Bell Labs Receives Technical Grammy Award for Its Pioneering R&D Contributions to Sound Recording and Digital Communications

MURRAY HILL, NJ (Lucent Technologies Bell Labs) - Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, today announced it has been awarded a Technical GRAMMY Award by The Recording Academy for its outstanding technical contributions to the recording field. This is the first Technical GRAMMY ever awarded to a communications research laboratory.

The award is a Special Merit Award presented to individuals and/or companies who have made contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. Technical GRAMMY Award recipients are determined by vote of the members of The Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing and The Academy's Trustees. The Technical GRAMMY Award will be presented on Feb. 7, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. The 48th Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 8, at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, and will be broadcast live in high-definition TV and 5.1 surround sound on CBS from 8 - 11:30 p.m. (ET/PT).

From the invention of the telephone, the first device to electronically transmit and receive sound, to its more recent R&D projects for digital sound capture and delivery technologies, Bell Labs has been a consistent pioneer in both the foundational and applied technologies of modern sound recording, electronic transmission, and digital communications. Seminal Bell Labs sound and audio inventions include high fidelity recording (1925), single groove stereo recording (1933), stereophonic recording on film (1941), the laser (1958), today used in all CD and DVD players, the electret microphone (1966), and advances in audio compression to facilitate digital radio technology (1992 - 1999), which allows AM, FM, and satellite stations to broadcast near-CD quality music. For a complete timeline please visit
https://www.bell-labs.com/sound