🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2/2/2018 6:39 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 15:47:33 -0500, Andreas Kohlbach
> <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 1 Feb 2018 17:07:51 -0800 (PST), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, Xerox said that, after 115 years as an independent
>>> business, it would combine operations with Fujifilm Holdings of
>>> Japan. The deal signaled the end of a company that was once an
>>> American corporate powerhouse. “Xerox is the poster child for
>>> monopoly technology businesses that cannot make the transition
>>> to a new generation of technology,” said David B. Yoffie, a
>>> professor at the Harvard Business School. The move offers a
>>> stark reminder that no matter how high a company may fly, it
>>> is still vulnerable to the next big breakthrough. Xerox joins
>>> once formidable tech companies like Kodak and BlackBerry that
>>> lost the innovation footrace.
>>>
>>> full article at:
>>> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/business/dealbook/xerox-fujifilm.html
>>
>> Sad. Many great US pioneers in computer technology were recently sold to
>> foreigners. Bell Labs became French (Alcatel-Lucent) in 2006, now Finnish
>> (Nokia). They're all finished. :-(
> 
> Bell Labs was killed in 1984.  It took a long time to die but that's
> when the knife went in.  I like to believe that there is a special
> Hell for all the lawyers involved in that action.
> 

Most of Bell Labs was sold to SAIC. Lucent ended up with a small part of 
it (and maybe the name).

From: http://techblog.comsoc.org/category/uncategorized/page/64/

______________

A History Lesson

As part of the divestiture of the Bell System in 1983, many AT&T Bells 
Labs engineers were transfered to a new company that was to be the 
research labs for the seven spun-off RBOCs.  Named Bell Communications 
Research- or Bellcore for short- the organization was formed January 
1,1984.  Over the next several years, Bellcore was very effective in 
helping their parent companies evaluate, standardize and arcitect new 
telecommunications technologies, e.g. ISDN, SMDS,  Frame Relay, Software 
Defined Network, Intelligent Network, etc.  Bellcore’s standards for TL1 
– the language of telco network management, and SONET (Synchronous 
Optical Network Transport) were implemented by every equipment company 
in those market segments.

But as the RBOCs put less of an emphasis on research and developement 
there was less need for Bellcore.  So the company was sold to Science 
Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1995.  What SAIC was 
getting, according to Bellcore’s CEO at the time, was a $650 
million-a-year software business and a $350 million-a-year professional 
services business. The approval process for the deal was arduous, 
passing muster with seven owners and nine state regulatory agencies, so 
that the sale was not completed until November 1997.

...
______________

I believe that SAIC also got the right to use all of Bell Lab's patents.


The other reason I know is that I bought a few hundred cheap shares in 
Lucent because they said they owned Bell Labs. That was when Lucent 
still seemed to a viable company.

After I bought the stock I became suspicious of Lucent's claim and 
contacted Lucent's banker who admitted that most of Bell Labs had been 
sold to SAIC.

Later, Lucent merged with Alcatel which was also a failing company. The 
combination of the two failing companies resulted in a larger (for 
awhile) failing company.

With the merger with Nokia it became a larger (for awhile) failing company.

In 2013 Nokia sold its mobile devices division to Microsoft:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/03/01/nokias-comeback-explained-historic-phone-company-suddenly-making-android-phones/

Its a real mess now.