Interview with Alan Earls, the author of Route 128 and the Birth of the Age of High Tech Watching the rise of Route 128, the road to nowhere

from NewsLink, Vol. 7, No. 2, Winter 2003 Route 128 is certainly more than a highway. To many, it's synonymous with high technology. Little did the first Massachusetts highway planners know that their long discussed idea for a Boston bypass would evolve into America's Technology Region. Their minds were focused on ending gridlock rather than designing microwave transmitters and transistors. As far back as the beginning of the 20th century, some transportation experts wanted a nifty north-to-south arc for navigating around the city of Boston. At the end of World War II, however, entrepreneurs saw the true potential of the newly completed sections of beltway and created the first suburban industrial parks. Together, the road and the entrepreneurs it attracted moved the state rapidly from an old economy into the brave new age of computer- and electronics-driven technology. As the region grew, cutting edge companies such as Raytheon with its radars and transistors set up shop along the highway. Edwin Land's Polaroid, Ken Olsen's Digital, and Edson DeCastro's Data General and a cast of small innovative companies staked their own claims to Route 128 and the I-495 beltway in the years that followed. Alan Earls had his first exposure to computer programming on one of Digital's famed PDP-8 minicomputers in 1970. He also grew up in one of the numerous suburban subdivisions that emerged as 128 was nearing completion. The son of an engineer who worked at several high tech firms, Earls went on to serve as editor of Mass High Tech, the region's newspaper of record. With his new book, Route 128 and the Birth of the Age of High Tech, Earls unfurls an alluring photographic essay on a key part of Massachusetts economic history. NewsLink editor Frank Conte started an online conversation with Earls in January to learn more about Route 128 and what lies ahead for the fabled "road to nowhere." More information about his book is available at www.alanearls.com   When they drew up the plans for Route 128 as far back as the 1920s and 1930s, state officials believed they were finally addressing traffic congestion in downtown Boston, a rationale not different than you hear for the Big Dig. What exactly did state officials have in mind? As automobile and truck traffic became more important, downtown Boston had become a choke point. One of the first solutions was to map out the original Route 128 -- a circumferential highway created by fiat from existing roads that ran through towns like Lexington, Waltham, and Newton. It provided an alternative to, say, taking Route 1 from Dedham, through Boston, to Lynn. Obviously, though, since it was an "unlimited access," usually only a two-lane affair, with innumerable crossroads, its potential was limited. Unlike the Big Dig, the solution that was selected was almost entirely and literally "greenfield" -- in other words it was built where there was little or nothing in the way. Thus, it was pretty cheap -- about $63 million. No matter what kind of multiplier you use to convert that to current dollars it's clearly not even in the same order of magnitude as the Big Dig. Route 128 was also sold as a way to link residents of the region to recreational opportunities, though I can't imagine this weighed too heavily with planners. Recall how people first called Route 128 "the road to nowhere"? My understanding is that an American Automobile Association publication provided the moniker "Road to Nowhere" in part because the beltway concept was new and, perhaps because the road deliberately skirted the centers of towns. Did the concept of a suburban industrial park emerge with the building of Route 128? Was there something about the technology itself that precluded it from being developed in the inner city? I think there is a lot of agreement that Route 128 and its office parks represented the first coherent manifestation of the concept. However, there were clear antecedents and doubtless there are those who could argue the point. Suburbanization was already starting. Add to this a strong impetus for the creation of single story industrial structures coming from the insurance industry -- experience had shown that multi-story structures were a much greater fire risk -- and you have the basic ingredients for the suburbanization of industry and employment in general. Doubtless the Depression and World War II delayed this somewhat but it was bound to happen somewhere. As far as the nature of the technology -- there's probably nothing inherently more tech-friendly about the suburbs. My book pays a lot of attention to Teradyne, a company that was launched in Boston in 1960 and still has most of its operations there today. And, of course, Cambridge continues to play host to many high technology firms. However, commutes into Boston were hellish making accessible suburban locations very appealing. I suspect that the housing that was initially constructed in the suburbs was also comparatively affordable. Both blue collar and white collar people found new homes they could afford in towns like Bedford and Lexington. So once the highway was in place, all the underdeveloped land offered affordable alternatives for commercial and residential development. If you had to identify one individual who was the driving force behind the project, who would that be? Who's the Robert Moses of Route 128? While there were clearly people who influenced the shape and development of Route 128, highway planners Benton McKay and Franklin C. Pillsbury, for example, the giant of 128 and, indeed, of almost all the great highway projects in the Commonwealth, is William F. Callahan. He has a universal reputation for getting things done. Route 128, the Turnpike, and the tunnel that bears his son's name are three obvious examples. What role did the federal government play in promoting the eventual success of Route 128 not only by building the road but by encouraging the industries that moved there? Or was it just an accident? There is certainly a lot of serendipity to the Route 128 story. In terms of the road and the specific locations of industries, the federal