Ma Bell: The Mother of Invention in New Jersey

March 13, 2022–March 5, 2023

What do cell phones, solar panels, radar, and the discovery of the Big Bang all have in common? They are all possible because of the technology created in New Jersey — at branches of Bell Telephone Laboratories throughout the state to be exact. 

Beginning in the 1930s Bell Telephone Laboratories, named for founder Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, had facilities operating in the Garden State. Throughout the 20th century, this company pioneered innovations that transformed every part of modern-day life. Seismic breakthroughs came by way of the highly technical (radar, solar panels, satellites) to the personal (telephone communications). The transistor, which bridges these two worlds, ushered in the digital age and was first built at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ in 1947.

Bell Telephone Laboratories, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) and Western Electric employed tens of thousands of New Jersey residents through its 100-year tenure in the state. From highflying linemen risking their safety atop telephone poles, to women trained to connect calls across the country, to the world’s leading engineers working to answer logistical questions of communication, New Jerseyans from all walks of life supported the ground-breaking technology of the company.

Major innovators to emerge from NJ locations include Claude Shannon, hailed as “the father of information technology,” and important contributor to the field of artificial intelligence; Erna Schneider Hoover, owner of one of the first software patents in history; Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, whose work led to the discovery of the Big Bang; and countless others whose day to day work was invisible to the public yet echoed to the corners of the world. The resulting companies, like AT&T and Nokia continue to innovate to this day and still have facilities in New Jersey. 

Morven Museum & Garden is proud to showcase the ways in which NJ-born creations came to be the building blocks of today’s technology, with loans from the AT&T Archives and History Center, MIT Museum, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Historical Society of Princeton, Monmouth County Historical Association, Telesat Canada, and other private lenders. This exhibition will include original historical artifacts pertinent to the many discoveries, products and fields of work that comprised the Bell System in NJ, from the 1920s to around 1984, when the Bell System monopoly divestiture created the seven “Baby Bells” known as the Regional Bell Operating Companies.

Funding for this exhibition has been provided in part by, AT&T Services Inc., The Hess Foundation, Liza and Schuyler Morehouse, The Astle-Alpaugh Family Foundation, Richard Lounsbery Foundation, Lisa and Michael Ullmann, Fulton Bank, and Church & Dwight Co., Inc.