[joepole]

Yep, Bell Labs was part of AT&T until the breakup, at which point it became part of Western Electric (which changed its name to AT&T Bell Labs or something similar). It also kind of sort of split into Belcore, which provided Bell Labs-like services to the RBOCs, but neither company has been anywhere near as important/influential as Bell Labs was back in the day.

They didn't just invent the transistor there, they invented UNIX (and c), lasers, faxes, and wireless networking, just to name a few things.

By the way, Bell Labs became Western Electric, which became AT&T Bell Labs, which spun off into Lucent, which sucks now and is being bought by Alcatel.