It's not immediately clear to me from the article, but this is the city of New Brunswick, NJ, USA, domain makes more sense now. It's not New Brunswick a Canadian province which I first thought of.
Was confused as well, and thought what an interesting idea, to do advanced research in he middle of nowhere like that. New Brunswick Canada doesn’t figure in the popular imagination at all other than as the family fief of an industrial fortune, like if the Waltons operated Arkansas as a kingdom. Why not build an Arcadian research campus that far from everywhere?
Take some equity in the results to fund it, do some skunkworks projects, keep it out of the press and politics and away from bureaucracy. Sounds ideal.
On the public side of things, this essentially describes the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which was itself born out of the Hanford Site and its attendant plutonium-specific Manhattan Project-related research needs... took a town of 300 people which ballooned up to 25,000, essentially operating as an Army town in service of the Manhattan Project.
Yep same. Took me a while reading this to realize this is not New Brunswick, the province in Canada.... Had me scratching head (of course it isn't but confused if they were leaving new jersey state or what).
I love when local news tv station websites just say “KXYZ” all over the header and footer and whatnot, and never clearly mention which city and state they are in.
And every single one does this from what I have seen. I have to search the KXYZ to find out which city it is.
Irreverent story: cast members at Disney parks show a hometown on their name tags. On my first trip to Disneyland, I'm very glad my shyness prevented me from asking the random teenager what part of the province they were from.
i think most people know that ontario airport is not in ontario, because the airports that are actually in ontario are better known and not called "ontario airport".
just like most people would understand that if you said "london international airport, airport code CXYU" you probably don't mean heathrow.
Oh do come on! There are loads of towns, cities, hamlets, villages, bergs, burys ... etc that have the same name in many places.
It doesn't help putting New on the front to differentiate either. Its not as though we do that here in the UK either (much): Newton Abbot, Newcastle, New Forest, New Market. I drive through a Newtown on the A303 in the Blackdown hills. Oh, perhaps we do.
Here in the UK, I believe Whitchurch is the most often seen name for a collection of habitation structures (best I can do at the moment). We very rarely have white churches - so I have no idea what that is all about. Perhaps the Whit- is actually wit: "wise/clever" cf: witten and whist.
The first Brunswick was probably in Germany. -wick and similar are a common place suffix in English, German and Dutch (ie the Germanic languages) for a farm or market place. Ipswitch, for example, was once known as gipeswic. Norwich is a northern wick (cf Norvik)
There are only three New Brunswicks in the world, one Canadian Province (American: state, European: Country) - the default Wiki match for "New Brunswick"[0], and two American towns (56k New Jersey, and an unrecorded number in Indiana).
There are many places called Brunswick[1]. Brunswick is indeed from Germany, in honour of George III established in 1784[2]. Yes, your town of forked river/Gifle has a street name origin for the same reason, but it wasn't complete until at least 60 years later, and was originally named New France Street[3].
Bit of a miss on Whitchurch, ringing in with only 14[4] uses in the world, while Newtown[5] can be found 80 in places, excluding variants like Sturminster just down the road from you[6].
Mr Big Bang ... Whitchurch has rather a lot of spellings. Also, relying on WP for all your references rarely works well.
My reference to Whitchurch was UK exclusive in context but there are quite a few in AUS, NZ, CA, US, SA and others.
I'm not sure why you conflate Sturmister Newton with a bog standard Newton. You'll be calling Newton Abbot a Newton next (I went to school there for a while). We have Newtons and Newhams and that pouring out all over the place here but they are largely unremarkable in this discussion because it is effectively a suffix or prefix associated with the real moniker. Sturminster -, - Abbot etc.
On the other hand a White Church generally is just that - a white church. However, some if not most are associated with wit as in wise and not the colour white. Also Church might be Kirk (Scotland) or Chapel (Welsh) and a lot of other spellings too.
I appreciate your research on WP but I think reality is a bit more complicated.
In Germany: US state = (federal) state (No wonder). No provinces :-) Also in German, province directly (mis-)translated to "Provinz" is a little bit of an insult.
Well the Bell Labs Holmdel complex is often used as an example of the death and creative reuse of the suburban office park, and I guess this is the flip side.
In the long run I guess splendid isolation turned out to be no match for being in a walkable city with a research university, research hospitals, major pharma headquarters (J&J) right in town, and a train station across the street that goes right to New York, EWR, and Princeton.
Still, I'm suffering a bit of vertigo that Bell Labs (or what's left of it) is moving to where the old Rutgers Bookstore and Albany St parking garage used to be (!) and that suddenly the gritty, grungy New Brunswick I used to bum around 20 years ago looks more like Kendall Square, where I work now. (And which also didn't used to look like it does now, I suppose.)
