Smack in the middle of New Jersey lie Bell Laboratories, the mighty research hub of American ingenuity that has given birth to many modern inventions. The transistor, the laser, C programming language, Unix operating system, all were born in Bell Labs.

Multiple Nobel Laureates have roamed its halls, including the 2018 winner in Physics, Arthur Ashkin. Ashkin got the Nobel for his work with lasers, and in doing so, became the oldest laureate ever: 96! (Take that, fellow Jew and previous record-holder Leonid Hurwicz, who won at the fledgling age of 90.)

Alas, the heydays of Bell Labs are in the past. After being owned by telecommunications behemoth AT&T for most of the 20th century, it was spun off into Lucent Technologies in 1996. After an initial spike, it entered a steady decline, with its research facilities reducing in size over time. It was then taken over by France's Alcatel, and is now owned by Finland's Nokia.

We're all for globalization and everything, but it's kinda sad.