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Thank you for this comment. Most people aren't aware of the relationship that Bell was in with the gov't because of its status as a monopoly. Before the gov't broke up Bell, it agreed to let Bell have the monopoly on the telephone system, and in exchange, Bell "gave back" to the public in the form of new, "public domain" technology. Not just the transistor, but also Unix and the C programming language. Sometimes I wonder how farther we might be in our technological development if Bell had never been broken up.

Folks wanting to know more about Bell Labs can check out "The Idea Factory" by Jon Gertner.