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Comment by gameswithgo | Hacker News Reader

wasn't bell labs part of a very big corporation when they invented basically everything about the modern world?

AT&T's early dominance was the direct result of the invention of the transistor that came from their own labs. From then on, the company was committed to spending massive amounts of money into developing new technology. Even if AT&T didn't directly invent a new technology, they were still one of the few companies in the world that could actually afford to buy new toys and put them into the hands of researchers who would find novel uses for it.

The Computerphile YouTube channel as some interviews with computer scientists that worked at Bell Labs during their heyday. It's incredibly interesting to hear about how they screwed around with early Linotype printers (which $100k+ in the 70s) and did things like reverse-engineer the font formats to create custom chess fonts.

That's not accurate. AT&T dominated telecommunications for decades before the transistor. Many of Bell Labs great scientific inventions predate the transistor, such as information theory.

Sure, but the transistor ushered in the long-distance era and helped AT&T establish their monopoly (and their eventual breakup). Regional telephone services were already beginning to drive down costs in local markets.

Maybe you're thinking of the triode, which AT&T did have a monopoly on around 1915, when they deployed the first transcontinental long-distance service using vacuum tubes to boost the signal. They bought deForest's patents and filed many more of their own on amplification circuits.

They had direct-dial long-distance by 1951, using relays and tubes.

The transistor started making a difference in telephony with the release of the 1ESS switch in 1965. But transistors were a commodity by then.

I think it is also that with a huge monopoly in an area, you can capture most of the benefits from basic research. With lots of competitors basic research gains go to all the competitors too and at some level you don't capture enough of the benefit to justify it.

Add to that, in return for their monopoly status, they released much of their IP to the public domaian. Imagine if they had held/sold their IP how electronic innovation would have been stifled.

No, Bell Labs did not invent basically everything about the modern world.

yeah, part of it was invented at PARC

you down voters are not giving Al Gore enough credit.

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