Bell-Northern Research
Encyclopedia
Bell-Northern Research was a telecommunications research and development
organizations jointly owned by Bell Canada
and Northern Telecom. BNR was absorbed into Nortel Networks when that company changed its name from Northern Telecom in the mid-1990s.
BNR was based in Ottawa
, Ontario
, Canada
, with campuses at locations around the world, including Research Triangle Park
, North Carolina
; Richardson
, Texas
; and Maidenhead
, United Kingdom
. Bell-Northern Research pioneered the development of digital technology, and created the first practical digital PBX, (SL1), and central office (DMS
). Under the direction of then Nortel Chief Officer, John Roth, BNR lost its separate identity in the 1990s, and was folded into the Nortel R&D organization.
.
in the US.
In 1949, the United States Justice department attempted to force AT&T
to divest itself of its Western Electric
subsidiary. As a result of this legal action, Western Electric sold its shares in Northern Electric to Bell Canada.
In 1957, Northern Electric started its own research and development labs in Belleville, Ontario
. Two years later, Northern Electric created the Northern Electric Research and Development Laboratories in Ottawa
.
BNR's researchers pioneered the view that a telephone switch (PBX or Central Office) was best regarded as a special form of real-time computer
, a view that was considered to be highly innovative in the 1970s. Although George Stibitz
had foreseen this evolution at AT&T
in the 1930s, subsequent generations of engineer
s, prior to the 1970s, regarded the switch as a piece of hardware, best hard-wired, to handle the basic telephone call
where two parties connect, speak and hang up.
In the 1960s, however, this view was coming under a great deal of strain. Increasingly, telephone users wanted to conference call
, forward, and record voice greetings, so common today. Such features required more flexibility in the controller, leading to the development of computer-controlled switching machines, notably the Bell Labs − Western Electric 1ESS. These early machines still had an analog, usually electromechanical switching matrix because the technology of the time did not permit the cost-effective dedication of a filter-codec to each subscriber. (Transmission systems had already gone digital, for example the D4 carrier system.)
Northern Electric introduced its first electronic central office system in 1969 with the SP1. The SP1 had a fully computer-based electronic control system, thus the name "SP," short for "stored program." Its switching matrix was still electromechanical. Rather than the reed relay matrix of the 1ESS, it used the minibar, a version of the crossbar switch.
BNR was, with Northern Telecom
, a part owner of MicroSystems International
a semiconductor manufacturer based in Kanata, outside Ottawa.
The SP-1 design was superseded by the DMS-100
central office switch and other members of the DMS family of products (DMS: digital multiplex switch). DMS extended the technology by fully integrating switching and transmission. This was a major advance that changed the way systems were built.
BNR's products were architecturally based on Complex Instruction Set
(CISC
) architecture
s prevalent in the 1970s, and on a series of underlying technologies. This was greatly influenced by the late 1970s success of the DEC VAX
computer, a highly "elegant" and rather layered technology, realizable in a range of power. In the early 1990s, under Nortel CEO Jean Monty, the software for the flagship DMS product was segmented into layers ('Base', 'Telecom', and 'IEC' or Inter-Exchange Carrier) to improve maintainability of the product. The IEC layers were customer-specific, targeted towards Sprint, MCI, and a large group of small "United Carrier" companies that were subsequently swallowed up by Worldcom. Once the IEC layer was established, customer-specific releases could occur quarterly, whereas Telecom and Base programming was for baked-in code that only had infrequent, maintenance updates.
lab introduced Meridian Mail
in the 1980s, which went on to be a very successful product and forced the introduction of similar products from other telephony vendors. They later added automatic call distribution and other similar services.
At its zenith in the early 1980s, when it opened R&D centers in Mountain View
, and later in Research Triangle Park
and Richardson, Texas
, BNR's notable American
employees included Whitfield Diffie
, a noted authority on cryptography
, and Bob Gaskins, who invented PowerPoint
at BNR, using new bit-mapped
displays to make presentations to management.
As part of its internal IT infrastructure, BNR also created an email system called COCOS (COrporate COmmunication System), and a powerful relational database system called GERM (General Entity-Relationship Model).
BNR also had labs in Maidenhead
, England, Montreal
, Quebec, Wollongong, Australia, and Tokyo
, Japan; as well as Atlanta, Georgia and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
, which occurred after aggressive spending on acquisitions and hiring under CEO John Roth, required Nortel to trim its workforce from 96,000 to 35,000 people (as of 2006).
Research and development
The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...
organizations jointly owned by Bell Canada
Bell Canada
Bell Canada is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Including its subsidiaries such as Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for telephone and DSL Internet services in most of Canada east of Manitoba and in the northern territories,...
and Northern Telecom. BNR was absorbed into Nortel Networks when that company changed its name from Northern Telecom in the mid-1990s.
