Comment by dredmorbius

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>.)

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.