[HN Gopher] Why Bell Labs Worked
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Why Bell Labs Worked
Author : areoform
Score : 38 points
Date : 2025-05-11 20:47 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (1517.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (1517.substack.com)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| If you haven't already, check out the "AT&T Archives" on the AT&T
| Tech Channel on YouTube. It's an absolutely remarkable collection
| of American technology history.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDB8B8220DEE96FD9
| kevmo314 wrote:
| > The reason why we don't have Bell Labs is because we're
| unwilling to do what it takes to create Bell Labs -- giving smart
| people radical freedom and autonomy.
|
| My observation has been that smart people don't want this
| anymore, at least not within the context of an organization. If
| you give your employees this freedom, many will take advantage of
| it and do nothing.
|
| Those that are productive, the smartest who thrive in radical
| freedom and autonomy, instead choose to work independently. After
| all, why wouldn't they? If they're putting in the innovation the
| equity is worth way more than a paycheck.
|
| Unfortunately, that means innovation that requires a Bell Labs
| isn't as common. Fortunately, one person now can accomplish way
| more than a 1960's engineer could and the frontier of innovation
| is much broader than it used to be.
|
| I used to agree with the article's thesis but it's been nearly
| impossible to hire anyone who _wants_ that freedom and autonomy
| (if you disagree, <username>@gmail.com). I think it's because
| those people have outgrown the need for an organization.
| musicale wrote:
| > If you give your employees this freedom, many will take
| advantage of it and do nothing
|
| This was addressed in the article
|
| > Most founders and executives I know balk at this idea. After
| all, "what's stopping someone from just slacking off?" Kelly
| would contend that's the wrong question to ask. The right
| question is, "Why would you expect information theory from
| someone who needs a babysitter?"
|
| also this hilarious quote from Richard Hamming:
|
| > "You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if
| you worked as hard as [Tukey] did that many years." I simply
| slunk out of the office!
| kevmo314 wrote:
| Yeah, that's the point of my next sentence. Why would someone
| who comes up with information theory want to give it to an
| employer?
|
| I think an answer to that was a lot clearer in the 1960's
| when going from idea to product was much harder.
| wbl wrote:
| "The only secret worth keeping is out: the damn things
| work".
|
| What products could Shanon have made only knowing
| information theory? Or CSRO knowing only ODFM solved
| multipath? Did Bob Metcalf make more money when everyone
| had Ethernet or if he'd licensed it much more exclusively?
|
| It's very hard for a single fundamental result to be a
| durable competitive advantage compared to wider licensing
| on nicer terms. That's particularly true when much else
| goes into the product.
| smj-edison wrote:
| > it's been nearly impossible to hire anyone who wants that
| freedom and autonomy
|
| Interesting, this is something that I'd love to do! I'm already
| planning on pursuing custom chip design for molecular
| simulation, but I don't really want to handle the business side
| of things. I'd much rather work in a paid lab than get rich and
| sell it off. Plus, you can do so much more with a team vs being
| independent.
|
| I was also homeschooled though (unschooling and tjed
| philosophy) so I've always been picking my own projects.
| Sometimes I wonder if the lack of generalist researchers comes
| down to education (another thing I'd love to pursue).
| musicale wrote:
| > The freedom to waste time. The freedom to waste resources. And
| the autonomy to decide how.
|
| As the article notes, several companies (Apple, Google, etc.)
| could (currently) afford to fund such a lab, but there is no way
| their management and shareholders would approve.
|
| There's a reason for this: research labs seem to benefit
| competitors as much as (or more than) the companies that fund
| them. This wasn't an issue for AT&T when it was a monopoly, but
| it is now. Personally I don't see it as a problem (since one home
| run innovation could pay for the entire lab) but company managers
| and shareholders do.
|
| On the other hand, Apple does seem to have a de facto AI lab with
| a good deal of resource waste, so maybe that's good.
| querez wrote:
| >> The freedom to waste time. The freedom to waste resources.
| And the autonomy to decide how.
|
| > As the article notes, several companies (Apple, Google, etc.)
| could (currently) afford to fund such a lab, but there is no
| way their management and shareholders would approve.
|
| Google did set up such a lab. The mission of Google Brain was
| literally to hire smart people and let them do work on whatever
| they want. ("Google Brain team members set their own research
| agenda, with the team as a whole maintaining a portfolio of
| projects across different time horizons and levels of risk." --
| https://research.google.com/teams/brain/). Unsurprisingly,
| Google Brain is the place that originated the Transformer that
| powers the current AI craze (and many, many, many other AI
| innovations).
| musicale wrote:
| > I'm so excited about programs like 1517's Flux that invests
| $100k in people, no questions asked and lets them explore for a
| few months without demanding KPIs or instantaneous progress.
