Industrial Research and the Pursuit of Corporate Security: The Early Years of Bell Labs

Abstract

Among the industries that owe their existence to technological innovation, voice communication by wire and by radio is an outstanding example. Professor Reich explains that during its first quarter century, however, the telephone enterprise developed a “business-technology mind-set” (he credits Reese Jenkins with the term) that held back further progress until after the thoroughgoing reorganization of American Telephone & Telegraph in 1907. Thereafter, an initial strong focus on applied science was gradually modified as the company sought to solve problems that stood in the way of important new services, such as long-distance telephony; to stay in the vanguard of major innovations, such as radio, that threatened the dominance of wired telephone systems; and to extend new capabilities into as many alternative techniques as necessary to “box the compass” of the patent laws. In the process, AT&T developed a highly structured research and development facility that pushed businessmen's respect for science and technology to new heights.