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I went to Holmdel High School, and my girlfriend’s dad was a researcher at this facility, he invented a delta wave modulation technique in the 60’s that was (is

I went to Holmdel High School, and my girlfriend’s dad was a researcher at this facility, he invented a delta wave modulation technique in the 60’s that was (is?) used by NASA for certain spaceship comms. I got to visit him once or twice here, it was truly an inspiring building with all of the open air quality and glass everywhere. Really part of another era, where AT&T sunk billions into the labs just for pure research. If only corporations could be a far seeing today.

Aloha 3y ago
The only way this worked when was AT&T had a virtual monopoly on all telecommunications (design, installation, services, etc) in the US, and had their rates set using a rate of return derived pricing mechanism. We can probably get such things back, but they are not Free exactly. RCA had similar labs, but I think changes to the tax code makes them less worthwhile to do today as well.
etrautmann 3y ago
I share the sentiment but there are companies doing this - it’s just in different domains than telephony. Deepmind, OpenAI, etc, fusion research, SpaceX. There are lots of long bets on hard tech. If anything it’s a proliferation, although Bell labs is no longer a thing. My hope is that we can establish a similar model for biology, since many challenges in that domain are pre-commercial but not at the appropriate scale for academic labs.
- jcrawfordor 3y ago
  None of these efforts are as wide-ranging as AT&T's, though. Budget comparisons are hard for a number of reasons (AT&T had R&D happening in multiple places, under multiple funding streams, both directly and indirectly funded), but the usual thinking is that AT&T spent a larger % of revenue on research than most, but not all, organizations today, with Google being a notable example of a company that beats it on % revenue to R&D (is this still true?). My suspicion would be that that comparison wouldn't hold if you factored in the directly funded DoD work but it's hard to say without some pretty complex digging through accounting records. The more substantial point is breadth, though. AT&T research at its peak was more comparable to a university than an industrial R&D institution, with both basic and applied research occurring in a huge variety of fields---likely all fields of physical science at various points. All of the organizations you mention are essentially single-purpose. Some of the major tech companies (Google, Microsoft) are known for wide-ranging R&D, but they seem to have struggled to produce the kind of basic advances that AT&T did, and also seem to be backing off of that work. Basic research is the big problem... AT&T had very little problem with money going to basic research without known applications, likely due to the substantial influence that academia and "scientific management" had on AT&T, as well as its reputation for excellent research management practices that made AT&T a major part of basic physics research on the behalf of the DoD for decades (Sandia National Laboratories, for example, operated by AT&T until relatively recently). In my opinion, accounts of Bell Labs enormous success, having made major contributions to nearly every field of engineering, often focus too much on the excellence of its staff (which was a factor, although Bell Labs management practices were not exactly modern), and downplay the role of AT&T's willingness to fund basic research and ability to find outside funding for basic research as well. Few modern organizations seem to be willing to entertain major efforts in a nascent field of astronomy, for example, on the assumption that the technical work will lead to useful engineering knowledge. There's a lot out there about the history of Bell Labs, but its own multi-volume "A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System," from the late '70s, does a good job of covering the incredible breadth and scale of work performed at Bell Labs. One thing to consider is that costs were quite a bit lower back then, and so Bell Labs small-looking budget of $3-5 billion of today's dollars per year translated to a workforce in the tens of thousands working, during WWII, 70-hour weeks. A two-day weekend did finally reach most of the Bell Labs technical staff early in the Cold War. Besides, if you read into the history of Bell Labs, you will recognize vestiges of its bureaucratic structure in most government and military R&D today. Its influence in government and military physical research is enormous.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    How I miss the age before MBAs and stock buybacks fever. Too bad I was not even born at that time.
