More than any other single institution, Bell Laboratories has helped weave the technological fabric of modern society. Since its founding in 1925, Bell Labs technology has shaped the ways people live, work and play. In fact, the technologies created by Bell Labs are so pervasive they are nearly invisible. The countless millions of transistors quietly labouring behind the scenes in the workplace, in homes, cars, banks, gas pumps, stores, telephone and computer networks 3 just about everywhere 3 are all descended from the first transistors invented here between 1947 and 1952. And all digital communication of sound, images and data 3 whether on telephone wires, in optical fibres, through the atmosphere or between a PC’s processor and its memory 3 rests on mathematical foundations of information theory laid here in the late 1940s. Today’s global economy rests on an infrastructure of networking, computing and software technology, much of which was invented and developed by Bell Labs. Some of the other important technological milestones of our age that were initiated by Bell Labs include: stereo recording, sound motion pictures, the first long-distance TV transmission, the first fax machine, the touch-tone phone, several generations of modems, communications satellites, lasers, solar cells, cellular telephony, lightwave communication systems, and software that operates, maintains and manages some of the most sophisticated public and private communications networks in the world.