Comment by mdnahas

My father worked at Bell Labs, with Thompson, Ritchie, Aho, etc.. My dad says Bell Labs was the result of the monopoly laws restricting AT&T. The government forced AT&T's prices to be based on its costs from 2 years previously with a fixed rate of profit. So, prices were something like 104% of its costs from 2 years earlier (or something like that). That meant that the only way that AT&T could increase its profits was by innovating to lower its costs. For example, if research lowered its costs by 2% per year, the company's profits would double! Thus, research was a top priority for AT&T and Bell Labs was well-funded and well-managed.

(BTW, I loved "take your kid to work day" at Bell Labs --- I got to use computers with 5-button mice and play hilarious computer games. I was also given a copy of "the old testament" (pre-ANSI "The C Programming Langauge" book) in high school. My dad worked in hardware and really enjoyed his time there helping to design the CRISP and Hobbit processors.)