government only contributed to the construction of the road in the smallest of ways -- some modest efforts from the WPA in the 1930s. Later, the move of industries and government agencies to the suburbs was encouraged by the Civil Defense organization of the federal government in the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, decentralization was the major portion of the "defense" rationale behind the 1956 Federal-Aid to Highway/Interstate Highway Act. However, there were no specific monetary incentives for such developments and I don't know of any specific examples of organizations that chose the suburbs based on those reasons except perhaps the Air Force Cambridge Research Lab, which relocated to Hanscom AFB starting in the late 1950s. Over the years, Massachusetts definitely was a magnet for government research dollars -- and remains so -- though its relative share of those dollars has been dropping in recent years. There is no doubt the steady and generous flow of funds that started in World War II with the Radiation Lab at MIT and continued with things like project Whirlwind at MIT, the guidance and control work at MIT's Instrumentation Lab (now Draper Lab), the spy satellite work of Itek, the missile and space program work conducted at Avco and elsewhere, and the various missile and radar systems developed by Raytheon employed a great many people and put in place some of the special advantages which we still rely upon today. It was the basis of the region's success in minicomputers. Of course a lot of the complex software that came into existence in those early years made possible the large software sector we still have here today. However, it could be argued that the region didn't capture as much of the "future" as it deserved given all the pioneering research here. Just as in earlier waves of industrialization, many things are pioneered in Massachusetts but reach their fuller development elsewhere. The most obvious proof of that is the fact that the region's population has hardly grown in the past 50 years -- at least compared to the high-tech neighborhoods of Texas and California.Many of the entrepreneurs were graduates of MIT who wanted to draw on talent from the school. How critical was MIT to the development of America's Technology Region? And is Route 128 a prime example of an interdependent economic cluster that makes a region competitive? MIT was and probably still is the cornerstone of Route 128. You can look at almost all the early Route 128 companies: Raytheon, Digital, High Voltage Engineering, Microwave Associates, Thermo-Electron and many others and find very strong MIT connections. Without MIT, the region's strong business and technical infrastructure would probably have produced some kind of post-War rebirth but it couldn't have had the same vibrancy, scale, or impact. As to whether Route 128 is an "economic cluster" and whether firms are interdependent, I'm not sure I can provide a good answer. Probably when minicomputers were at their peak, one could easily make that case. Things are more diverse now. Certainly, many of the fundamental kinds of services and suppliers for producing almost any kind of sophisticated product exist here. Over and above that we have things like software, biotech, and telecommunications that have become demonstrated strengths and are in that sense clusters. There probably are times when government should consciously help nurture or support industries in the absence of a clearly defined need, such as defense. But I see no evidence from the 128 story that such support need be overt or frequent. It's probably better for government to simply be unobtrusive. That's the real secret of Route 128-- it was cost-effective public infrastructure that provided room for the economy as a whole to grow.   Policymakers who believe in an activist industrial policy may think they can point to the history of Route 128 as a prime example of why government should be involved. Does the success of firms on Route 128 prove that government ought to row as well as steer an industry? Well, as I mentioned, Route 128's successes were not really planned. If World War II and the Cold War hadn't come along, computers and radars wouldn't have been needed in such abundance. Could the government have developed a plan to create those industries or any similarly sophisticated industry? I really don't think so. The government had needs and saw organizations with the potential to meet those needs. They provided support and some of those organizations grew to be very successful. The scourge of war -- whether hot or cold -- was what kept the process reasonably honest and gave it motivation. By honesty, I mean having to produce a meaningful and useful output. Of course there were projects with embarrassing cost overruns and things like that. But at the end of the day, the whole military -industrial complex -- including the part resident in Massachusetts -- had to deliver the goods. There probably are times when government should consciously help nurture or support industries in the absence of a clearly defined need, such as defense. But I see no evidence from the 128 story that such support need be overt or frequent. It's probably better for government to simply be unobtrusive. That's the real secret of Route 128-- it was cost-effective public infrastructure that provided room for the economy as a whole to grow.   