Sound bite: The patent office in Washington announces an improvement in telegraphy,
 
which will make possible instantaneous
transmission of speech
by wire. The inventor of this revolutionary
instrument is named Alexander Graham Bell.
Bell? Sfx: phone ring.
Since that first ring, Bell Labs
is changing the face of modern society.
The transistor, the laser, the communications satellite
and cellular communications are but a few of its revolutionary innovations.
The R&D arm of Lucent Technologies,
today's Bell Labs averages more than
3 patents per day in its push at the frontiers of communications.
Thirty years ago,
two Bell Labs researchers sparked a different revolution.
Thompson sound bite: We're trying to make computing as simple as possible.
In the late 1960's,  Richie and I
realized that the then-current operating
systems were much too complex.
We attempted to reverse this trend by
building a small, simple operating system on a mini-computer.
Ritchie: What we wanted to was
not just a good programming  environment in which
to do programming, but a system around which a community could form.
The UNIX operating system and C  language allowed machines from microprocessors
to supercomputers to run the same software.
UNIX, C and their offspring remain linked
through their own network of creative
collaboration and common history.
Dennis Richie's and Ken Thompson's seminal efforts
blazed a path for the computing and communications industries.
They influenced the development of today's network of networks,
and enabled the creation of applications yet to be imagined.
 
