Bell-Northern Research
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Bell-Northern Research (BNR) was an R&D company that was jointly owned by Bell Canada (70%) and Northern Electric (30%) (later Northern Telecom and later Nortel Networks. It was one of the premier research organizations in telecommunications. It pioneered in the development of digital technology. It created the first practical digital PBX (SL1) and central office (DMS). Under the direction of then Nortel CO John Roth, BNR lost its separate identity in the 1990s and was folded into the Nortel R&D organization. BNR was a highly innovative and successful organization. Much of this was lost with the Nortel absorption in the bubble era.
Notable employees of BNR at its zenith in the early 1980s included Whitfield Diffie, a noted authority on cryptography and Bob Gaskins, who invented PowerPoint at BNR to be able to use new "bit-mapped" displays to make presentations to management.
Increasing cost pressures caused Northern Telecom to demand faster results from BNR centers during the 1980s and in the 1990s, John Roth subscribed to the idea that "proprietary" technology was part of the problem, and that Nortel needed to buy and assemble components from lean firms. Unfortunately, the excessive spending this strategy demanded collided with collapse in demand for Nortel's products, and since that time Nortel has cut its work force from 60,000 to 30,000 people.