New York
Inside the Birthplace of Your Favorite Technology
The technology industry is obsessed with the future.
Many of our modern marvels are rooted in the legacy of Bell Labs, an innovation powerhouse in suburban New Jersey.
Bell Labs, the once-famed research arm of AT&T, celebrated the centennial of its founding last year.
In its heyday, starting in the 1940s, the lab created a cascade of inventions, including the transistor, information theory and an enduring computer software language. The labs’ digital DNA is in our smartphones, social media and chatbot conversations.
“Every hour of your day has a bit of Bell Labs in it,” observed Jon Gertner, author of “The Idea Factory,” a history of the storied research center.
Bell Labs’ most far-reaching idea — information theory — forms the bedrock of computing. The mathematical framework, known as the “Magna Carta of the information age,” provided a blueprint for sending and receiving information with precision and reliability. It was the brainchild of Claude Shannon, a brilliant eccentric whom the A.I. start-up Anthropic named its chatbot after.
Last month, Nvidia announced a new A.I. chip packed with more than 300 billion transistors — the tiny on-off electrical switches invented in the lab.
Bell Labs became so powerful and renowned that it is entrenched in pop culture. The 1968 sci-fi movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” drew inspiration from Bell Labs, and the father of the titular character in the period dramedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” worked there. Most recently, characters in the show “Severance” report to a former Bell Labs building.
Here are some of the labs’ most prominent inventions.
Bell Labs described itself as a wide-ranging “institute of creative technology.” And it was a well-funded one, thanks to the monopoly held by AT&T — with incentive to expand Ma Bell’s phone business.
One invention was Telstar, the first powerful communications satellite, which could receive radio signals, then amplify them (10 billion times) and retransmit them. This allowed for real-time phone conversations across oceans, high-speed data communications and global television broadcasts.
1960
In 1960, Bell Labs launched an earlier orbital communications satellite in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — a passive balloon satellite called Echo that could reflect signals one way.
1962
The lab again teamed up with NASA to launch the smaller Telstar, which was about three feet in diameter and weighed 170 pounds.
1962
Bell Labs also developed some of the rocket technology that launched the satellite, a byproduct of an antiballistic missile project.
1962
Lyndon B. Johnson, vice president at the time, spoke on the first phone conversation bounced off a satellite. “You’re coming through nicely,” he assured Frederick Kappel, the phone company’s chairman.
PRESENT
In the decades since, those groundbreaking inventions from Bell Labs have become ubiquitous and affordable. International phone calls and television broadcasts are part of daily life. Today, more than 11,000 satellites provide internet, surveillance and navigation services, and are crucial for driverless cars and drone warfare.
While developing mobile-phone service, Bell Labs scientists drove around in a van to check transmission quality.
The labs submitted its plan for a working cellular network to the government in 1971, and AT&T opened the first commercial cellular service in Chicago more than a decade later.
1968
An early, simple version of mobile service was essentially a conventional phone on wheels — the car phone. Through radio technology, it connected to the landline network for calls.
1972
Smaller, more powerful chips, radios and batteries made a truly mobile phone possible. It still weighed nearly two pounds.
PRESENT
The technology continued to improve, as cellphones grew smaller and more sophisticated. Smartphones, which gained popularity with the iPhone’s launch in 2007, helped cement the devices as everywhere, ever-present and the dominant device for communication, information and entertainment — for better or worse.
The Picturephone allowed you to see the person you were talking to on a small screen.
1968
And it was heavily promoted. An ad for the Picturephone said it amounted to “crossing a telephone with a TV set.” Its tagline: “Someday you’ll be a star!”
1964
The Picturephone was introduced to great fanfare at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
1964
Even the White House was enlisted for a publicized demo. Lady Bird Johnson spoke via Picturephone to a Bell Labs scientist, Elizabeth Wood.
1968
But at the cost of $16 for a three-minute call (more than $165 today), the novelty soon wore off. Though a market failure, the Picturephone had a star turn in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
PRESENT
Decades later, tech giants ran with the vision of talking with people on video. Similar technology is now incorporated in every smartphone, allowing families to chat in real time. Video calls have also transformed the way we work — connecting people around the world for meetings.
