Being a monopoly always offered both benefits and problems for AT&T-from early on, the company had an intermittently uneasy relationship with sectors of the federal government that opposed its monopolistic power and deemed it a threat to both competition and broader society. Before its breakup in the 1970s, the entire web of companies under the AT&T umbrella was called the “Bell System.” It included various regional telephone companies, later called the “Baby Bells” Western Electric, which manufactured telephone related equipment and, crucially for this book and for AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories, officially created in 1925. Today’s AT&T is the successor to the business created by Alexander Graham Bell in 1882. Ayn Rand would not agree, but then, what did she ever actually accomplish? Ultimately, Gertner’s account gives the obvious answer-scientific advancement stands on a three-legged stool, dependent on all of the broader culture, muscular group effort, and heroic individuals. In its exploration of the might and works of Bell Labs, this book reminds us that genius requires the right cultural environment to flourish, and it addresses whether collective or individual genius is the mainspring of scientific advancement. Jon Gertner’s The Idea Factory is a mild corrective to the commonly found anguished certainty that America’s days of innovative scientific greatness are behind us.
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