AT&T Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, New Jersey, is quite the legend. Formed in 1925, Bell Labs used to be one of the richest and largest private communications lab in the in the world. The lab's scientific fraternity represents an esteemed Who's Who of international research: William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen invented the transistor in 1947; Anro Penzias and Robert Wilson confirmed the big bang theory in 1965; and Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson developed Unix in 1969.
In October 1996, Bell Labs split into the AT&T Laboratories Research Division (owned by AT&T) and Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Innovations (fully owned by Lucent Technologies).
Thanks to Wired for the history of innovators at Bell Labs.