This book is a history of the Bell Labs run by AT&T for much of the 20th century. These are the labs which produced many of the things I use day to day — Unix and the C programming language for example, although this book focuses on other people present at the lab, and a bit earlier than the Unix people. Unix, a history and a memoir for example is set in the same location but later in time.
One interesting point the book makes early is that the America of the early 20th century wasn’t super into scientists, it was much more about engineers. So for example Edison was an engineer whose super power was systematically grinding through a problem space looking for solutions to a problem, but not necessarily actually understanding the mechanism that caused the solution to work. A really good example, although not one of Edison’s, is adding lead to fuel to stop engine knocking and wear — they literally walked the periodic table until they found an element that worked. I am left wondering how much of this failure to understand the underlying mechanism was a contributor to the longer term environmental and health implications of these innovations — would a competent scientist have produced the same product given a knowledge of the likely outcomes? This is worry in the context of modern America becoming increasingly anti-science. Will there be a reverse to the former brute force approach and ignoring longer term consequences?
The book discusses the invention and manufacture of the vacuum tube, an invention necessary to create the transcontinental phone system that AT&T Long Lines so desired. This story is told in the context of the careers of early labs hires, who were all Members of Technical Staff (MTSes), a job title still used by several FAANG companies to this day.
There’s then the story of early work towards what we’d now call a transistor to replace the energy intense and fragile vacuum tubes. This effort was however derailed by being pulled into America’s WW2 efforts. Along the way they might of invented nuclear reactors just a little (but probably after others). An interesting aspect to this story that I hadn’t heard before is the controversy around William Shockley — a highly competitive man who committed the cardinal sin (in AT&T culture at least) of competing with his own direct reports. Later in the book we also learn that Shockley was a racist eugenicist, so that’s nice.
Next up is a brief introduction to Claude Shannon’s work on what we now call Information Theory — the idea of how to quantify the maximum amount of information you can reliably transmit on a given channel. This was by far my favourite subject at university while studying computer engineering, so I particularly enjoyed this section. I’ve had a book about Shannon on my reading to-do list for a long time, I really should get around to reading it soon. Ironically I read the description of Shannon as effectively someone with very high functioning ADHD and possibly autism. He was just lucky enough to find an environment that valued brilliance over conformity.
We then pivot back to the development of silicon transistors (as opposed to the previous germanium ones) and ultimately the first practical solar cell. Sadly that solar cell from the early 1950s was too expensive to make to be economically viable, but it was certainly a glimpse of the future. Bell Labs would return to those solar cells later in the book to solve another interesting problem.
It must have been difficult to write a book like this — there are simply so many inventions which changed our world to cover. In the context of the development of both satellite communications (both first with passive Mylar balloons and then active satellites) and cellular telephony, it is likely fair that the development of Unix and C only receive a few paragraphs. However, it certainly doesn’t map to my own personal biases well given the later two are the underpinnings for basically all modern internet scale technologies.
Bell Labs ultimately didn’t survive the break up of AT&T. Something with its name did, but it simply wasn’t the innovative place it once was. The book uses it’s closing chapter to ask an interesting question I think could use more examination than the book gives it — is the America of today trading on the innovations of 50 years ago made by places like Bell Labs? Or is there true “great leap forward” innovation still occurring in America. I think it’s worryingly possible the former is true. The book also argues that government research funding to a large extent replaced the torrent of cash that the early telephony monopoly gave Bell Labs. With global cuts in research funding that might not be true for long.
One minor disappointment with this book is that it is mostly descriptive — the who, the what, and the when. I see a missed opportunity here to try and explain why Bell Labs was as successful as it was. For over 60 years they were the leading industrial research lab in the world, which is a pretty impressive feat. The book does spend a few pages at the very end sort of playing with ideas around this, but overall it feels like an after though. Perhaps that question isn’t answerable, but I would have liked to have seen Gertner at least try a bit harder.
Business & Economics
Penguin
March 15, 2012
434
The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.