At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men mervin kelly, bill shockley, claude shannon, john pierce. When the building opened in 1941, its design reflected the ideas of mervin kelly, bell labs director of research. The people helping to make it happen including mervin kelly, jim fisk, william shockley, claude shannon, john pierce, and william baker. He is the editor and lead author of the book the future x network.
How bell labs missed the microchip full page reload. Bell labs and the great age of american innovation paperback february 26, 20. May 29, 2012 key bell labs managers mervin kelly, john baker, and john pierce may not be well remembered now, but they were regarded as towering presences in their time, just as compelling if not nearly as well compensated as our current internet heroes. Opinion innovation and the bell labs miracle the new. Mervin kelly, for example, was one of the most gifted physics students at the university of. Mervin kelly as bell s research director, and later its president, mervin kelly was the driving force that steered bell labs into solid state physics. I hopped onto more than half a dozen planes to actually pay a visit to potential employers all over the country during th. The idea factory navy general library program downloadable. The book covers bell labs seminal work on multiplexing, information theory, transistors, lasers, fiber optics, communications satellites, the cosmic microwave background, and mobile phone networks, among other things. He kept the store books for his father and had a newspaper. Jon gertners new york times oped provides more details from his book. Bell labs functioned in a world not ours, he quotes john pierce as saying near the end of the book. In the years that followed, perhaps more than anyone else, he crafted and refined the research model that would define bell labs. Download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets.
Opinion innovation and the bell labs miracle the new york times. And at its heart this is a story about a small group of brilliant and eccentric men including mervin kelly, bill shockley, claude shannon, john pierce, and bill baker who spent their careers at bell labs. Arthur ashkin invented optical tweezers that grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men mervin kelly, bill shockley, claude shannon, john pierce, and bill bakerwho spent their careers at bell labs. Upon receiving the idea factory, i raided the index for. He was responsible for research and development across all of lucent. Kelly was employed at bell labs, rising from researcher to chairman of the board.
However, almost as many fruitful interactions described in the book can be traced to architectural features. Opinion innovation and the bell labs miracle the new york. Upon earning his phd in physics at the university of chicago, mervin kelly began his bell system career in 1917 working with vacuum tube technology. World heritage encyclopedia, the aggregation of the largest online encyclopedias available, and the. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read the idea factory. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, its hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasnt been touched by bell labs. The program was informally knownmuch to mervin kelly s discomfortas kelly college, because thats what it was. In 1951 he was named director of the labs, and his work was pivotal in changing the communications industry. The idea factory, by jon gertner the new york times. Find all the books, read about the author, and more. The idea factory bell labs and the great age of american innovation. Part of the essential yeast of bell labs was president mervin kellys radical insistence on mixing top scientists critical. Bill oshea was the tenth president of bell labs, and lucent technologies chief technology officer. Mar 23, 2012 in fact, the bell lab facilities in murray hill, n.
Weaving together the scientific research, product development and marketing along with the intriguing and gifted personalities who were involved over the decades, the author has done an excellent job of bringing the highlights, the excitement, the breakthroughs and. Bell labs and the great age of american innovation ebook written by jon gertner. Mervin joe kelly february 14, 1895 princeton, missouri march 18, 1971 was an american physicist and engineer, and president of bell labs from 1951 to 1959. Kelly and his colleagues at bell labs repeatedly sought, creates millions of jobs and a. In jon gertners deep dive into bell labs history, the idea factory, a lot of time is spent detailing the nearprescient pairings of experts made by research director mervin kelly and other influential managers. From transistors to telstar, idea factory traces bell labs. He was avidly pursuing graduate work in the discipline at the university of michigan, intent on an academic career, when bell labs research director mervin kelly happened to visit in 1936. Why bell labs was a hotbed of innovation that led to many. Jon gertner this work highlights achievements of bell labs as a leading innovator, exploring the role of its highly educated employees in developing new technologies while considering the qualities of companies. His parents were joseph fenimore and mary etta evans kelly. Kelly, fisk, and baker were presidents of the labs, and served as stewards during the institutions golden age. Whether the 21st century will produce another bell labs remains to be seen. Bell labs and the great age of american innovation kindle edition by gertner, jon.
