The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
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14 Interview of Dean Woolridge by Lillian Hoddeson, August 21, 1976, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
15 John L. Moll, “William Bradford Shockley: 1910–1989,” National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoir, 1995.
16 Interview of Addison White by Lillian Hoddeson, September 30, 1976, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
17 Interview of William B. Shockley by Lillian Hoddeson, AIP.
18 Walter Brown, author interview.
19 William Shockley, interviewed in 1969 by Jane Morgan.
20 Interview of Walter Brattain by Alan Holden and W. J. King, 1964, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
CHAPTER FOUR: WAR
1 Interview of Dean Woolridge by Lillian Hoddeson, August 21, 1976, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
2 The request for uranium research came from Vannevar Bush, one of Jewett’s closest friends, who was then in charge of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which later became the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Bush would also be a mentor to Claude Shannon, the Bell Labs engineer-mathematician.
3 Vannevar Bush, letter to Frank B. Jewett, May 2, 1940, Bush Papers, Library of Congress. Bush wrote, “There is a matter on which I am decidedly puzzled, and it may or may not be of great importance. This is the matter of the fission of uranium.”
4 Uranium in its natural form contains mostly U-238 and only trace amounts of U-235. Most modern-day fuel for nuclear reactors is composed of slightly “enriched” uranium—that is, U-238 mixed with about 5 percent of the more volatile and fissionable U-235. Weapons-grade uranium contains much higher percentages of U-235. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/ur-enrichment.html.
5 Interview of James Fisk by Lillian Hoddeson, June 24, 1976, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
6 Charles Townes, How the Laser Happened (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 39.
7 Though Mervin Kelly used the words “scramble” and “unscramble” in his description of multiplexing and quartz filters, Bob Lucky points out that those terms erroneously suggest encrypted transmissions. It might be more precise to think of the telephone conversations of the era as “stacked” atop one another during the transmission process.
8 “Artificial Quartz Is Produced Here,” New York Times, September 19, 1947.
9 James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (New York: Vintage, 1993), p. 85.
10 Lloyd Espenschied, “Memo: Visit by a Young Investigator of the War Department,” January 25, 1944, 4:50 p.m. AT&T archives.
11 Buckley and Jewett traded memos on the Espenschied incident between late January 1944 and November 1944.
12 There is no evidence as to Mervin Kelly’s personal feelings, yet Kelly was the first Bell Labs executive to hire Jews—for the Labs’ efforts in radar and wartime development. Meanwhile, it took many more years before the Labs executives embraced the idea of hiring African Americans or promoting women into leadership positions. Those steps toward diversity—in the research department, at least—did not come until Bill Baker’s tenure.
13 T. R. Kennedy Jr., “Theory of Radar: More Information on Radio Detection Device Is Made Public,” New York Times, April 29, 1945.
14 William S. White, “Secrets of Radar Given to World,” New York Times, August 15, 1945; Russell Owen, “Radar Promises Peacetime Miracles, Too,” New York Times Magazine, August 19, 1945.
15 Robert Buderi, The Invention That Changed the World (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 126.
16 Ibid., p. 29.
17 “Radar,” Time, August 20, 1945.
18 M. D. Fagen, ed., A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: National Service in War and Peace (1925–1975) (Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1975), p. 114.
19 Buderi, The Invention That Changed the World, p. 49.
20 J. B. Fisk, H. D. Hagstrum, and P. L. Hartman, “The Magnetron as a Generator of Centimeter Waves,” Bell System Technical Journal, April 1946.
21 “Facing the 70’s: An Interview with President Fisk,” Bell Labs News, December 11, 1970.
22 Bohr and Kelly probably became close in the early 1950s, when Kelly became involved in the “Atoms for Peace” program. Kelly’s son-in-law, Robert Von Mehren, described to me their friendship. Some correspondence at the Niels Bohr archive in Copenhagen verifies this. “My wife and I look forward with great pleasure to meeting you and Mrs. Kelly at the Award Ceremony in October and to seeing you both later in Boston. We shall also be happy to come and visit you in your home in Short Hills from which we have so pleasant memories.” Niels Bohr to M. J. Kelly, May 2, 1957. Courtesy Niels Bohr archive, Copenhagen.
