by Donald Gaminitilake

A hundred years ago, Queen Victoria was greatly amused by a new invention that allowed her to speak with her ministers in London from Isle of Wight. The telephone has been greatly improved. In early stages of telephone’s development, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) decided to set up an organization that would research ways of improving the telephone system. Thus in 1925, Bell Laboratories (known as Ma Bell) was born at Murray Hill, New Jersey.

Bell labs is an unusual institution since it is solely devoted to doing research, and yet owned by a company whose only purpose to make profit.  Gifted scientists are allowed to pursue those aspects of research that they think are important because, the corporation believes, a few of their ideas will be worth the investment. Over the years Bell labs collected Nobel prizes and made discoveries in quite diverse area of scientific research. Here, we consider some aspect of their research were particularly relevant to the development of computer.

By the 1930’s telephone systems were becoming increasingly automatic and sophisticated in USA. Messages were sent in analogue form over the telephone cables and calls were connected using information contained in a digital dialing code.  The number dialed was first converted at the exchange from an analogue signal to a sequence of digital pulses. This was temporary stored in a memory made out of relay switches until a bank of cross bar switches completed the connection. These counted pulses in the dialing code and converted them in to co-ordinates on an electromechanical switchboard. This contained all the ingredients of a computer.

George Stibitz was a mathematician employed by Bell who noticed the similarity between ‘counting’ pulses and adding them together. Working at home on his table with some old crossbar switches and electromechanical relays, he made the first relay computer circuits.    Stibitz worked with Samuel B Williams, and created the Complex Number Calculator.  (- means “imaginary numbers” , square roots  of negative numbers, solutions to poly normal equations) The Complex Number Calculator became operational in January 1940. In the same year it was demonstrated to the American Mathematical Society at Dartmouth College. The Calculator had the facility of remote and multiple access through typewriter key boards connected by telephone wires to the calculating mechanism in New York.  The public was impressed by the “HUMAN” form of operation: after the calculator was asked a question it would seems to pause for some seconds before giving the answer!!!

Many minor hardware devices also originated at Bell. The Floating air cushions used in magnetic tape heads, negative feed back amplifiers, but the most famous invention was the TRANSISTOR, created in 1947 by Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley. It was the transistor made possible for second generation of computers.

BELL LABORAORIES takes its name from Alexander Graham Bell (1847- 1922) who generally credited with the invention of the telephone in 1876. It is generally believed that the first words ever transmitted over wires by electrical means were from Bell to his assistant situated in the next room: They were “Come here Mr. Watson, I want you!