Corporation Bell Labs is a factory of scientific innovations

The results of scientific research and development have become the basis for the development of the economy, the most important factor in increasing its competitiveness, the foundation of modern technologies. Therefore, the problem of effective organization of scientific research and the effectiveness of their financing is extremely urgent. The study of the evolution of organizational forms of science allows us to conclude that in firms that do not have government funding, scientific research at the Nobel level is often carried out. The story of the creation of one of these organizations, the world famous Bell Labs corporation, which is a real incubator of progressive scientific and technical ideas, is told. Over the years, Bell Labs employees have made a number of grandiose discoveries: the detection of cosmic radio emission, the invention of a point-contact transistor, quartz clocks, charge-coupled devices, the creation of information theory, the UNIX operating system, programming languages C, C ++, etc.Considerable attention is paid to describing the scientific and technical results of Bell Labs employees who have become Nobel, Turing, Emmy and Grammy laureates, as well as holders of the US National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the IEEE Medal of Honor. In conclusion, some other scientific achievements of Bell Labs employees that have not received the above awards are discussed. The experience of studying the history of the creation and functioning of this company can be useful when organizing innovative research centers in our country.

Coherent Radiation from Electrostatic Double Layers

The radiation properties of electrostatic double layers (DLs) are of potential significance for cosmic magnetic explosions. If the emission is sufficiently intense it can serve as a diagnostic tool for particle acceleration by localized strong potential drops in current-carrying plasmas. Moreover such intense emission may form the explanation of some of the observed intense and narrow-band bursts of radiation from stellar and planetary magnetospheres. Here we study the efficiency of two coherent radiation processes: antenna radiation and a maser process. It is found that both processes can operate in the DL to produce intense and narrow-band emission. Antenna radiation occurs if the dimensions of the double layer are smaller than the wavelength of the emitted radiation. This process is therefore relevant to laboratory rather than to astrophysical plasmas. The maser on the other hand requires an amplification length inside the double layer much larger than the emitted wavelength, and can lead to observable emission in astrophysical circumstances. The growth is exponential and the rate depends only on the electric field energy density of the DL. Since the latter is externally controlled by the electric circuit it is a constant for the emission process so as to constitute a true maser. The maximum brightness temperature is of order 1025K. Masing radiation from electrostatic DLs is therefore a candidate for some of the observed intense narrow-band cosmic radio emission.

40. Radio Astronomy

The last triennium marked the 50th anniversary of the paper describing the first observations of cosmic radio emission by Karl Jansky in 1933. Sullivan (82 Classics in Radio Astronomy, Reidel) has published a collection of the major historical papers in radio astronomy, and collections of papers discussing the historical development have been published by Sullivan (84 Early Years of Radio Astronomy, Cambridge Univ. Press) and by Kellermann and Sheets (84 Serendipitous Discoveries in Radio Astronomy, NRAO).