Originally Posted by
deubster
...
In a similar vein, AT&T's Bell Labs developed the solid state transistor, couldn't figure out what to do with it (they were thinking hearing aids), gave it away for next to nothing to Sony, which spurred Japan's entire economy into the upper echelon for decades.
....
AT&T knew exactly what to do with the transistor. It was used to replace vacuum tubes in amplifiers and switches. Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T, made billions of transistors.