BNR was based in Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, with campuses at locations around the world, including Research Triangle Park
Research Triangle Park
The Research Triangle Park is a research park in the United States. It is located near Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
; Richardson
Richardson, Texas
Richardson is a city in Dallas and Collin Counties in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 99,223. In 2011 the population was estimated to be 107,684. Richardson is an affluent inner suburb of Dallas and home of the Telecom Corridor with a high...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
; and Maidenhead
Maidenhead
Maidenhead is a town and unparished area within the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in Berkshire, England. It lies on the River Thames and is situated west of Charing Cross in London.-History:...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Bell-Northern Research pioneered the development of digital technology, and created the first practical digital PBX, (SL1), and central office (DMS
Digital Multiplex System
Digital Multiplex System is the name shared among several different telephony product lines from Nortel Networks for wireline and wireless operators...
). Under the direction of then Nortel Chief Officer, John Roth, BNR lost its separate identity in the 1990s, and was folded into the Nortel R&D organization.
History
For much of its early history, Bell Canada was an operating division of Bell in the United States. Development and manufacturing of their various telephony products generally took place in the US, and then, to avoid duty, were manufactured in Canada at their Northern Electric subsidiary (which would later become Nortel Networks), the Canadian analog to the US Western ElectricWestern Electric
Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
.
Pre-1970s
Northern Electric spun off a subsidiary in 1934, Dominion Sound Equipment, originally to develop equipment for sound in movies. Over time, the division evolved in an attempt to use its design talent and manufacturing ability on third party projects. In 1937, this aspect became the Special Products Division. For many years the SPD was used as Bell Canada's R&D arm, although as before, most telephony designs were created at Bell LabsBell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
in the US.
In 1949, the United States Justice department attempted to force AT&T
American Telephone & Telegraph
AT&T Corp., originally American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American telecommunications company that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. AT&T is the oldest telecommunications company...
to divest itself of its Western Electric
Western Electric
Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
subsidiary. As a result of this legal action, Western Electric sold its shares in Northern Electric to Bell Canada.
In 1957, Northern Electric started its own research and development labs in Belleville, Ontario
Belleville, Ontario
Belleville is a city located at the mouth of the Moira River on the Bay of Quinte in Southern Ontario, Canada, in the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor. It is the seat of Hastings County, but is politically independent of it. and the centre of the Bay of Quinte Region...
. Two years later, Northern Electric created the Northern Electric Research and Development Laboratories in Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
.
1970s
In 1971, Bell Canada and Northern Electric combined their R&D organizations and formed Bell-Northern Research.BNR's researchers pioneered the view that a telephone switch (PBX or Central Office) was best regarded as a special form of real-time computer
Real-time computing
In computer science, real-time computing , or reactive computing, is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints...
, a view that was considered to be highly innovative in the 1970s. Although George Stibitz
George Stibitz
George Robert Stibitz is internationally recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer...
had foreseen this evolution at AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
in the 1930s, subsequent generations of engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
s, prior to the 1970s, regarded the switch as a piece of hardware, best hard-wired, to handle the basic telephone call
Telephone call
A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network between the calling party and the called party.-Information transmission:A telephone call may carry ordinary voice transmission using a telephone, data transmission when the calling party and called party are using modems, or facsimile...
where two parties connect, speak and hang up.
In the 1960s, however, this view was coming under a great deal of strain. Increasingly, telephone users wanted to conference call
Conference call
A conference call is a telephone call in which the calling party wishes to have more than one called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference calls may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party...
, forward, and record voice greetings, so common today. Such features required more flexibility in the controller, leading to the development of computer-controlled switching machines, notably the Bell Labs − Western Electric 1ESS. These early machines still had an analog, usually electromechanical switching matrix because the technology of the time did not permit the cost-effective dedication of a filter-codec to each subscriber. (Transmission systems had already gone digital, for example the D4 carrier system.)
Northern Electric introduced its first electronic central office system in 1969 with the SP1. The SP1 had a fully computer-based electronic control system, thus the name "SP," short for "stored program." Its switching matrix was still electromechanical. Rather than the reed relay matrix of the 1ESS, it used the minibar, a version of the crossbar switch.
BNR was, with Northern Telecom
Nortel
Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly known as Northern Telecom Limited and sometimes known simply as Nortel, was a multinational telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada...
, a part owner of MicroSystems International
MicroSystems International
Microsystems International Limited was a telecommunications microelectronics company based in Ottawa, founded in 1969. MIL was an early attempt to create a merchant semiconductor house by Nortel Networks...
a semiconductor manufacturer based in Kanata, outside Ottawa.
