Its hard to argue Bell Labs was much of a purely private company, AT&T was bound by law to invest a certain amount of money in hard scientific research, in return for its monopoly position in telecom.

So at the very least, bell labs was the direct result of regulation, and pretty arguably just an alternate form of taxation (AT&T was also legally bared from commercializing Bell Lab's research outside of telecom)

Good point!

1. I will admit that there are exceptions :)

2. Clearly, I should have written "industry" instead of "companies".

Barring any error in my memory Bell Labs was a pure research lab at the time, wasn't it, i.e. not an industry research branch, right?

Is that a Life Of Brian reference? :D

Lasers.