In its heyday, bell labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1,200 of whom held phds and of whom won nobel prizes. This innovative laboratory, established in the 1920s, was the source of dozens, if not hundreds, of technological innovations, effectively ushering in our modern digital age. Bell labs and the great age of american innovation. Kelly thought the purpose of bell labs was to turn new science into new things that made a difference. The idea factory is a fascinating look at the lives of some of the key men who shaped bell labs and created its greatest inventions. In the idea factory, jon gertner paints bell labs astutely. One type of innovation creates a handful of jobs and modest revenues. Phd physical chemistry degree from harvard university in cambridge, massachusetts, usa, and a bachelor of science computer science and chemistry joint degree from kings college in london, uk. From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, bell labsofficially, the research. Bell labs and the great age of american innovation jon. Mervin joe kelly february 14, 1895 princeton, missouri march 18, 1971 was an american physicist and engineer, and president of bell labs from 1951 to. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading the idea factory. Part of the essential yeast of bell labs was president mervin kelly s radical insistence on mixing top scientists critical understanding of basic processes with cut and fit experimentation.
The book could equally well be subtitled the invention of the modern world. Not everything bell labs did was a resounding success, though. As bells research director, and later its president, mervin kelly was the driving force that steered bell labs into solid state physics. Bell labs and the great age of american innovation by jon gertner 2012, hardcover at the best online prices at ebay. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric menmervin kelly, bill shockley, claude shannon, john pierce. Probably the best example of that in history is the bell labs research center in murray hill, new jersey. Twas the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. With the exception of mervin kelly, the eldest of the group, they were sometimes considered members of a band of bell labs revolutionaries known as the young turks.
How bell labs created the future in the idea factory. Mervin kelly even created branches of bell labs at the phone companys factories so that the theoreticians and scientists could be closely involved with the manufacturing workers. With headquarters located in murray hill, new jersey, the company operates several laboratories in the united states and. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, bell labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and. If you need to print pages from this book, we recommend downloading it as a pdf. Bell labs project gutenberg selfpublishing ebooks read. This was largely the vision of two men frank jewett and mervin kelly. A study of bell labs offers a number of lessons about how our. Dave tompkins, who explored bell labs via the history of the vocoder in the fascinating book how to wreck a nice beach, writes in slate.
That the story is about bell labs, and even more specifically about life at the labs between the late 1930s and the mid1970s, isnt a coincidence. At bell labs, the man most responsible for the culture of creativity was mervin kelly. In this fascinating book, the author recounts the amazing story of bell labs from its creation in 1925 to its present state. Apr 08, 2012 mervin kelly even created branches of bell labs at the phone companys factories so that the theoreticians and scientists could be closely involved with the manufacturing workers. By tracing the history of bell labs through the biographies of several of its founding thinkers, including mervin kelly, bill shockley and claude shannon, gertner reveals the complicated humanity at work behind the scenes and provides unprecedented insight on some of historys most important scientific and technological advances. The scale of bell labs impact is truly incredible and this book does a good job of explaining the history of the institution and what factors contributed to its remarkable output.
Labs a number of scientific exemplars the guy who wrote the book, as. All these men knew one another, and some were extremely close. Beginning his career with bell labs in 1972, oshea spent almost 30 years in the development, manufacturing, marketing and sales of information systems. Mervin kelly, for example, was one of the most gifted physics students at the university of chicago before coming to bell labs. In 1948, bell labs began offering a series of unaccredited but highly challenging courses for employees known as the communications development training program, or cdt. But the real stroke of genius was to realize the value that basic scientists mainly physicists and chemists could bring to this endeavor along with engineers. Nov 30, 2019 that the story is about bell labs, and even more specifically about life at the labs between the late 1930s and the mid1970s, isnt a coincidence. Long before jack dorsey and steve jobs reflected on the keys to innovation, mervin kelly, one of the early architects of bell labs, weighed in on the subject. How an idea from bell labs is improving office design today. In the idea factory, jon gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth centurys most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of american history.
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