From Trust Me I'm a Scientist. The article is about audio sampling rates, but this passage stood out.
The mid-20th century was a heady time at Bell Laboratories. Just before its closing, it employed upward of 25,000 people, dedicated entirely to research and development.
Their innovations were enormous ones, and they lie at the root of the very device you are reading this on: The transistor, the laser, semi-conduction, the solar cell, television, C++ programming, the fax machine, and by the 1960s, the goddamn video phone.
For the sake of contrast, Google, one of our greatest innovators of today, employs roughly 50,000 people across all of its departments, and it’s greatest offerings have been, well… a slightly improved version of the fax machine and the videophone.
This passage is perhaps too dismissive of Google, but it is amazing how one of the technological powerhouses of our era pales in the face of Bell Labs.
