This week I finished the most recent book in my self-guided study of 20th century technology, namely The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by Jon Gertner. As the title implies, it’s a chronicle of research and development wing of AT&T, a history that lasts roughly from the 1920s to its demise in the 1980s. First of all, the sheer list of things that were invented or discovered in these Labs is just insane by any measure. Physical things like the transistor,transis...