Bell Labs and Bell Sound Division Thompson Ramo Wooldridge, Inc. are not associated.

Bell Sound Division was part of TRW originated in 1901 with the Cleveland Cap Screw Company, founded by David Kurtz and four other Cleveland residents.

It lasted more than a century until being acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2002.

In 1880, when the French government awarded Alexander Graham Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs (approximately US$10,000 at that time; about $270,000 in January 2019's dollars) for the invention of the telephone, he used the award to fund the Volta Laboratory (Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory) in Washington, D.C. in collaboration with Sumner Tainter and Bell's cousin Chichester Bell. The laboratory was variously known as the Volta Bureau, the Bell Carriage House, the Bell Laboratory and the Volta Laboratory.

It focused on the analysis, recording, and transmission of sound. Bell used his considerable profits from the laboratory for further research and education to permit the "[increased] diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf" resulting in the founding of the Volta Bureau (c. 1887) which was located at Bell's father's house at 1527 35th Street N.W. in Washington, D.C. Its carriage house became their headquarters in 1889.

In 1893, Bell constructed a new building close by at 1537 35th Street N.W., specifically to house the lab.This building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972.

After the invention of the telephone, Bell maintained a relatively distant role with the Bell System as a whole, but continued to pursue his own personal research interests.

(left) Bell's 1893 Volta Bureau building in Washington, D.C.

The Bell Patent Association was formed by Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Sanders, and Gardiner Hubbard when filing the first patents for the telephone in 1876.

Bell Telephone Company, the first telephone company, was formed a year later. It later became a part of the American Bell Telephone Company.

American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its own subsidiary company, took control of American Bell and the Bell System by 1889.

American Bell held a controlling interest in Western Electric (which was the manufacturing arm of the business) whereas AT&T was doing research into the service providers.

In 1884, the American Bell Telephone Company created the Mechanical Department from the Electrical and Patent Department formed a year earlier.

Formal organization and location changes

In 1896, Western Electric bought property at 463 West Street to station their manufacturers and engineers who had been supplying AT&T with their product. This included everything from telephones, telephone exchange switches, and transmission equipment.

 

See also Western Electric and AES

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On January 1, 1925, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. was organized to consolidate the development and research activities in the communication field and allied sciences for the Bell System. Ownership was evenly shared between Western Electric and AT&T. The new company had existing personnel of 3600 engineers, scientists, and support staff. In addition to the existing research facilities of 400,000 square feet of space, its space was extended with a new building on about one quarter of a city block.

The first chairman of the board of directors was John J. Carty, the vice-president of AT&T, and the first president was Frank B. Jewett also a board member, who stayed there until 1940. The operations were directed by E. B. Craft, executive vice-president, and formerly chief engineer at Western Electric.

By the early 1940s, Bell Labs engineers and scientists had begun to move to other locations away from the congestion and environmental distractions of New York City, and in 1967 Bell Laboratories headquarters was officially relocated to Murray Hill, New Jersey.

The largest grouping of people in the company was in Illinois, at Naperville-Lisle, in the Chicago area, which had the largest concentrationof employees (about 11,000) prior to 2001. There also were groups of employees in Indianapolis, Indiana; Columbus, Ohio; North Andover, Massachusetts; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Reading, Pennsylvania; and Breinigsville, Pennsylvania; Burlington, North Carolina (1950s–1970s, moved to Greensboro 1980s) and Westminster, Colorado. Since 2001, many of the former locations have been scaled down or closed.

The Holmdel site, a 1.9 million square foot structure set on 473 acres, was closed in 2007. The mirrored-glass building was designed by Eero Saarinen. In August 2013, Somerset Development bought the building, intending to redevelop it into a mixed commercial and residential project. A 2012 article expressed doubt on the success of the newly named Bell Works site, but several large tenants had announced plans to move in through 2016 and 2017

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Suppressing Innovation: Bell Laboratories and Magnetic Recording

Clark, Mark. “SuppresClark, Mark. “Suppressing Innovation: Bell Laboratories and Magnetic Recording.” Technology and Culture, vol. 34, no. 3, 1993, pp. 516–538. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3106703. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.sing Innovation: Bell Laboratories and Magnetic Recording.” Technology and Culture, vol. 34, no. 3, 1993, pp. 516–538. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3106703. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.

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Bell RecordOFone RT-65 

(49, 50, 51, 52, 53)

                

1949 Lafayette catalog listing

1951 catalog listing  Photofact #1  #2

Allied 1952 catalog listing and

Lafayette 1952 catalog listing

Company information

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Photos below provided to our museum by others

We appreciate all photos sent to our museum. We hope to successfully preserve the sound recording history. If we have not credited a photo, we do not know its origin if it was not taken by the contributor. Please let us know if a photo on our site belongs to you and is not credited. We will be happy to give you credit, or remove it if you so choose.

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The non-profit Museum was dissolved on December 31, 2017. Donations are NOT ta x deductible and are now processed by Phantom Productions.

All donations to MOMSR go 100% to support restoration of vintage magnetic recording devices in the private collection and help fund the web site development and hosting.