One of the watershed moments in the history of Massachusetts politics and public policy was the emergence of the Massachusetts High Technology Council. How did that come about? I wasn't "present at the creation." My understanding is that some executives were fed up with doing business in a state that no longer seemed to recognize that the world was a competitive place.Why did the High Tech Council make tax policy a centerpiece of its agenda? In the mid-1970s, there was a widespread flight of industry from the region, shrinking defense spending, and unemployment that briefly reached about 12 percent. As I recall, even middle-of-the-road folks used to refer to the Bay State as "Taxachusetts" back then. Deserved or not, there was a widespread belief that all public policy issues were addressed by taxing someone -- in effect, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. It appears that some political officials warmed up to the high tech community's development agenda, Ed King for example. Years later, Michael Dukakis finally recognized the value of growing Route 128 high tech firms. Was this a surprise? I don't know exactly how Ed King got religion but in listening to what he said and talking to him I got the sense that he had somehow acquired a sincere and probably genuine respect for entrepreneurial people. He certainly made every effort to be a cheerleader for the state's businesses -- something we've not seen much since then. As far as Mike Dukakis, I don't think he really grasped things in the same way. He had a reputation for rationality and thoughtfulness but his commitment to the high tech industry developed after the industry -- and the Massachusetts Miracle it helped create -- had already seized the public's imagination. Your book tells the story of Route 128 in pictures; a common theme that runs through it is that the high tech community certainly had a confidence in its abilities. I suppose that is true. The region certainly produced many hard-driving visionaries and entrepreneurs. Route 128 has been compared unfavorably to Silicon Valley lately. Some observers such as Annalee Saxenian in her book Regional Advantage; Culture and Competition in SIlicon Valley and Route 128, believe that Silicon Valley's culture is more conducive to innovation? Why? I've always felt that Saxenian was a bit unfair in that she looked at the two regions during the period in time when the microprocessor --particularly the Intel architecture -- became the dominant factor in computing and much of the rest of electronics. This development gave all enterprises -- anyone with the ability to buy an off-the-shelf CPU -- the same standing in the industry as older, established players. To cite an obvious example, for a time, anyone could build PC clones and everyone did. So, naturally, Silicon Valley, which grew up in this period, drew success from extremely rapid change. Companies grew and changed. Started and failed. People moved from one job to another -- sometimes after just a few months. In this same period, the great minicomputer companies of the 128 region were struggling to hold on to their positions, adopt new technology, and continue to service customers globally. In the long run, they failed, I suppose, but that may have been almost inevitable given the vastness of change in the industry as a whole. What Saxenian didn't acknowledge, in my opinion, is that these firms had become entrenched, had sought to foster loyalty and long-term commitment in their employees, and so on, because that was the key to their success up to that point. When Digital was in its heyday they were very vertically integrated because there simply weren't enough suppliers out there for, say, disk drives or keyboards. They needed to hold on to all their talent. When Ed deCastro left Digital and started Data General, I have no doubt it was perceived as a serious blow by DEC. So, again, I think what Saxenian recorded was not so much a comparison of East Coast and West Coast business styles as the death of one part of the industry and the birth of another. If she had looked at a 25-year time-span her conclusions might have been different.Do you agree with the notion that few regions illustrate the theory of creative destruction more precisely than Route 128. During economic downturns large firms fall by the wayside. Wang, Digital, and Prime Computer no longer exist on their own. Actually it's hard to fathom that Digital is now part of Hewlett-Packard. It's said that firms in the 1980s mostly ignored the PC revolution, wedded as they were to mainframes. Software is a slightly different story but even home grown companies like Lotus are part of larger corporations such as IBM. I think you are correct. There certainly is both destruction and creation going on. I personally am concerned that, for the most part, the region no longer has companies that dominate an important section of the market. Twenty years ago, decisions that Digital or Wang made could help set standards or have ripple effects with suppliers. Nowadays, the ripples start somewhere else and end up here. High tech is more integrated globally than ever so it may not hurt Massachusetts. Still, I have to think it was better for the region when the decisions made in Massachusetts mattered more. With the nation's new priorities geared toward homeland security and President Bush's proposed increase in defense spending, do you see any kind of revival for Route 128 firms? I would think that Route 128 probably has a better shot at getting more funding in the current climate than some other areas of the country. We have retained a core of companies with expertise in surveillance, intelligence, and communications. Also, a few area companies have a strong presence in the "bomb sniffing" business, which seems destined to remain important for some time to come. The photographs in your book detail the evolution of technologies from computers to robotics to hand held telephones. Are there any firms or technologies that might bring some of the old glory back to Route 128? I think that's impossible to predict. As I mentioned, there's still a great deal happening in the region. All the fundamentals exist here to spawn new companies and new industries. What is of concern, and I think there is a chance that Governor Romney may address this, is that only highly compensated individuals can afford to live in Massachusetts. Thanks to a variety of land-use policies the suburbs are no longer a place of opportunity but, instead, a barrier to economic growth. I serve on my suburban town's Open Space Committee. I'm not in favor of unrestricted growth. But there needs to be a better way of creating places for people to live and work within the metropolitan area as a whole. That will require regional thinking and creative leadership. It is exactly the kind of issue where government needs to be involved.

NewsLink is the quarterly newsletter of the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research at Suffolk University. © 1996-2003. All rights reserved.

HTML format revised on 7/3/03 11:58 AM