Bell Labs Global Whiteboard

To honor one hundred years of Bell Labs innovators, Potion developed an interactive whiteboard that could "remember" every idea written upon it.

The scientists at Bell Labs have changed the world. Over the past 100 years, these researchers stood at their whiteboards (and blackboards) and invented the Telephone, Cell Phones, Lasers, Fiber Optics, and even the Transistor.

The Global Whiteboard accesses a database that contains nearly every article published by Bell Labs since 1897 — over 80,000 publications and 25,000 worldwide patents. Potion used the interaction language of a whiteboard to allow users to make complex database queries and visualize the results as dynamic bubble diagrams. Users draw bubbles to create new concepts, drag them around to arrange their ideas, and curate their selections by crossing out and “popping” bubbles.

Today, many of Bell Labs’ innovations are no longer physical objects, they are algorithms and cloud services. The Global Whiteboard provides a dynamic showcase for today’s digital innovations while revealing deep connections to discoveries of the past.