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Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

This was right at end of of life for AT&T as an innovator, but I don't think people really appreciate just how much AT&T did for technology. Sure, they had a monopoly. Government backed, really. But you can trace just about every piece of modern tech back to Bell Labs or someone who worked there. The transistor itself, UNIX, the C programming language, the laser, CCDs, solar panels, and the list goes on. I don't think there's ever been a company before or since that has done so much.

I can't help but wonder what a modern day Bell Labs would be able to do.

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I’m convinced AT&T did all those things because it was a monopoly. Look at what happened to Xerox after the DOJ killed it’s copier monopoly by forcing it to license its patents. PARC rapidly went downhill. Companies in highly competitive markets can’t really afford capital intensive innovation.

This. Competition and rational buyers with perfect information will move prices close to production costs plus risk compensation. There's no room for anything more than incremental innovation and quick wins at those kinds of companies.

Bell did amazing research under that monopoly, the downside was that they also buried some of it.

They had magnetic storage and an answering machine in the 30s, but were terrified that it might reduce demand for telephone services, so they suppressed the technology for sixty years.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-ma-bell-shelved-the-future-for-6...

Maybe that one would have never come to light without their help anyway, but they also fought inventions of outsiders that touched the telephone network, under the monopoly protection laws that allowed them to control anything "connected to" their network.

Probably the most absurd example is when they fought to stop people from using a physical barrier to make phone calls a little less loud:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-battle-over-net-ne...

A few months ago I ordered a book on a whim called "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation." [0]

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it and how much I learned. There were amazing minds at Bell Labs who were given free reign to innovate (as a direct result of AT&T's huge monopoly and revenue stream) and ended up laying the groundwork for many ideas and concepts we take for granted today.

The book is so dense with information and anecdotes but I'd still consider it a page-turner. I highly recommend it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovatio...

There is a 'modern day' Bell Labs. Look at Air-Gig (for example). I worked with one of the top AT&T inventors (just earned his 200th U.S. Patent). Nokia Labs owns what was Lucent, which was the direct descendant of Bell Labs.

Everyone has patents. That’s not impressive. Bell Labs had like a dozen Nobel Prizes.

The first time I ever saw live video teleconferencing was an AT&T device in the Epcot Center dome. I think it must have been around 1993.

They also had Sega Genenis networked together with modems, maybe?

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