|
| If Bell Labs let people xplore for multiple years, a few months
| probably isn't enough time.
| areoform wrote:
| That's absolutely true! But we aren't a multi-billion dollar
| corporation with a war chest in the billions so sadly this is
| the best we can do. :(
| WalterBright wrote:
| A related program was Lockheed's Skunkworks.
|
| There have been many attempts to replicate the success of the
| Skunkworks, but they've all failed because the organizers thought
| they could improve on it.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _During WW2, Bell Labs reversed engineered and improved on the
| British Magnetron within 2 months._
|
| um... the UK sent the magnetron they had recently invented (1940)
| to the US in a spirit of wartime cooperation and because their
| own research and industrial base was already maxed out at the
| time. pretty sure they sent an owners manual and schematics too.
| probably even some people?
|
| (magnetrons, for generating microwaves, were the essential
| component for radar)
| areoform wrote:
| I'm quoting their research summary. By reverse engineering, it
| means that they figured out why the magnetron worked and then
| optimized it. They X-Rayed it, found a deviation from plans,
| then developed a model to understand why there was a deviation
| in performance. However examples No. 11 and
| 12 had the number of resonators increased to 8 in order to
| maximise the efficiency of the valve with the magnetic field
| provided by the then available permanent magnet, E1189 also
| incorporated cooling fins to enable the device to be air rather
| than water cooled. Sample No.12 was taken to
| the USA by E. Bowen with the Tizard mission and upon testing at
| Bell Labs produced 10 times the power at 5 times the frequency
| of the best performing American triodes. A certain amount of
| confusion arose as the drawings taken by Bowen still showed the
| 6 resonator anode but an X-Ray picture taken at Bell Labs
| revealed the presence of 8 resonators. The
| E1189 or its Navy equivalent NT98 was used in the Naval radar
| type 271 which was the Allies first operational centimetric
| radar. The early RCM's like the E1189 were prone to mode
| jumping (frequency instability) under pulse conditions and the
| problem was solved in by means of strapping together alternate
| segments a process invented by Sayers in 1942. Strapping also
| considerably increased the magnetron's efficiency.
|
| via,
| https://www.armms.org/media/uploads/06_armms_nov12_rburman.p...
|
| and another account, https://westviewnews.org/2013/08/01/bell-
| labs-the-war-years/...
| WalterBright wrote:
| If I was a billionaire, that would be a fun thing to do:
|
| 1. find 100 highly motivated scientists and engineers
|
| 2. pay them each $1m/year
|
| 3. put them in a building
|
| 4. see what happens!
| Temporary_31337 wrote:
| To be fair you only need to pay sustenance or opportunity cost
| so closer to 100k per person should be fine especially outside
| of USA
| WalterBright wrote:
| I figured the $1m would also fund the equipment and supplies
| they'd need.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| The hard part is picking the right people.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The way to do it is the way top engineers and scientists were
| recruited for the Manhattan Project. You go around to
| universities and talk to the professors, who will know who
| the highly motivated people are.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| My guess is not much unless you give them a specific problem,
| and create a hierarchy.
|
| Otherwise things will just fragment into cliques and fights,
| like any university department.
| WalterBright wrote:
| What would there be to fight over? They each have a $1m
| budget.
| johnea wrote:
| Bell Labs wasn't the only loss. HP Labs was another victim of LBO
| cannibalism.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| A close family member worked at Bell labs during the cold war
| era. According to them,
|
| <paraphrase>
|
| The reason is very simple. There was a big picture motivation:
| the war, followed by the cold war. Once the big picture
| motivation wasn't there anymore, that sort of organizational
| structure(or lack of it) does not work the same way. What ends up
| happening is what a sibling comment has noted:
|
| > My observation has been that smart people don't want this
| anymore, at least not within the context of an organization. If
| you give your employees this freedom, many will take advantage of
| it and do nothing.
|
| </paraphrase>
|
| You might say, but `grep` wasn't used for war! Correct, but it
| came up as a side effect of working on much larger endeavours
| that tied into that bigger picture.
|
| This has been true for most of recent human history. You might
| know this already, but Fourier was part of most of Napoleon's
| expeditions, and his work on decomposing waveforms arose out of
| his work on the "big picture": ballistics.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think it's complicated.
|
| A lot of large US tech corporations do have sizable research
| arms.
|
| Bell Labs is certainly celebrated as part of a telephone monopoly
| at the time though AT&T actually pulled out of operating system
| development related to Multics and Unix was pretty much a semi-
| off-hours project by Ritchie and Thompson.
|
| It's true that you tend not to have such dominant firms as in the
| past. But companies like Microsoft still significant research
| organizations. Maybe head-turning research advancements are
| harder than they used to be. Don't know. But some large tech
| firms are still putting lots of money into longer-term advances.
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