The chapters unfold along the lines Gertner outlines in his opening sentence, with the focus centered on a few especially significant people who thrived within Bell Labs (e.g. Topics include how the design of the Murray Hill campus aided interdisciplinary exchange, the laying of the transatlantic cable, Echo and Telstart, and more. Gertner takes us through various inventions and episodes in the history of the Labs, which still function today. This unique set of circumstances allowed the monopoly to develop a manufacturing entity, Western Electric-the sole provider of equipment-and a research and development arm, Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs).
This legislation exempted the company from federal antitrust laws, allowing the company to function as a government-mandated “natural monopoly.” The premise behind the law was that AT&T inhabited a problem-rich environment because they needed to invent from scratch everything that we associate with the telephone industry (dial tones, hang-up hooks, telephone ringers, etc.). Congress passed the Willis-Graham Act of 1921. This was possible because Ma Bell’s monopoly and the guaranteed income it generated meant that there was little pressure to restrict the projects to foreseeably money-making innovations.ĪT&T’s monopoly, which ended in 1982, was put in place when the U.S. Another reason Gertner expounds upon is that the Labs’ success was due to the way that employees enjoyed significant freedom in pursuing projects.
It is often stated, and Gertner reiterates, that creativity thrived at Bell Labs because the leaders of the company set up an arena that encouraged employees in different fields to work together. Among the best known are the transistor, methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light, Charge Coupled Device (CCD) semiconductor imaging sensors and the discovery of the predicted level of background cosmic radiation left over from the Big Bang. Gertner goes on to explain that the Bell Labs environment was an incubator of innovation and offers a narrative documenting many of the transitional technologies of the 20th century that were created from within this culture.
In the opening sentence of The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner states, “This is a book about the origins of modern communication as seen through the adventures of several men who spent their careers working at Bell Labs” (p.
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