This actually flies against my sense that Bell Labs was able to build the transistor because of their resources and build-up of particular knowledge and expertise they had after 20-years. Possibly their ideas were just getting spread around via their external contacts, or actually, solid-state physics was taking off generally.
Woah, this was striking to me. It seems like pretty big evidence against Bell Labs actually having a secret sauce of enabling intellectual progress. I would have to look into it more, though. (Also the update is tempered by the fact that another argument for Bell Labs’ greatness is the sheer number of inventions, like UNIX, satellites, lasers, information theory, and other stuff.)
Yeah, I’ll want to revisit this question a) when I’ve finished the book and read some other stuff, b) look into the other people who seemed to have invented the same things around the same time.
Woah, this was striking to me. It seems like pretty big evidence against Bell Labs actually having a secret sauce of enabling intellectual progress. I would have to look into it more, though. (Also the update is tempered by the fact that another argument for Bell Labs’ greatness is the sheer number of inventions, like UNIX, satellites, lasers, information theory, and other stuff.)
Yeah, I’ll want to revisit this question a) when I’ve finished the book and read some other stuff, b) look into the other people who seemed to have invented the same things around the same time.