Bell Labs Holmdel Complex

It's funny, I instantly recognized that iconic atrium when they used it in Severance and my poor wife had to suffer through an explanation of the history of Bell Labs when she was just trying to watch her TV show.

It’s great that it became a part of the show Severance but I personally just think it’s awesome that they found a use for it these days.

So many office buildings sit and rot because they are just too big and there are no viable uses for them outside of well: being office buildings.

Some might recognise the building from Apple's Severance, here's a great recent video about the building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEP9HMcptok

I had a chance to visit a couple of times. Once during the heyday of Bell labs, which was magnificent. Then, later, after the AT&T break up when the whole place was down at the heels. IIRC was for a meeting about a DSP architecture that an under-resourced team had come up with that had a guaranteed throughput architecture, instead of the usual RTOS-like DSP OS. It felt like a last gasp of innovation.

The scale of it is stupendous. It looks like a normal building at a distance but when you get up close, it hits you. I wasn't optimistic about it being repurposed because who needs that big of a building. It's heartening that it was put to good use.

Bell Labs used to host regular (monthly?) talks that were open to the public.

My mom took me to a couple in high school and they were GREAT!

You got to hear presentations from researchers, actually try out demos of certain projects etc.

My favorite was a guy demoing voice recognition that went something like:

System: "Please say what call you are trying to make"

Researcher:

"Mary had a little lamb it's fleece was white as snow collect and every where that Mary went the lamb was sure to go"

System:

"You have selected a collect call"

Pretty mind blowing stuff back in the 1996.

The elliptical road design is interesting as there is no need for T-junctions or traffic lights. Two large ellipses running in opposite directions connected by semi-circular off/on ramps so you only need to merge and not stop.

I just got into severance and wondered where the Lumon building was set. Interesting building. Reminds me of back in the day when I commuted to a suburban office park.