The Bell Labs of decades ago was well recognized as a national treasure for its pioneering innovations and its creation of new knowledge. However, the breakup of the Bell System that occurred in 1984 resulted in considerable change for research and development in telecommunication. This paper...

Picturephone service -- a two-way, switched, video telephone system -- was developed and marketed by AT&T in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The market did not respond to the service offering, and the service was withdrawn -- in other words, picturephone service was a market failure, although...

Divestiture of the US Bell System in 1984 caused concern about the future of research and development activities conducted at Bell Labs. This article 4describes the history of R&D in the Bell System, and in the organizations which have been formed since divestiture, and looks at likely future...

Within the last few years videotex has attracted considerable attention. Unfortunately, but as frequently is the case with novel services that are still evolving, a precise definition of videotex is somewhat difficult to obtain. To some people the term videotex applies to a wide variety of...