The light-sensitive electronic sensor, called a charge-coupled device, opened the door to digital imaging. It captured images by converting photons of light into electrons, breaking images into pixels.
1978
Efforts to use the imaging sensors in cameras and camcorders began in the 1970s, and the products steadily improved. The cameras got smaller and the images sharper. Willard Boyle and George E. Smith earned a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention.
1978
The science is complicated, but the sensor converts light to electrical charges, stores them and then shifts them across the chip to be measured.
PRESENT
By the early 2000s, a smaller, cheaper technology, CMOS, had won out in mass markets like camera phones. But charge-coupled sensors remained the choice for tasks requiring very high resolution, like mapping the Milky Way.
The silicon solar cell was a Bell Labs triumph of material physics.
The solar cell performs a special kind of photon-to-electron conversion — sunlight to energy.
1956
But while a scientific success, the early solar cell technology was a market flop — prohibitively expensive for mainstream adoption. By one estimate at the time, it would have cost $1.5 million for the solar cells needed to meet the electricity needs of the average American house in 1956.
PRESENT
The solar industry would take off decades later, riding the revolution in semiconductor technology, with prices falling and performance soaring. Government subsidies in many countries, eager to nurture clean energy development, helped as well. Today, light-catching panels stretch across fields and deserts.
All computer technology stems from the transistor, the seemingly infinitely scalable nugget of hardware that is essentially an on-off electrical switch that powers digital technology. It was invented at Bell Labs, which licensed the technology to others, paving the way for today’s tech industry.
The versatile transistor can also boost signals by gating electrons and then releasing them.
1956
These transistors — seen on the face of a dime — were the tiniest in their day. The smaller the transistors, the more that can be packed on a chip, using less electricity and enabling faster, more powerful computers.
1950s
Improvements in transistor design led to mass production in the 1950s, helping inspire new products like the portable transistor radio.
1956
The transistor’s inventors — John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley — shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their creation.
1979
The technology continued to improve as a “computer on a chip” in the late 1970s. It was smaller than a fingernail and a few hundredths of an inch thick.
PRESENT
Today’s microscopic transistors animate the chips that go into our phones, computers and cars. The artificial intelligence boom is powered by chips of almost unimaginable scale. Jensen Huang, president of Nvidia, recently showed off the company’s new Rubin A.I. chip, with 336 billion transistors.
new video loaded: Protesters Clash with Federal Agents Outside ICE Detention Center in New Jersey
transcript
transcript
Protesters Clash with Federal Agents Outside ICE Detention Center in New Jersey
Protesters and immigration agents clashed outside Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, where activists have gathered for days to denounce conditions inside.
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“Get back!” “Get back, get back, get back, get back, get back!” [chanting] “ICE, ICE has got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho.” “We’ve heard repeatedly about these horror stories of pregnant women not getting access to care, of people with injuries not being treated. People shouldn’t have to starve themselves to make their dignity known.” “Down, down with the degradation.” “Down, down with the degradation.”
By Christina Kelso
May 28, 2026
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Ellen Hagan grew up in a small town in Kentucky, and moved to New York City as quickly as she could after she graduated from college. She arrived a few weeks before Sept. 11, and tried to get her bearings in a city turned upside down.
She found a group of fellow young artists and writers who wanted to take advantage of everything they could in the city, on very limited budgets. They went to poetry readings and dance parties, and rented tiny apartments in the East Village.
All the while, Ms. Hagan was diligent about saving money, even when she had very little of it.
“I didn’t know what I was saving for, but I knew I wasn’t going to have a job that would give me a pension,” she said. “I wanted to make enough money to live the New York existence I was dreaming of.”
Twenty-five years later, Ms. Hagan and her husband, David Flores, whom she started dating in her early years in New York, have much more money than they used to. Still, they feel more anxious about money than they hoped they would at this point in their lives.
The couple both work at DreamYard, a Bronx arts nonprofit. Last year, they made $178,135 there collectively, with Ms. Hagan, 47, directing the poetry and theater programs, and Mr. Flores, also 47, serving as the head of visual art and design.
