Through the years Bell Laboratories has led progress in communications
and electronics. No scientific achievement has had more far-reaching
effects on communications than the Laboratories’ work in the development
of the vacuum tube. Bell scientists were the first to devise a practical
amplifier tube which, placed at intervals in long distance lines,
restored the energy of weakening voice currents, making it possible to
telephone from coast to coast.
The Laboratories was the first to develop automatic equipment that can
“remember” telephone numbers and perform other complicated operations in
the central office.
By means of filtering apparatus, developed by the Laboratories, one high
frequency “carrier” can carry many speech currents at the same time.
Largely because of carrier telephony, the Bell System has been able to
reduce greatly the cost of long distance telephone service.
The Laboratories pioneered the development of coaxial cable and
microwave radio-relay systems. Both can be used to transmit television
programs and hundreds of telephone conversations.
Among the many other achievements of the Laboratories have been
important contributions to the design of computers—the amazing
electronic machines that can work out problems that might otherwise take
months or years of work by mathematicians.
A few years ago, scientists at the Laboratories invented the
_transistor_. This is a radically new device, simple in design and tiny
in size, that performs most of the functions of the vacuum tube and does
other things besides. Its effect on communications technology promises
to be revolutionary.
Early in 1954, the Laboratories announced a device that realizes one of
the ancient dreams of mankind—the Bell Solar Battery, which converts the
sun’s light directly into useful amounts of electricity. Research that
led to the transistor led also to the battery—and to a tiny and durable
switch that one day may handle the automatic switching of your telephone
calls, and other things not yet imagined.