<P> In 1952, William Gardner Pfann revealed the method of zone melting which enabled semiconductor purification and level doping . </P> <P> The 1950s also saw developmental activity based upon information theory . The central development was binary code systems . Efforts concentrated more precisely on the Laboratories' prime mission of supporting the Bell System with engineering advances including N - carrier, TD Microwave radio relay, Direct Distance Dialing, E-repeaters, Wire spring relays, and improved switching systems . Maurice Karnaugh, in 1953, developed the Karnaugh map as a tool to facilitate management of Boolean algebraic expressions . In 1954, the first modern solar cell was invented at Bell Laboratories . As for the spectacular side of the business, in 1956 TAT - 1, the first transatlantic telephone cable was laid between Scotland and Newfoundland, in a joint effort by AT&T, Bell Laboratories, and British and Canadian telephone companies . A year later, in 1957, MUSIC, one of the first computer programs to play electronic music, was created by Max Mathews . New greedy algorithms developed by Robert C. Prim and Joseph Kruskal, revolutionized computer network design . In 1958, the laser was first described, in a technical paper by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes . </P> <P> In December 1960, Ali Javan and his associates William Bennett and Donald Heriot successfully operated the first gas laser, the first continuous - light laser, operating at an unprecedented accuracy and color purity . Also in 1960, Dawon Kahng and Martin Atalla invented the metal oxide semiconductor field - effect transistor (MOSFET); the MOSFET has achieved electronic hegemony and sustains the large - scale integrated circuits (LSIs) underlying today's information society . In 1962, the electret microphone was invented by Gerhard M. Sessler and James Edward Maceo West . Also in 1962, John R. Pierce's vision of communications satellites was realized by the launch of Telstar . In 1964, the Carbon dioxide laser was invented by Kumar Patel . In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 . Frank W. Sinden, Edward E. Zajac, Kenneth C. Knowlton, and A. Michael Noll made computer - animated movies during the early to mid-1960s . Ken C. Knowlton invented the computer animation language BEFLIX . The first digital computer art was created in 1962 by Noll . In 1966, Orthogonal frequency - division multiplexing (OFDM), a key technology in wireless services, was developed and patented by R.W. Chang . In 1968, Molecular beam epitaxy was developed by J.R. Arthur and A.Y. Cho; molecular beam epitaxy allows semiconductor chips and laser matrices to be manufactured one atomic layer at a time . In 1969, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson created the computer operating system UNIX for the support of telecommunication switching systems as well as general purpose computing . From 1969 to 1971, Aaron Marcus, the first graphic designer involved with computer graphics, researched, designed, and programmed a prototype interactive page - layout system for the Picturephone . In 1969, the charge - coupled device (CCD) was invented by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009 . In the 1960s, the New York City site was sold and became the Westbeth Artists Community complex . </P> <P> The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer - related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the personal computing revolution . In 1972, Dennis Ritchie developed the compiled programming language C as a replacement for the interpreted language B which was then used in a worse is better rewrite of UNIX . Also, the language AWK was designed and implemented by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories . </P>

Operating system developed in 1969 at at&t's bell laboratories