Lucent Technologies

Alcatel-Lucent was formed when Alcatel (originally short for the Société Alsacienne de Constructions Atomiques, de Télécommunications et d'Électronique, a small company in Mulhouse absorbed by CGE in 1966) merged with Lucent Technologies on 1 December 2006. However, the predecessors of the company have been a part of telecommunications industry since the late 19th century. The company has roots in two early telecommunications companies: La Compagnie Générale d'Électricité (CGE) and the Western Electric Manufacturing Company.

Western Electric began in 1869 when Elisha Gray and Enos N. Barton started a manufacturing firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, US. By 1880, the company had relocated to Chicago, Illinois, and become the largest electrical manufacturing company in the United States. In 1881, the American Bell Telephone Company, founded by Alexander Graham Bell and forerunner of American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), purchased a controlling interest in Western Electric and made it the exclusive developer and manufacturer of equipment for the Bell telephone companies.

CGE was formed in 1898 by French engineer Pierre Azaria in the Alsace region of what was then Germany and was a conglomerate involved in industries such as electricity, transportation, electronics and telecommunications. CGE would become a leader in digital communications and would also be known for building the TGV (train à grande vitesse) high-speed trains in France.

Bell Telephone Laboratories was created in 1925 from the consolidation of the R&D organizations of Western Electric and AT&T. Bell Labs would make significant scientific advances including the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, the digital signal processor chip, the Unix operating system and the cellular concept of mobile telephone service. Bell Labs researchers have won 7 Nobel Prizes.

Also in 1925, Western Electric sold its International Western Electric Company subsidiary to ITT Corporation. CGE purchased ITT's telecommunications division in the mid-1980s.

AT&T re-entered the European telecommunications market in 1984 following the Bell System divestiture. Philips promoted the venture in part because its PRX public switching technology was aging, and it sought a partner to help fund the development costs of digital switching. …

The company's global headquarters (now a Nokia office) was in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It had previous head offices in the 7th arrondissement and 8th arrondissement of Paris, France. Its previous head office, in the 8th arrondissement, was built between 1912 and 1929 and was renovated in 1998. During the renovation, the building was decorated with materials on the theme of the cosmos and time.

There were regional groups for the Americas, Asia Pacific & China, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. Middle East and Africa Headquarters were at Smart Village, Giza, Egypt. Alcatel was present in Italy with various research centers: Vimercate (in Lombardy), Rieti, Battipaglia, Trieste, Genova, Bari, Naples, Rome and Sesto Fiorentino; by 2014, their presence was only in Vimercate, Trieste and Rome.

The Core Networking segment included three business divisions: IP Routing, IP Transport and IP Platforms. The Access segment included 4 business divisions: Wireless, Fixed Access, Licensing and Managed Services.

Bell Labs was Alcatel-Lucent's research and development (R & D) organization.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first patent for the telephone, and subsequently started AT&T. Bell Labs is named in his honor.

In 1937, Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter. His fundamental work is part of the foundation for much of today's solid-state electronics.

In 1947, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, William Shockley of Bell Labs invented the transistor. In 1956, they received a Nobel Prize for their invention. The transistor led to an electronics revolution during the post-war boom. The transition from vacuum tubes to transistors enabled all technologies to be built on a smaller scale and use less electricity. Items that before required large dedicated spaces, could now fit into a home or even on a kitchen counter.

In 1954, Gerald Pearson, Darryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller invented the solar cell. Telstar, the first active communications satellite also developed by Bell Labs and launched in 1962, used these solar cell batteries as an external renewable source of power once launched. It was the first to carry live television over water, between England and the US.

In the late 1950s, Charles Townes and Arthur Shawlow of Bell Labs invented the laser, which has numerous applications, including measuring/cutting in the manufacturing industry and research/surgery in the medical industry. Bell Labs was awarded the laser patent in 1960.

In 1964, Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.

In 1969, Dennis Ritchie and a team of Bell Labs employees invented the UNIX operating system and the C programming language.

In 2006, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith were awarded the National Academy of Engineering prize, for work on charge-coupled devices which transform patterns of light into useful digital information. In 2009, they received a Nobel Prize for their invention. The device is widely used in digital cameras, video cameras and modern astronomy.

In 2013, there was a Net R&D investment of €2.3 billion (approx. 16% of sales). There are more than 32,000 active patents, more than 3,000 obtained in 2013, and 14,900 pending patent applications.

Alcatel-Lucent was selected by MIT Technology Review in its 2012 TR50 List of the World's Most Innovative Companies. The magazine recognized Alcatel-Lucent lightRadio as a "key innovation". Also in 2012, Alcatel-Lucent won the Mobile World Congress Best Infrastructure Technology Award for the lightRadio Network.

In 2014, the company was named Industry Group Leader in the Technology Hardware & Equipment sector in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices review, and was listed in the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators for the fourth consecutive year.