2 ms·
What were the other major R&D labs, corporate or otherwise of this era (roughly: 1880s through 1980s)? I can think of: AT&T, DuPont, Kodak, Xerox PARC, Westi
by dredmorbius 2y ago
What were the other major R&D labs, corporate or otherwise of this era (roughly: 1880s through 1980s)?
I can think of: AT&T, DuPont, Kodak, Xerox PARC, Westinghouse, IBM, GE, the original Edison labs (best as I can tell acquired by Western Union), Microsoft, Rockefeller University, Google Research.
Of notable industries and sectors, there's little I can think of in automobile, shipping, aircraft and aviation (though much is conducted through Nasa and military), railroads, steel (or other metals/mining), petroleum, textiles, or fianance. There's also the Manhattan Project and energy labs (which conduct both general energy research and of course much weapons development).
(I've asked similar questions before, see e.g., <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41004023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41004023>.)
I'd like to poke at this question in a number of areas: what developments did occur, what limitations existed, where private-sector or public / government / academic research were more successful, and what conditions lead to both rise and fall of such institutions.
- anthk 2y agoMIT's AI Lab with Lisp, ITS and such. They were far ahead of Unix, Bell Labs and Berkeley.
- dredmorbius 2y agoWhich suggests SAIL (Stanford) and early Internet collaboration (UCLA, UCSB, and others). Various advanced computer facilities: UCSD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Probably others at Carnegie-Mellon, Georgia Tech, and elsewhere.