They typically bring in another $40,000 to $60,000 a year through their freelance work. Mr. Flores is an adjunct professor, a photographer and a filmmaker, and Ms. Hagan teaches at a graduate writing program and writes books and poetry. They try to set aside about 15 percent of their income each year to grow their savings.
The couple live in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan with their two daughters, who are 12 and 15.
Homeownership Doesn’t Solve Everything
As a young couple, Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores lived in a 400-square-foot East Village rental. When their rent started to tick up, Ms. Hagan began looking for a place to buy, seeing homeownership as a buoy that would all but guarantee a secure financial life in New York.
Sixteen years ago, the couple found a perfect apartment in Washington Heights and scrambled to cobble together a down payment. They pooled their savings to put a 15 percent down payment on the $335,000 home. Once they closed, they were left with only a few hundred dollars in savings, but were thrilled and relieved.
“I had this sense that when you buy, you’re set in New York City,” Ms. Hagan said.
The reality, she has found, is more complicated.
The couple’s mortgage payment is $1,300 a month, and their maintenance fees keep rising, partially as a result of a new local law that requires increased inspections and repairs for buildings. Local Law 11 boosted their maintenance by $462 a month, at least temporarily, to about $1,900 total. And when the building’s management installed a new security system, each unit had to chip in $95 a month for three months.
Ms. Hagan loves the apartment, but she worries that they may eventually be priced out of their neighborhood.
“This building isn’t going to be for us at some point,” she said. “This feels like, uh oh, they’re imagining people who have much higher incomes than we do.”
Keeping the Kids Busy
Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores, who each maintain packed calendars, have encouraged their daughters to adopt the same approach to city living.
“I’m definitely a proponent of, let’s fill your schedule and see what you love,” Ms. Hagan said.
The girls’ public school offers free debate and band classes before and after school, and they’ll appear this spring in the school’s productions of “Annie” and “The Addams Family.”
The girls are also enrolled in a free theater academy at the People’s Theatre and writing workshops at Uptown Stories, which has a pay-what-you-can system. Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores typically pay the full tuition, which is $800 for each 12-week session, and donate about $2,500 a year to the organizations their daughters are part of.
The couple’s older daughter, Araceli, who wants to be both a writer and a doctor, is enrolled in a medical training program for middle and high school students. She made $2,500 for completing an internship at a cardiothoracic intensive care unit last summer.
Their younger daughter, Miriam, is going to a Y.M.C.A. camp this summer, which costs $2,600 for two weeks.
Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores spent about $500 total on holiday gifts for both girls, and the couple doles out their daughters’ weekly allowances in two installments: $25 on Mondays and $25 on Fridays.
They shook their heads when Miriam, who is known as the most stylish member of the family, came home one day wearing a Dr Pepper T-shirt she’d bought at Target.
“We were like, ‘What are you doing with your money?’” Ms. Hagan said.
The Fun Stuff
The extra income from the couple’s freelance work allows the family to splurge on theater, vacations, books and memberships at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Sometimes, Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores work together. A few years ago, they sold a young adult novel called “Tell Me Every Lie” they had co-written for a $35,000 advance, some of which went to their agent.
Every little bit helps. The family is spending a weekend on Long Beach Island in New Jersey this summer, which will cost about $3,500. That price tag includes a hotel room big enough for four.
The family typically travels twice a year to Kentucky, where both Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores are from, and where the couple co-owns a home in Louisville with Mr. Flores’s parents. They put $40,000 down and spend about $12,000 annually on expenses related to the home.
The family was hoping to travel to the Philippines this year, where Mr. Flores’s father is from, but they realized it could cost as much as $15,000. The trip is now on hold indefinitely.
They spend about $700 a month on groceries from nearby supermarkets, and occasionally order grocery deliveries from FreshDirect.
Every Wednesday, when the girls come home late from theater class, someone picks up dinner at the nearby halal truck or the Dominican restaurant Malecon, which usually runs about $60.
Dinner out as a family of four can easily cost $200, so Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores typically eat at restaurants just once or twice a month. The other night, the whole family was hungry and craved Italian food from a favorite upscale spot nearby.
They balked, and walked around the corner to a diner instead. The meal was $120, all in.
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a Democrat who has clashed with the Trump administration over immigration policies, joined protests outside a detention center in Newark on Monday in support of detainees participating in a hunger strike.
