Industrial Research and the Pursuit of Corporate Security

The Early Years of Bell Labs

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9622221
AutoresLeonard S Reich (Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, autor correspondente)
Ano1980
Volume54
Fascículo4
Páginas504-529
Data de publicação1980-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Business History Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0007-6805 • E-ISSN: 2044-768X
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3114217
OpenAlexW2321713863
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas11

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

Business · Dominance (genetics · Economics · Management · Sociology · Telecommunications · Telephony · Vanguard · Computer Science · History · History of Computing Technologies · Research, Science, and Academia