alt Hacker NewsMost of those things were invented by a company granted a government monopoly on communications and not allowed to directly profit off of any of those advances.
AT&T threw money at smart people and said, "Do stuff. Then we'll see if we can use it"
No one does that anymore.
The big one on the list that wasn't AT&T was microwaves and that was a contractor to Nasa [0] in the heat of the moon race and a similar "Do stuff. Then we'll see if we can use it" mandate.
[0] Defense contractor Raytheon most specifically.