Researched
Industrial Research Laboratory
Edison's Menlo Park lab (1876) makes invention a team job with salaried staff, the model for corporate R&D and Bell Labs.
Open in the interactive tree →Edison set up a dedicated invention workshop in New Jersey where teams built the phonograph, a practical light bulb and a power system; German dye and chemical firms had in-house labs even earlier. Industrial labs such as Bell Labs (1925) later produced the transistor and information theory.
Prerequisites
Unlocks
- Incandescent Light Bulb1879Edison's Menlo Park laboratory produced the practical light bulb
- Transistor1947The transistor came out of Bell Labs, the model corporate research lab
- Information Theory1948Shannon worked at Bell Labs, which funded basic research on communication
- Photovoltaics1954The first silicon solar cell was made at Bell Labs in 1954