From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s Bell Labs-officially the research & development wing of AT&T-was the biggest & arguably the best laboratory for new ideas in the world From the transistor to the laser from digital communications to cellular telephony it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs In The Idea Factory Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions & delivers a riveting & heretofore untold chapter of American history At its heart this is a story about the life & work of a small group of brilliant & eccentric men-Mervin Kelly Bill Shockley Claude Shannon John Pierce & Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs Today when the drive to invent has become a mantra Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges & solutions to technological innovation Here after all was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born