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  Fusion isn't a good example. It's not getting anywhere near the funding it requires. Maybe I've become cynical, but it seems like all the big new technology products which have come out in the last decade or two have just been software products mostly designed to predict human behavior more accurately to advertise to us. AT&T invented solar panels, the transistor, radio astronomy, as well as computing innovations that we're still using today. It's hard to imagine we'll hold Google, Apple, or Facebook in the same reverence 100 years from now because they created some interesting consumer products which distract us for a couple years before going in the trash to be replaced by the next, slightly more distracting version
- thevania 3y ago
  sir, i must respectfully disagree - bell labs is still a thing disclaimer - i work there as a senior researcher and we still do world class research, so pls don't portrait us as a thing of the past just yet, thx :)
graphviz 3y ago
Whether or not AT&T was far-seeing, they had a mandate to design and deliver universal telephone service, and cost-plus deal to pay for it, so it made sense to buy nice expensive things. Even when the mission was fulfilled and the economy started to restructure the company, it ran along for at least another 10 or 15 years before the real disruption started (the 1996 breakup that turned Bell Labs into Lucent). And even then, the labs contributed fundamental research in machine learning, quantum computing and databases, to name a few areas. As you say, that model of large-scale corporate R&D doesn't exist any more - there's no funding model to support it.
- etrautmann 3y ago
  How do you figure? The model now has been tech companies for the last 15 years.
  - treyd 3y ago
    I can't speak for the previous commenter but it does seem there is a different character to the research work happening at FAANG-scale companies (which is still generally in service of their corporate strategy) vs the work that happened at Bell Labs back in the day (which was more abstract and less directly-commercializable). Bell Labs was more of a large team of brilliant researchers with ample resources to support their work, and it just had to be useful to somebody rather than be part of a product/service that could be sold directly.
    - shortrounddev2 3y ago
      You're right. The invention of the transistor was a multi-decade effort by scientists working outside of regular hours, essentially inventing the field of solid state physics. It's hard to imagine such a technology coming out of a publicly traded company like Google or Apple, whose year-to-year or even quarter-to-quarter behavior is as sensitive to changes in interest rates and short term market conditions as a balloon in the wind.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
wslh 3y ago
I understand they were a cash cow which put the company in another league where cash flow is anormally high.
woodruffw 3y ago
> Really part of another era, where AT&T sunk billions into the labs just for pure research. If only corporations could be a far seeing today. I think it's only fair to mention that AT&T's motives here weren't entirely selfless: the value of much of their research was really only realized by the public as a result of a 1956 consent decree. Before that, it was largely locked behind patents; the consent decree forced them to license their research without royalties (and forbade them from competing in non-telecommuncations domains).
randshift 3y ago
Lucky it's still alive and well. I've been there... it's not full but it's still open! https://bell.works/new-jersey/explore/ https://bell.works/new-jersey/explore/

