The Idea Factory

The Idea Factory explains how one company, Bell Labs, has managed to spearhead innovation in the communications industry for almost 100 years by dedicating themselves to science and research, thus producing a disproportionately big share of the technology that significantly shapes our lives today.

More often than not, the greatest inventors in history are forgotten. They either don’t get credit for their inventions, or, if they do, it is purely academic. Since their work is seldom tied to commercial ventures and big, profitable businesses, their names aren’t broadcast enough and end up hidden in the dusty pages of history books.

For example, do you know who Tim Berners-Lee is? The guy who invented the internet. And who invented the urinal? Andrew Rankin. Air conditioning? Willis Carrier.

But chances are, you know very well who invented the telephone: Alexander Graham Bell. This isn’t a coincidence. He invented the telephone in 1876. In 1880, he was awarded the Volta prize of 50,000 francs (approximately $250,000 in today’s money), which he decided to use to set up a lab, dedicated to the research of analyzing, recording and transmitting sound.

He knew that he needed to keep inventing, make profits and re-invest those, in order to keep investigating and improving communication, which is exactly the vision with which Bell Labs was formed in 1925.

If you really want to have an impact on the world long after you’re gone, you can’t just say “I’ve invented the telephone, I’m done.” Your vision must be bigger and broader than that. Even if he couldn’t imagine what it would look like at the time, I’m sure Bell thought of a world in which all humans are connected over 100 years ago, and that’s why his vision still lives today in the form of Bell Labs.

Bell Labs was set up as a subsidiary of AT&T, you know, the 12th-largest company in the world, which provides mobile phone services to every other person in the US. While they did do lots of operational work (like improving and fixing phone networks, cables, etc.) they also had a division entirely committed to basic research. Because they hired the greatest minds from the best colleges, they’ve always been at the forefront of innovation in communication, and among their “alumni” are 13 Nobel Prize winners, as well as five winners of the Turing Award. Among Bell Labs’ inventions are the telephone, the radio, the radar, the nuclear reactor, the transistor, the satellite, the solar battery, the wireless phone and the operating system Unix – at least three of which influence your life right this second. One of their alumni, Claude Shannon, came up with information theory, you know, the whole bits and…