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Thesis ID: CBB001561474

The Bell Telephone Laboratories and the Military-Industrial Complex: The Jewett-Buckley Years, 1925--1951 (2007)

George Washington University
Becker, William H.
Publication date: 2007
Language: English

Publication Date: 2007
Edition Details: Advisor: Becker, William H.
Physical Details: 428 pp.

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Research institutes; research stations Government sponsored science Laboratories Science and economics Privately sponsored science; philanthropy Corporations 20th century, early United States Buckley, Oliver E. Jewett, Frank B. Bell Telephone Laboratories

AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories was in many ways a microcosm of what President Eisenhower termed the "military-industrial complex"---or, more accurately, the military-industrial science complex. Valuable and sometimes surprising insights can be gained by an historical examination of this remarkable corporate institution and the public and private influence it wielded over several decades of the twentieth century. Nearly every adult American knows something about Bell Telephone Laboratories and its prominence in the history of industrial research and development. However, very few---including students of the communications industry---are fully aware of the extensive; behind-the-scenes participation of Bell Laboratories in the formulation of American military and national security policy. Dr. Frank B. Jewett was the first president of Bell Telephone Laboratories and, from 1925 to 1940, the leader of some of the nation's leading scientists. Jewett not only was a groundbreaking leader in industrial science, but the person chosen to lead the prestigious National Academy of Sciences during the Second World War. He is a key figure in the deployment of the American scientific resources that made an enormous difference in that global conflict. Of no less importance is the career of Dr. Oliver E. Buckley, who succeeded Jewett as Bell Telephone Laboratories president. Behind the scenes and mostly unrecognized by historians for his contributions, Buckley was a major science advisor to the Roosevelt and Truman administrations during the Second World War and in the early Cold War era. During the span of time from 1941 to 1951, he was chief of the nation's most famous applied science facility and an active participant in the crucial policy debates concerning thermonuclear warfare. A closer study of the Bell Telephone Laboratories' relationships with government during the Jewett-Buckley era provides new insights into its hidden role in major industrial science developments that became central to U.S. security policy in the interregnum between the First and Second World Wars and in the early Cold War.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/01 (2007). Pub. no. AAT 3248464.

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