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Throughout history there is a recurring theme of like-minded individuals coming together to create a shared “hive mind” intelligence that is greater than its constituent parts. There are extremely rare cases of geniuses that worked on their own, but for the most part almost every famed inventor, pioneer, or philosopher was part of a group or cadre of other great thinkers.

The fact is, we work best when we have something to bounce ideas off. In the time of Socrates and Plato and Cicero, this would’ve been the local forum or sophist schools, and the Enlightenment of the 18th century was triggered by homely gatherings at salons and fueled by the steaming hotpot of coffeehouses and caffeine. Today we still use forums of course, and plenty of inventions and insight still originate from coffeehouses, but most innovation occurs in laboratories.

Almost everything around you — your computer, wallpaper, desk and chair, money, pens — was invented, created, or augmented by a team of geniuses working long hours from a well-stocked laboratory, and often with very juicy pay packets to boot.

Being ExtremeTech, though, we’re going to focus on the labs that have shaped technology in general and computers in specific. There might be a few interesting segues along the way, though!

(Pictured above: the WITCH computer — one of the first stored-program computers)