(Disclaimer: this is a super local story for me; my dad worked at Bell Labs in Holmdel, and I'm a third generation Rutgers grad whose mom grew up walking into downtown New Brunswick, and I probably spent way too much of my early 20s at the Starbucks on George Street and the Melody Bar, both RIP.)
I worked in N Jersey in the late 70s and I had coworkers who'd worked for Bell. They said that most tech people in Jersey had been thru Bell at one time or another. Does this match your experience of the area ?
It really blew my mind how much Bell Labs influenced the area. I had my internship at Ericsson in Piscataway (formerly Telcordia, formerly part of Bell). I later worked for a defense contractor that came out of the Bell/Lucent/Alcatel-Lucent line. It feels like everyone I crossed paths with knew everyone else, and that they all had roots in some part of the Bell System.
I once interviewed with Nokia Bell labs for the robotics team and got pretty close to the offer stage. But I ended up withdrawing from the process since the interview process was ridiculously tedious. I went to an onsite with a couple of whiteboarding sessions (they made me program on the computer for one of them), I had to talk to the CEO (or president, I forget), and it literally took me 9-5 for it but felt worth it cause the hiring manager was impressed. Afterwards, they wanted me to do another remote coding interview with a fellow researcher as a follow up, and after that another interview with some senior researcher for another follow up. When they asked me to set up a time for the senior researcher, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I really hope things has changed since then.
Has Nokia Bell labs since the acquisition produced anything even within an order of magnitude as significant or impactful as Bell labs did during its heyday?
What is it with incumbent old companies far past their prime paradoxically having much more stringent high standards for hiring? Is it a coping mechanism to believe that they are still at the caliber they once were by treating getting a job at their company like some necessarily arduous odyssey?
> What is it with incumbent old companies far past their prime paradoxically having much more stringent high standards for hiring? Is it a coping mechanism to believe that they are still at the caliber they once were by treating getting a job at their company like some necessarily arduous odyssey?
I don't think it's some grand mystery; they're past their prime, not in a phase of aggressive growth.
Layoffs at these places are far more likely than new hires. If a new hire is made, it's exceptional, and naturally involves a lot of deliberation/friction.
> The move also means that Nokia Bell Labs will be leaving its iconic campus in Murray Hill, one that began as the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925 — and one where researchers are credited with the development of the transistor, among other major innovations. Ten Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed there.
For those looking to learn more about Bell Labs the typical book recommendation is The Idea Factory:
While this seems a little sad given the history at Murray Hill - and it's an absolutely incredible building to visit - hopefully this is going to bring benefit to Rutgers and their engineering department as well as the technology sector in New Jersey in general. As a Rutgers ECE grad myself, it feels like there's a special hub of exciting engineering jobs here, so I'm glad that if Bell Labs is making a move, they aren't leaving the region (unless the Central Jersey [0] argument is considered). On another note, if anyone is interested in the amazing history of Bell, I highly recommend the book "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" by Jon Gertner.
This is a really stupid idea. Murray Hill is a sprawling campus in a suburban area with plenty of on-site parking and a stone's throw away from I-78, a major interstate highway. New Brunswick is a densely-developed city, lots of traffic, and parking is a hassle with metered on-street parking and for-fee parking garages. The point of proximity to Rutgers University is a weak argument because Murray Hill is less than 20 miles from New Brunswick, not at all onerous for university linkage and a lot less than the distance from MIT to many of the high-tech businesses on 128 and 494 around Boston.
> The point of proximity to Rutgers University is a weak argument because Murray Hill is less than 20 miles from New Brunswick,
The time to travel and the standard deviation is relevant, not the 20 miles. In northern New Jersey, 20 miles could be 1 hour or 20min.
Looking at Google Maps driving time at Sunday 3:23AM, it takes 30min from Rutgers NB to Nokia in New Providence, NJ. Which I am sure is much longer and volatile during times of congestion.
I grew up about 10 mins from that building. It was epic when it was built, but pretty much underutilized from day 1, IIRC.
I now live about 10 mins from this new building. I hope it fares better! The site has been a hole in the ground for several years now, and I've been wondering what would get built and who would occupy it.
This is a fun little tidbit I found about the Naperville site:
"The Indian Hill Lab at Naperville is built on the site of an ancient Potawatomi signaling hill. On the prominence where Indians once sent up smoke signals, Bell Labs' scientists are building electronic equipment which has and will revolutionize telephone service. It is doubtful that Indian Hill developments will produce anything of such generalized use as the transistor."
