Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 28, 2008 @08:19AM from the having-solved-all-the-really-important-problems dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from Wired: "After six Nobel Prizes, the invention of the transistor, laser and countless contributions to computer science and technology, it is the end of the road for Bell Labs' fundamental physics research lab. Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software." Jamie points out this list of Bell Labs' accomplishments at Wikipedia, including little things like the UNIX operating system.

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Re:Selling out bunch of... by greg_barton · 2008-08-28 08:42 · Score: 0, Redundant

Bell labs may have been a loss, but of course that's not the same as the division being dead weight
Well, considering their inventions made the entire existing business possible, I'd say it was worth the investment.