An atmospheric history of Bell Labs highlights its achievements as an influential and leading innovator, exploring the role of its highly educated and Nobel Prize-winning employees in developing now-ubiquitous technologies while considering the qualities of companies where innovation and development are most successful. 50,000 first printing.
Highlights achievements of Bell Labs as a leading innovator, exploring the role of its highly educated employees in developing new technologies while considering the qualities of companies where innovation and development are most successful.
The definitive history of America's greatest incubator of technological innovation
In this first full portrait of the legendary Bell Labs, journalist Jon Gertner takes readers behind one of the greatest collaborations between business and science in history. Officially the research and development wing of AT&T, Bell Labs made seminal breakthroughs from the 1920s to the 1980s in everything from lasers to cellular elephony, becoming arguably the best laboratory for new ideas in the world. Gertner's riveting narrative traces the intersections between science, business, and society that allowed a cadre of eccentric geniuses to lay the foundations of the information age, offering lessons in management and innovation that are as vital today as they were a generation ago.