On road maps, the new superhighway that curls through the pleasant woodlands surrounding Boston is known routinely as Route 128. But to U.S. industry, it is known more romantically as the Space Highway. Amid the landscaped woods of the industrial parks along commuter-clogged 128 are tucked scores of low, angular buildings bearing science-fiction names: Trans-Sonics, Tracerlab, Microwave, Dynametrics. These plants add up to the biggest and fastest-growing science-based complex* in the U.S., and provide the nation's most impressive proof of the vast new industrial potential of the electronics and space age. Beyond that, they are a dramatic demonstration of the fact that behind current new industrial development lies one key factor: new ideas.
For Wall Street, Highway 128, the road of ideas, has become a road of enchanting mystery, glamour—and the source of quick profits. Many a Wall Street analyst periodically tours the highway, on the hunt for hot new companies. Few investors can understand what many of the companies make. But their eager bidding to get in on the ground floor has sent the prices of some stocks soaring a hundredfold—and more—in the last few years.
Along the highway, giant manufacturers such as Raytheon, RCA, Avco and Sylvania are hard at work on missile and space systems. Smaller firms make components and instruments—some of them so tiny that a week's production fits into the rear of a station wagon. Many of them are so sophisticated that even company brass are hard-put to explain how they operate. From 128's small companies come devices that can read print optically, or probe space to guide a missile.
Out of the Lofts. Highway 128 was built to be just a Boston bypass. But in the eight years since it opened, the roadway has lured 17 industrial parks and $137 million worth of new buildings. Into them have moved 227 companies employing 28,000 people.
Most of the companies started in small lofts, warehouses or garages in the commercial districts of Boston or Cambridge, looked very much like the radio-repair shops and jobbers that surrounded them. To finance samples of new products, the founders dug into personal savings or tapped friends. Cash came from such risk-minded organizations as American Research & Development Corp., which sponsored many science companies (High Voltage, Tracerlab), and from individual investor groups such as those of Laurance Rockefeller, who now is sponsoring one of 128's newest, Geophysics Corp. of America. As the prototype models succeeded, the young companies outgrew their quarters and moved "out to the highway."