The Idea Factory: Bell Labs And The Great Age Of American Innovation

Author: Jon Gertner

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  • : $29.99 AUD
  • : 9781594203282
  • : Penguin Putnam Inc
  • : The Penguin Press
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  • : 0.726
  • : March 2013
  • : 216mm X 135mm
  • : United States
  • : 29.99
  • : May 2013
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  • : books

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  • : Jon Gertner
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  • : Hardback
  • : 413
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  • : 384
  • : 432
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  • : Colour
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Barcode 9781594203282
9781594203282

Description

A sweeping, atmospheric history of Bell Labs that highlights its unparalleled role as an incubator of innovation and birthplace of the century's most influential technologies.

Bell Laboratories, which thrived from the 1920s to the 1980s, was the most innovative and productive institution of the twentieth century. Long before America's brightest scientific minds began migrating west to Silicon Valley, they flocked to this sylvan campus in the New Jersey suburbs built and funded by AT&T. At its peak, Bell Labs employed nearly fifteen thousand people, twelve hundred of whom had PhDs. Thirteen would go on to win Nobel prizes. It was a citadel of science and scholarship as well as a hotbed of creative thinking. It was, in effect, a factory of ideas whose workings have remained largely hidden until now. "New York Times Magazine" writer Jon Gertner unveils the unique magic of Bell Labs through the eyes and actions of its scientists. These ingenious, often eccentric men would become revolutionaries, and sometimes legends, whether for inventing radio astronomy in their spare time (and on the company's dime), riding unicycles through the corridors, or pioneering the principles that propel today's technology. In these pages, we learn how radar came to be, and lasers, transistors, satellites, mobile phones, and much more. Even more important, Gertner reveals the forces that set off this explosion of creativity. Bell Labs combined the best aspects of the academic and corporate worlds, hiring the brightest and usually the youngest minds, creating a culture and even an architecture that forced employees in different fields to work together, in virtually complete intellectual freedom, with little pressure to create moneymaking innovations. In Gertner's portrait, we come to understand why both researchers and business leaders look to Bell Labs as a model and long to incorporate its magic into their own work.

Written with a novelist's gift for pacing and an ability to convey the thrill of innovation, "The Idea Factory" yields a revelatory take on the business of invention. What are the principles of innovation? How do new technology and new ideas begin? Are some environments more favorable than others? How should they be structured, and how should they be governed? Can strokes of genius be accelerated, replicated, standardized? The history of Bell Labs provides crucial answers that can and should be applied today by anyone who wants to understand where good ideas come from.

Reviews

"Gertner reveals the complicated humanity at work behind the scenes and provides unprecedented insight on some of history's most important scientific and technological advances. Packed with anecdotes and trivia and written in clear and compelling prose, this story of a cutting-edge and astonishingly robust intellectual era--and one not without its controversies and treachery--is immensely enjoyable."--"Kirkus"

Author description

Jon Gertner grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey--just a few hundred yards away from Bell Labs. He has been a writer for the" New York Times Magazine "since 2004 and is currently an editor at "Fast Company" magazine. He lives in New Jersey, with his wife and two children.