Bell Labs, Give Us Back Our Pasts!

Bell Labs, one of the world`s most prestigious research institutes, is currently falling apart.

Not only have the number of researchers reduced from 1,100 to 400 but the budget also has been reduced from 350 million dollars to 115 million dollars. Scientists majoring in ecology, psychology, and economics have all been kicked out with the Institute having given in to market demands.

Bell Labs is the most authoritative research institute in the U.S. It was founded in 1925 as an affiliated research center for AT&T which was then a long distance phone service provider. It has enriched our life and culture through inventions and findings for the last 80 years. Bell Labs, however, became an affiliate institute of Lucent Technologies, after AT&T split apart, and the staff and budget of Bell Labs had been drastically cut due to bad management performance from the company.

The fall of Bell Labs symbolizes a fundamental change in U.S. research areas, the Wall Street Journal reported on May 23. The following is a summary.

The U.S. government used to support two thirds of the total budget for fundamental research areas until 1970. The government, however, started to reduce financial assistance since then and private corporations had to fill the gap. What`s more, private corporations began turning their backs on research because stockholders, who gained influence in the companies, demanded an international competitive edge and returns, which basically eliminated the need for research.

“This is a national tragedy. Bell Labs not only has been carrying out research sturdy for the next few decades, but has also employed many greatest scientists,” MIT President Charles Vest said.

Bell Labs invented or provided fundamental technology for creating the most historical noted inventions of the 20th century including the transistor, fax machine, VCR, satellite, and laser. Astronomer Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson committed themselves to analyzing distortion of radio waves occurring between space craft in orbit and radio antennas in 1965. Their discovery enabled them to announce the big bang theory, which claims that the universe was created by a gigantic expansion, for the first time. Bell Lab produced 6 Nobel Prize winners including Penzias and Wilson. Such results can only be achieved when researchers are guaranteed freedom from market demands and even to joke around. However, Bell Labs now has to concentrate its research to telecommunications related areas.

“In reality, you can progress only as much as money allows,” William O`Shea, the president of Bell Labs said. The market value of Lucent Technologies was once 287 billion dollars, but now it stands at merely 10.5 billion dollars and has consecutively recorded deficits for the last 13 quarters.

Eun-Taek Hong euntack@donga.com