Aloha 3y ago

The only way this worked when was AT&T had a virtual monopoly on all telecommunications (design, installation, services, etc) in the US, and had their rates set using a rate of return derived pricing mechanism. We can probably get such things back, but they are not Free exactly. RCA had similar labs, but I think changes to the tax code makes them less worthwhile to do today as well.

etrautmann 3y ago

I share the sentiment but there are companies doing this - it’s just in different domains than telephony. Deepmind, OpenAI, etc, fusion research, SpaceX. There are lots of long bets on hard tech. If anything it’s a proliferation, although Bell labs is no longer a thing. My hope is that we can establish a similar model for biology, since many challenges in that domain are pre-commercial but not at the appropriate scale for academic labs.

jcrawfordor 3y ago
None of these efforts are as wide-ranging as AT&T's, though. Budget comparisons are hard for a number of reasons (AT&T had R&D happening in multiple places, under multiple funding streams, both directly and indirectly funded), but the usual thinking is that AT&T spent a larger % of revenue on research than most, but not all, organizations today, with Google being a notable example of a company that beats it on % revenue to R&D (is this still true?). My suspicion would be that that comparison wouldn't hold if you factored in the directly funded DoD work but it's hard to say without some pretty complex digging through accounting records. The more substantial point is breadth, though. AT&T research at its peak was more comparable to a university than an industrial R&D institution, with both basic and applied research occurring in a huge variety of fields---likely all fields of physical science at various points. All of the organizations you mention are essentially single-purpose. Some of the major tech companies (Google, Microsoft) are known for wide-ranging R&D, but they seem to have struggled to produce the kind of basic advances that AT&T did, and also seem to be backing off of that work. Basic research is the big problem... AT&T had very little problem with money going to basic research without known applications, likely due to the substantial influence that academia and "scientific management" had on AT&T, as well as its reputation for excellent research management practices that made AT&T a major part of basic physics research on the behalf of the DoD for decades (Sandia National Laboratories, for example, operated by AT&T until relatively recently). In my opinion, accounts of Bell Labs enormous success, having made major contributions to nearly every field of engineering, often focus too much on the excellence of its staff (which was a factor, although Bell Labs management practices were not exactly modern), and downplay the role of AT&T's willingness to fund basic research and ability to find outside funding for basic research as well. Few modern organizations seem to be willing to entertain major efforts in a nascent field of astronomy, for example, on the assumption that the technical work will lead to useful engineering knowledge. There's a lot out there about the history of Bell Labs, but its own multi-volume "A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System," from the late '70s, does a good job of covering the incredible breadth and scale of work performed at Bell Labs. One thing to consider is that costs were quite a bit lower back then, and so Bell Labs small-looking budget of $3-5 billion of today's dollars per year translated to a workforce in the tens of thousands working, during WWII, 70-hour weeks. A two-day weekend did finally reach most of the Bell Labs technical staff early in the Cold War. Besides, if you read into the history of Bell Labs, you will recognize vestiges of its bureaucratic structure in most government and military R&D today. Its influence in government and military physical research is enormous.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  How I miss the age before MBAs and stock buybacks fever. Too bad I was not even born at that time.
shortrounddev2 3y ago
Fusion isn't a good example. It's not getting anywhere near the funding it requires. Maybe I've become cynical, but it seems like all the big new technology products which have come out in the last decade or two have just been software products mostly designed to predict human behavior more accurately to advertise to us. AT&T invented solar panels, the transistor, radio astronomy, as well as computing innovations that we're still using today. It's hard to imagine we'll hold Google, Apple, or Facebook in the same reverence 100 years from now because they created some interesting consumer products which distract us for a couple years before going in the trash to be replaced by the next, slightly more distracting version
thevania 3y ago
sir, i must respectfully disagree - bell labs is still a thing disclaimer - i work there as a senior researcher and we still do world class research, so pls don't portrait us as a thing of the past just yet, thx :)

graphviz 3y ago

Whether or not AT&T was far-seeing, they had a mandate to design and deliver universal telephone service, and cost-plus deal to pay for it, so it made sense to buy nice expensive things. Even when the mission was fulfilled and the economy started to restructure the company, it ran along for at least another 10 or 15 years before the real disruption started (the 1996 breakup that turned Bell Labs into Lucent). And even then, the labs contributed fundamental research in machine learning, quantum computing and databases, to name a few areas. As you say, that model of large-scale corporate R&D doesn't exist any more - there's no funding model to support it.

etrautmann 3y ago
How do you figure? The model now has been tech companies for the last 15 years.
- treyd 3y ago
  I can't speak for the previous commenter but it does seem there is a different character to the research work happening at FAANG-scale companies (which is still generally in service of their corporate strategy) vs the work that happened at Bell Labs back in the day (which was more abstract and less directly-commercializable). Bell Labs was more of a large team of brilliant researchers with ample resources to support their work, and it just had to be useful to somebody rather than be part of a product/service that could be sold directly.
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    You're right. The invention of the transistor was a multi-decade effort by scientists working outside of regular hours, essentially inventing the field of solid state physics. It's hard to imagine such a technology coming out of a publicly traded company like Google or Apple, whose year-to-year or even quarter-to-quarter behavior is as sensitive to changes in interest rates and short term market conditions as a balloon in the wind.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

wslh 3y ago

I understand they were a cash cow which put the company in another league where cash flow is anormally high.

woodruffw 3y ago

> Really part of another era, where AT&T sunk billions into the labs just for pure research. If only corporations could be a far seeing today. I think it's only fair to mention that AT&T's motives here weren't entirely selfless: the value of much of their research was really only realized by the public as a result of a 1956 consent decree. Before that, it was largely locked behind patents; the consent decree forced them to license their research without royalties (and forbade them from competing in non-telecommuncations domains).

randshift 3y ago

Lucky it's still alive and well. I've been there... it's not full but it's still open! https://bell.works/new-jersey/explore/ https://bell.works/new-jersey/explore/