This is a special time for technology. Five of the world’s seven most valuable companies are U.S. tech firms. But the core innovations underlying Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc. are decades old.
The transistor was born in the 1940s at AT&T’s Bell Labs. The internet was nurtured by the U.S. Defense Department in the 1960s. Many important, but less foundational inventions, such as GPS, were products of the Cold War.