The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
“I recently read a book that I liked, The Idea Factory. Strongly recommend it.”
Why it is worth your time
The Idea Factory is Jon Gertner's 2012 history of Bell Labs, the research arm of AT&T, from the 1920s to the 1980s. Gertner is a journalist who grew up near the Murray Hill campus. It follows Mervin Kelly, who ran it, and the people he hired: Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain on the transistor, Claude Shannon on information theory, John Pierce on satellites, and the laser, the solar cell and cellular phones. His answer to what made it work is a monopoly's long horizon, physical proximity and freedom to fail. Friedberg said on the Dec 29, 2023 year-end episode that he had just read it and recommended it. Energy, semiconductors and basic science are recurring subjects for him, and Bell Labs did founding work in all 3. It suits readers interested in how research is organized. The caveat is length, at 432 pages, and Foreign Policy's Konstantin Kakaes found it weak on technical detail, with multiplexing glossed over.