Ms. Sherrill heard from family members of detainees, who have complained about rotten and spoiled food and inadequate medical care at Delaney Hall. Dozens of protesters waved signs, banged on drums, and chanted “Free Them All!” The governor told the crowd she had requested access but was denied.
“No matter what your immigration status is, you shouldn’t be treated with anything less than dignity in this country,” said Ms. Sherrill, who was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and blue-gray jacket on the Memorial Day holiday. At one point, she rested her hand on the shoulder of a crying relative and smoothed the hair of an upset child.
After the governor left, the scene worsened outside the detention facility. A tense standoff erupted between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and protesters who blocked an entrance; the agents responded by firing pepper balls and spray at the protesters. Senator Andy Kim, who was trying to de-escalate the situation, was among those affected.
On Monday, the governor and other elected officials, including Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark, appeared outside Delaney Hall amid growing concerns over the hunger strike, which started on Friday inside the gray, cinder-block building enclosed by a high chain link fence topped with razor wire.
Immigration advocates have rallied outside Delaney Hall since Friday. Detainees said they would go on a hunger and labor strike while calling for an investigation of the detention center and its operations and for Ms. Sherrill to visit to discuss protections from ICE. Hundreds of detainees were participating, one protester told Ms. Sherrill.
The governor said in a statement on Sunday that she had contacted ICE to gain access to the detention center and was working to monitor the situation and “do what’s necessary to ensure humane conditions.”
At Monday’s protest, some protesters shouted in Ms. Sherrill’s face to criticize her for not showing up earlier in the weekend, like other elected officials had.
Representative Rob Menendez of New Jersey had arrived at 8 p.m. on Sunday and stayed all night until he was allowed into the center on Monday morning. Mr. Menendez said that he had spoken to some of the detainees inside Delaney Hall, including a young woman who just wanted to go to her high school graduation, a pregnant woman who was trying to get medical care, and a man who showed him a carton of milk that had gone rancid.
“I heard just desperation from so many people in there,” Mr. Menendez said afterward.
Angela Martinez told Ms. Sherrill that her cousin, Bolivar Bueno, 65, has diabetes and that she hasn’t been able to speak to him to make sure he is getting medication. “We don’t know what’s going on,” she told the governor.
Afterward, Ms. Martinez said, “I want for her to help me out.”
Ms. Sherrill left after about an hour, around 11:30 a.m., as some demonstrators jeered at her. Her security had to clear the road of a couple people who tried to stop her S.U.V. from leaving.
A few hours later, a convoy of ICE vehicles approached another entrance on the south side of Delaney Hall. Protesters, who had rallied at the north entrance in the morning, ran over to sit down in front of the vehicles. Many said they feared that the detainees on hunger strike inside would be transferred to other facilities.
ICE agents — most of whom were wearing face masks — pushed and shoved the protesters out of the way, even dragging one young man by a kaffiyeh around his neck. As the protesters chanted “Trump Has To Go,” they linked arms and faced the ICE agents.
The standoff prevented anyone from leaving through the south entrance. Soon after, a military-style vehicle moved toward that entrance, with a man on top holding a firearm pointed at demonstrators.
Senator Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, who had been allowed inside Delaney Hall, came out during the confrontation and walked over to support the protesters. Soon afterward, the ICE agents and military vehicles backed away from the entrance and slightly retreated toward to the detention center, but the standoff continued.
“They provoked it, they brought that tank over,” Mr. Kim said. “It’s getting worse and worse here.”
The senator said he was working to “de-escalate” the standoff through negotiations with federal officials and would push for families to be allowed to visit detainees as early as Tuesday. “I’m going to keep at it,” he said.
Not long after, the standoff escalated with ICE agents using pepper balls and mace on the crowd.
It’s not the first time Delaney Hall has faced protests. In June 2025, four men escaped from the detention center after days of unrest over meager and sporadic meals and overcrowding that forced some detainees to sleep on the floor. Detainees had smashed windows, doors and security cameras.
And Mr. Baraka, the Newark mayor, was arrested in May 2025 during a clash with federal agents outside its gates last year.
Dakota Santiago contributed reporting.
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