Building the Bell System
“The [Bell] System,” Danielian pointed out, “constitutes the largest aggregation of capital that has ever been controlled by a single private company at any time in the history of business. It is larger than the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and United States Steel Corporation put together. Its gross revenues of more than one billion dollars a year
... See moreJon Gertner • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
The Secret Life of the 500+ Cables That Run the Internet
cnet.com
In essence, AT&T became a quasi-nationalized public utility that had many good reasons to invest heavily in R&D and allow others to take advantage of its findings.
Byrne Hobart • Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation
Undersea cables, and long-distance communications in general, became the highest of high tech, with many of the same connotations as rocket science or nuclear physics or brain surgery would acquire in later decades. Some countries and companies (the distinction between countries and companies is hazy in the telco world) became very good at it, and ... See more
Wired • Mother Earth Mother Board
In the wake of the 1956 agreement, AT&T appeared to be indestructible. It now had the U.S. government’s blessing. It was easily the largest company in the world by assets and by workforce. And its Bell Laboratories, as Fortune magazine had declared, was indisputably “the world’s greatest industrial laboratory.” And yet even in the 1960s and 197
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