Bell Laboratories/Definition

an R&D group, dating from ~1925, formed to create products for the Bell telephone company in the U.S.; by the early 1980s employed more than 330,000 technologists and had made many key advances in technology, but in 1983 broken up by government fiat to break its monopoly on telephone services; much smaller version still exists, centered in Murray Hill, NJ, and owned by Nokia Corporation after having changed hands multiple times since the 1983 divestiture.