The Digital Switch
BNR introduced the Meridian SL-1 in 1975, the world's first all-digital PABX aimed at medium sized businesses. The SL-1 was fully digital in both control and switching. As such the SL-1 was smaller, much more reliable, and offered many more features than an equivalent electromechanical system. The SL-1 design evolved into Meridian-1, and subsequently the CS1000x as Nortel's private network (or enterprise) flagship offering.The SP-1 design was superseded by the DMS-100
DMS-100
The DMS-100 Switch is a line of Digital Multiplex System telephone exchange switches manufactured by Nortel Networks.The purpose of the DMS-100 Switch is to provide local service and connections to the PSTN public telephone network. It is designed to deliver services over subscribers' telephone...
central office switch and other members of the DMS family of products (DMS: digital multiplex switch). DMS extended the technology by fully integrating switching and transmission. This was a major advance that changed the way systems were built.
BNR's products were architecturally based on Complex Instruction Set
Complex instruction set computer
A complex instruction set computer , is a computer where single instructions can execute several low-level operations and/or are capable of multi-step operations or addressing modes within single instructions...
(CISC
Complex instruction set computer
A complex instruction set computer , is a computer where single instructions can execute several low-level operations and/or are capable of multi-step operations or addressing modes within single instructions...
) architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
s prevalent in the 1970s, and on a series of underlying technologies. This was greatly influenced by the late 1970s success of the DEC VAX
VAX
VAX was an instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC's various Programmed Data Processor ISAs...
computer, a highly "elegant" and rather layered technology, realizable in a range of power. In the early 1990s, under Nortel CEO Jean Monty, the software for the flagship DMS product was segmented into layers ('Base', 'Telecom', and 'IEC' or Inter-Exchange Carrier) to improve maintainability of the product. The IEC layers were customer-specific, targeted towards Sprint, MCI, and a large group of small "United Carrier" companies that were subsequently swallowed up by Worldcom. Once the IEC layer was established, customer-specific releases could occur quarterly, whereas Telecom and Base programming was for baked-in code that only had infrequent, maintenance updates.
1980s
Through the 1980s attention turned from pure hardware to software development. The BNR TorontoToronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
lab introduced Meridian Mail
Meridian Mail
Meridian Mail was one of the early all-digital voicemail systems, running on Meridian Norstar digital PBX systems from Northern Telecom ....
in the 1980s, which went on to be a very successful product and forced the introduction of similar products from other telephony vendors. They later added automatic call distribution and other similar services.
At its zenith in the early 1980s, when it opened R&D centers in Mountain View
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
, and later in Research Triangle Park
Research Triangle Park
The Research Triangle Park is a research park in the United States. It is located near Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina...
and Richardson, Texas
Richardson, Texas
Richardson is a city in Dallas and Collin Counties in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 99,223. In 2011 the population was estimated to be 107,684. Richardson is an affluent inner suburb of Dallas and home of the Telecom Corridor with a high...
, BNR's notable American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
employees included Whitfield Diffie
Whitfield Diffie
Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie is an American cryptographer and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography.Diffie and Martin Hellman's paper New Directions in Cryptography was published in 1976...
, a noted authority on cryptography
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
, and Bob Gaskins, who invented PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a non-free commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system...
at BNR, using new bit-mapped
Raster graphics
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
displays to make presentations to management.
As part of its internal IT infrastructure, BNR also created an email system called COCOS (COrporate COmmunication System), and a powerful relational database system called GERM (General Entity-Relationship Model).
BNR also had labs in Maidenhead
Maidenhead
Maidenhead is a town and unparished area within the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in Berkshire, England. It lies on the River Thames and is situated west of Charing Cross in London.-History:...
, England, Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec, Wollongong, Australia, and Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Japan; as well as Atlanta, Georgia and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
1990s
With the formation of Bell Canada Enterprises (later shortened to BCE) in 1983 as the parent company of Bell Canada and Northern Telecom, BNR in Canada was jointly owned 50-50 by Bell Canada and Nortel. Nortel assumed a majority share in BNR in 1996, and BNR was gradually folded into Nortel, which acquired the remainder of BNR when BCE divested itself of Nortel. Unfortunately, the collapse in demand for Nortel products in the wake of the bursting of the dot-com bubbleDot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
, which occurred after aggressive spending on acquisitions and hiring under CEO John Roth, required Nortel to trim its workforce from 96,000 to 35,000 people (as of 2006).
See also
- Nortel Networks
- Bell CanadaBell CanadaBell Canada is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Including its subsidiaries such as Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for telephone and DSL Internet services in most of Canada east of Manitoba and in the northern territories,...
- Nortel Retirees and former employees Protection Canada (NRPC)