History of Innovation at Bell Labs – more

Don Heirman, a Bell Labs “Pioneer” who participated in the April 11 – 13 charrette, has shared these photos of one of the other buildings on the Bell Labs site that help to tell the remarkable story of innovation at Bell Labs.

“One of the other buildings is made entirely out of plastic. Photo #1 is the interior and the other is a tunnel that lead to the basement of the main [Saarinen] building, as no metal could be above the elevation of the ground plane above.) This dates back to the early 1980’s when the Federal Communications Commission passed regulations requiring special radio frequency levels to be met. The measurement of those levels had to be in a non-reflective building and hence no metal or conductive resins could be used. The all-plastic building that still stands there is where many if not most of the telecom products coming out of Holmdel were measured to assure they met the new regulations which still stand today.”