchers to focus on research
| with commercial applications. Disenchanted, top scientists began
| to leave for universities and were mostly not replaced by new
| recruits. In 1995, ownership of Bell Labs was transferred to the
| newly formed company Lucent Technologies."
|
| Then Lucent got hit by the dot-com bubble blowout, resulting in a
| 30% loss of share value in Jan 2000. This led to a new focus on
| PR:
|
| > "By keeping up its practice of releasing exciting scientific
| findings, the lab could continue to demonstrate to investors,
| customers and anyone else that Lucent had a sound, long-term
| technological future. Again, this was a question of survival:
| with revenues falling, managers had to make the argument that
| their jobs and the jobs of their staff were worth keeping."
|
| This led to a culture in which critical scrutiny of the claims of
| one fraudulent researcher was discouraged in favor of
| institutional cheerleading, and the end result was that 15 papers
| published in Science and Nature had to be retracted.
|
| [1] "Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook
| the Scientific World" (2009) Eugenie Samuel Reich.
|
| If you want a parable for what's happened to Bell Labs and many
| other scientific institutions in the US, it's that of the greedy
| farmer killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.
| GlibMonkeyDeath wrote:
| 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.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| Tachyooon wrote:
| Bobbybroccoli over on Youtube made three massive episodes about
| the story that goes into it with a lot of detail - I couldn't
| stop watching them when I first found them. Here's the link if
| anyone is interested:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAB-wWbHL7Vsfl4PoQpNs...
| lgkk wrote:
| 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.
| tomcam wrote:
| I'm not a nostalgic person, but for some reason I wish
| irrationally that that Murray Hill building could be preserved
| as is. I read so much about of it in the history of computing,
| and just like (from the pictures) the building interior itself
| so much I just feel like I missed out on some thing not to have
| been there myself.
|
| I was lucky enough to work at Microsoft in building 2, one of 8
| matching buildings from the mid-80s, and it absolutely felt
| special at the time. In my imagination, it had some of the same
| vibe as Bell Labs did in its heyday. I was on the Visual Studio
| team, and great things were happening. I knew it. I also knew
| that team was special.
|
| No one else in Visual Studio seemed that interested - they were
| just too busy and I think maybe too young to get it.
|
| Buildings 1-8 were demolished few years ago, but I had been
| gone from the company for decades by that time. I did grieve a
| bit.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I wonder where can you find those types of places currently?
|
| Places developing the next mRNA vaccines for cancer?
|
| Places developing AI?
|
| Electric cars?
| tomcam wrote:
| I think that if you have a PhD in the right field and
| enough hip publications that many of the FAANG companies
| still have research teams like that operating in a
| diminished capacity. It appears to me that many of these
| positions have been replaced by administrators who are more
| interested in hiring to a specific set of demographics.
| coliveira wrote:
| Have you ever seen something fundamental coming from
| FAANG? No, and you won't, because what they're doing
| (even when very technical) is purely for the improvement
| of their business. Things like AI are coming from smaller
| groups such as OpenAI, even when backed by big companies
| like Microsoft.
| pm90 wrote:
| What are you talking about? All of the basic research
| around transformers originated at Google.
| lgkk wrote:
| NASA.
|
| I know a few people who wanted to get away from the FANG
| hype grind and went to NASA.
|
| They tell me they're doing actual engineering for
| engineerings sake. Which sounds great.
|
| Salary obviously not comparable to FANG 400k plus but the
| satisfaction and pride is well worth the sacrifice to them.
|
| Me and most of my friends are "super American" like I'm an
| immigrant who wears USA hats and t shirts. I would love to
| work at NASA once I have established a little place for
| myself here. I would be so proud to contribute to this
| country and its success in space and research.
| tomcam wrote:
| I'm not a nostalgic person, but for some reason I wish
| irrationally that that Murray Hill building could be preserved
| as is. I read so much about of it in the history of computing,
| and just like (from the pictures) the building interior itself
| so much I just feel like I missed out on some thing not to have
| been there myself.
|
| I was lucky enough to work at Microsoft in building 2, one of 8
| matching buildings from the mid-80s, and it absolutely felt
| special at the time. In my imagination, it had some of the same
| vibe as Bell Labs did in its heyday. I was on the Visual Studio
| team, and great things were happening. I knew it. I also knew
| that team was special.
|
| No one else in Visual Studio seemed that interested - they were
| just too busy and I think maybe too young to get it.
|
| Buildings 1-8 were demolished few years ago, but I had been
| gone from the company for decades by that time. I did grieve a
| bit.
| dimator wrote:
| It's interesting how much we associate a place with the
| fulfillment (career) we had there. I always smile fondly when
| I pass by the buildings I worked in years ago, in the valley.
|
| It's a strange thought that the building I spent so many
| hours, days, years in is now just a thing seen out of the
| passenger window as I drive by, for maybe 2 seconds.
| tomcam wrote:
| In my particular case, the best jobs I had also happened to
| be at places where I could think hard, then go take a walk
| outside and enjoy the fresh air. Building two at Microsoft
| was nestled in a sort of mini forest, and taking a jog
| around that area in the winter was a pleasure almost to
| good to put into words.
| dleink wrote:
| Any recommendations for books on the history of computing
| from that period?
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Not Microsoft but an enjoyable account from that time:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
| tomcam wrote:
| Agreed, that is a good portrait of what it was like
| tomcam wrote:
| Maybe "Fire in the Valley"? I learned to program in the
| mid-1980s and learned about the culture from dozens of
| magazines that were published contemporaneously. I didn't
| live in Silicon Valley and thought I had pretty much missed
| the boat so I spent thousands a year in early 1990s dollars
| to keep up. Then I got to move to Redmond, Washington and
| actually live it. Working with people I had literally read
| about was every bit as good as I hoped.
| ioblomov wrote:
| The whole complex (immortalized as Lumon HQ in _Severance_ )
| is landmarked so presumably it can't be messed with too much.
| Even apart from the historical significance, it's a
| masterpiece of mid-century design. Its architect, Eero
| Saarinen, also did the St. Louis Arch and, my personal
| favorite, the TWA terminal at JFK, which reopened as a hotel
| in 2019. If you're ever stuck on a layover there, do check it
| out!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Hotel
| tomcam wrote:
| Thanks for the reminder. I agree, that appears to be a
| massive triumph of preservation.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| 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).
| Zigurd wrote:
| I got to visit the Holmdel site a couple times, once in its
| heyday and once after it was half empty and down at the heels -
| an eerie vibe. It was an awesome sight when first arriving. It
| is colossal. Pictures don't do it justice. A symbol of economic
| power. Later I learned it was largely made possible by the
| government negotiating a deal with AT&T. It was a kind of crony
| capitalism Camelot. An industrial policy monument. But it was
| glorious. Saarinen designed a lot of Peak Industrial America
| headquarters.
| galacticstone wrote:
| Following
| sambeau wrote:
| I couldn't read past this photo caption:-
|
| _" In 1969, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson developed UNIX, a
| computer programming language. Nokia"_
|
| :-|
| shrubble wrote:
| Credit for the picture provided goes to Nokia; Nokia doesn't
| get credit for anything else :)
| zamadatix wrote:
| > UNIX, a computer programming language
|
| :p
| chrisrohlf wrote:
| The Murray Hill campus may have been where the bulk of the
| innovation happened but the former Holmdel site is the
| architectural gem of the two. Thankfully it was preserved and is
| now functional and used as 'Bell Works'.
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