Alan Bell appears in the above 1982 photo holding a disc that is not a CED, but a recordable optical disc with a 100-billion-bit storage capacity. Dr. Bell and Robert Bartolini engaged in this optical research during the same time frame the CED system was under development. Some of the patents issued for this optical technology may at first glance appear to be CED-related. These are not listed in the CED Patents Table but can be viewed from Dr. Bell's patent link further down this page. In 1995-96 Dr. Bell was instrumental in establishing the consumer DVD standard.

Alan E. Bell received his B.Sc (Hons. 1st Class) in Physics from Imperial College, London University, in 1969. He was a graduate student in the Metal Physics group of the Physics Department at Imperial College and was awarded his PhD degree in 1973 for experimental work on the low-temperature magnetic and electrical properties of dilute alloys (Kondo effect). In 1973 he was awarded the Sarnoff Fellowship to visit RCA Laboratories at Princeton. N.J., to engage in postdoctoral research for a period of nine months. Working in the field of liquid crystalline materials, he used optical Raman scattering to study the molecular order in the nematic phase of the material. Since joining the technical staff at RCA Laboratories in 1974, Dr. Bell has been involved mainly in the optical-video-recording research program, both from an experimental and an analytical viewpoint.

His work in the design and optimization of structures for optical recording has led to a new approach which allows significant improvements in the recording characteristics of metallic recording media. By this new approach, the basic feasibility for broadcast-quality optical video recording on a fully encapsulated recording medium has been demonstrated for the first time. Dr. Bell has developed numerical thermal models that provide a thorough description of laser-annealing experiments as well as the shaped growth of silicon ribbon for application to solar-cell fabrication.

Dr. Bell received an RCA Laboratories Achievement Award in 1975 and has been granted three U.S. patents. He is a member of OSA and IEEE, an Associate of the Royal College of Science, and a Diplomate of Imperial College, London.
- RCA 1979 Company Biography

The DVD format was announced at the end of 1995, after two competing proposals for the next generation of compact disk, MMCD and SD, were unified. This presentation will describe the events which led to this unusual conclusion, provide an overall description of the format itself, and explain why the opportunity for DVD is so great.

Dr. Alan E. Bell, a pioneer in the research of optical storage technology, will discuss this topic at the May 21 meeting of the Santa Clara Valley Magnetics Society. Dr. Bell is the inventor of several key designs for optical disk media which are in use in today's products. He has held a variety of technical and management positions in both the IBM Research and Storage Systems Divisions. Most recently his interests have been in the area of storage intensive applications and systems; digital libraries and video servers. During 1995 Dr. Bell served as chairman of the Technical Working Group, an ad-hoc group of technical representatives of computer systems companies which played an important role in the unification of the competing MMCD and SD formats into the unified DVD format for the next generation of compact disk products.

Dr. Bell received his PhD in physics at Imperial College, London University, and is a fellow of the Optical Society of America. He has been awarded more than 20 US Patents, and has published and presented extensively in the areas of optical storage, optical storage systems, and applications in general.
- 1996 DVD Seminar Announcement

Alan Bell joined Warner Bros in 2000. As Senior Vice President, Warner Bros. Technical Operations Alan is responsible for advanced technology and requirements development across a broad range of areas centered on the preparation, distribution and consumption of digital motion picture content and related derivatives. Dr. Bell's current areas of interest include the development of next generation HD DVD standards, digital home entertainment networks, including the technologies and issues associated with digital content rights management and copy protection.

In 1995, Alan was centrally involved in the unification of the DVD format, and shortly thereafter the developments that resulted in the CSS scrambling methods for DVD. For the last eight years he has focused on the technical development and cross-industry issues involved in the development of comprehensive rights management architecture. Dr. Bell has co-Chaired the Copy Protection Technical Working Group since its inception. Dr. Bell's career has included positions at IBM Research and RCA Sarnoff Labs.

In recognition of his contributions to the introduction of DVD and to the development optical storage technology in general, Dr. Bell was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2001 and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 1984. Alan received his doctoral and bachelor degrees in Physics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University.
- 2004 Biography

Search for patents issued to Alan Edward Bell.

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