From its beginnings in the 1920s to the breakup of the Ma Bell monopoly six decades later, Bell Labs—the new-technology division of AT&T—was arguably the most successful corporate research organization in the world. Among its scientists’ achievements were the development of the transistor, the continuously operated laser beam, and cellular networks. The institution’s researchers were so prolific, and their work so consequential, that they garnered six Nobel prizes, including one for a discovery that confirmed the big bang theory.
The site of many of these breakthroughs was an immense mirrored-glass box in suburban Holmdel, New Jersey. The original portion of the structure, designed by Eero Saarinen and Associates and completed in phases in 1962 and 1964, sat on 472 pastoral acres and was surrounded by a rolling landscape created by Sasaki, Walker and Associates, with lagoons, lawns, groves of trees, and 5,000 parking spaces. Expanded in the 1980s by the Saarinen successor firm, Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo Associates, the 2 million-square-foot complex at its peak hummed with the activity of nearly 6,000 employees.
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