Bell Labs Exiting Murray Hill, NJ

[segaloco]

https://www.roi-nj.com/2023/12/08/real_estate/nokia-bell-labs-is-moving-to-helix-in-new-brunswick/

Nokia is moving Bell Labs to New Brunswick from Murray Hill.  Among countless other innovations, UNIX was born in 1969 at Murray Hill and continued gestation there for many years until becoming the hydra it is today.  Yeah, there was this thing called a transistor too, might've turned a few heads.

Anywho, the historian in me hopes that they'll be thorough in their sweep of the premises but the pessimist in me says something important is going to be lost to history.  In any case, the end of an era in some ways, although change is an ever fluid thing.  It brought an interesting thought to my mind too, what with more and more remote work these days, that also translates to less long term accumulation of ephemera of peoples work in the same building.  I wonder how that will translate into lost history as time goes on, or if the digital nature of modern communications more than makes up for that.

[Stormcrash]

Very sad news! The Murray Hill labs are both historic and iconic. Hope they don't sit idle for decades like Holmdel did and hope whatever future use the site finds honors its heritage