The Idea Factory 1
KEY POINTS FROM
Jon Gertner, THE IDEA FACTORY: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation[1]
Notable Discoveries, Inventions, and Creations of Bell Labs[2]
the transistor (1947-48)
the photovoltaic cell (1954)
(with others) the laser (1960; see p. 255)
the Echo and Telstar communications satellites
fiber optic cable (with Corning Glass)
the cell phone
the C programming language[3]
the UNIX computer operating system[4]
the CCD (charge-coupled device)
Claude Shannon’s development of information theory
The Bell System Technical Journalpublished Shannon’s “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” in 1948.
“Another breakthrough—the charge-coupled device, or CCD—was invented during work on new forms of computer memory. The CCD was a light-sensitive electronic sensor that used the varying responses of electrons to different amounts of light to create photographs and images of extraordinary detail. The CCD would become the foundation of digital photography as we now know it, but Bill Baker perceived its value to national security long before its commercial potential was understood. ‘I took it out to the NRO immediately,’ Baker would later recall, knowing that the National Reconnaissance Office, the spy satellite agency he had helped found, could use it for espionage.” p. 261
Gertner summing up the contributions of Bell Labs:
“[Peter] Drucker believed that Bell Labs’ technical contributions over the course of fifty years had essentially made its continued existence untenable. ‘Bell Laboratories’ discoveries and inventions,’ he wrote, ‘have largely created modern electronics.’ As those discoveries spread around the world, however, they had made telephone technology indistinct. To Drucker, telecommunications was now just a part of the immense field of information and electronic technology. There were many competitors and many competing ideas in this field. And therefore, going forward, no single lab could on its own provide the new technology for the entire electronics and information industry.
At the same time, he noted, the reverse was true: The scientists and engineers at Bell Labs had been producing too many ideas over the past half century for a single company to handle:
In a wide array of areas, from the transistor to fiber optics, and from switching theory to computer logic, the Bell System has been no more adequate as a conduit for Bell Labs’ scientific contributions than an eye dropper would be to channel a mountain freshet. The main users have been others—that is, non-telephone industries—with Bell Labs getting little out of its contributions other than an occasional footnote in a scientific paper.[5]”
Other items of interest:
p. 81 “a natural latex known as gutta percha for waterproofing cables” developed at Bell Labs
p. 117-119 Shannon and Vannevar Bush at M.I.T. Shannon’s paper on information theory
Gertner: “The laser was not so much a single invention. Rather, it was the result of a storm of inventions during the 1960s” (p. 256).
[1] New York: Penguin Press, 2012.
[2] Not a complete list.
[3] Developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs between 1969 and 1973 (Wikipedia, “C Programming Language”).
[4] Originally developed at Bell Labs in 1969 “by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs…The Unix operating system was first developed in assembly language, but by 1973 had been almost entirely recoded in C, greatly facilitating its further development and porting to other hardware.” Wikipedia, “Unix”).
[5] Peter Drucker, “Beyond the Bell Breakup,” Public Interest, Fall 1984. From Gertner, p. 302-303.