23 Paul Hartman, letter to Homer Hagstrum, November 23, 1973. AT&T archives.
24 Homer Hagstrum, letter, December 1973. Fisk collection, AIP.
25 P. L. Hartman, letter to J. B. Fisk upon his retirement. Fisk Collection, AIP.
26 Fisk collection, AIP.
27 Philip M. Morse, In at the Beginnings: A Physicist’s Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), p. 184.
28 In the Stanford archives, where Shockley’s papers are housed, there are usually various notebooks and diaries for the same year but for different aspects of his life. Some are spiral-bound; others are leather-bound; others still are two-inch-by-two-inch square-bound.
29 Occasionally, Shockley’s trips involved hazardous secret missions. There was, for instance, a white-knuckle November 1942 trip that Philip Morse and Shockley took to London, on a special plane built for aquatic landings and takeoffs. In his memoir, In at the Beginnings, Morse recalled, “We went to Lisbon in a Pan American flying boat, with lengthy stops at Bermuda and again at the Azores to refuel and to wait for the sea to be calm enough so we could take off again. We finally landed in the bay at Lisbon, in the evening, after circling for a half hour waiting for the fishing boats to get out of the way. After a day’s wait in Lisbon, we were flown at night to London in a blacked-out British transport plane, to avoid being spotted by German fighters from France” (p. 191).
30 Joel N. Shurkin, Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley (New York: Macmillan, 2006), pp. 77–78.
31 O. E. Buckley, memo, January 21, 1944. AT&T archives.
32 Mervin J. Kelly, “A First Record of Thoughts Concerning an Important Post-War Problem of the Bell Telephone Laboratories and Western Electric Company,” memo, 29 pages, May 1, 1943. AT&T archives.
33 William Shockley, “The Invention of the Transistor—An Example of Creative-Failure Methodology,” Electrochemical Society Proceedings 98, no. 1 (1998): 31.
CHAPTER FIVE: SOLID STATE
1 “Big Development in Murray Hill by Bell Telephone Laboratories,” Summit (NJ) Herald, August 1, 1930.
2 O. E. Buckley to F. Jewett, January 16, 1939. AT&T archives.
3 O. E. Buckley to Dr. Jewett, May 17, 1938. AT&T archives.
4 In my discussion of the Murray Hill complex, I’ve drawn on numerous memos from the late 1930s and early 1940s, a June 1943 Bell System pamphlet by Franklin L. Hunt entitled “New Buildings of Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill,” and a limited-edition photographic book on the design. I’ve also used my own visits for description.
5 Interview of Addison White by Lillian Hoddeson, September 30, 1976, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
6 A box at the AT&T archives purports to hold Kelly’s files; the box is mostly empty, containing his published speeches, some papers on an obscure patent dispute, and a disintegrating leather-bound log of his incoming mail during several years of the late 1930s. Kelly’s lo
ng career at Bell Labs suggests that he would have amassed dozens of boxes of archive-worthy materials, as was the case with his predecessors, Oliver Buckley and Frank Jewett. I tried for several years to locate the Kelly papers, but to no avail. Kelly’s wife and children are deceased; his son-in-law had only some published technical papers and a few random Polaroids of Kelly relaxing on his patio in Short Hills, New Jersey. Neither of Kelly’s former schools—the Missouri School of Mines and the University of Chicago—were bequeathed any relevant archival materials, nor was Sandia Labs or any other government institution. It is possible (but unlikely) that some Kelly papers have been given to the AT&T archives but have not yet been cataloged. The archives has warehoused numerous crates and boxes of unexamined materials that cannot be evaluated due to limited staffing. Most likely, however, the Kelly papers have been lost or destroyed. What remains exists in the collections of various contemporaries, such as Oliver Buckley, Frank Jewett, and Ralph Bown.
7 “Authorization for Work,” Case No. 38139. I actually came across two distinct work authorizations for the transistor. Both authorizations are dated January 1, 1945, but one is unsigned. The other (signed) has an approval date of June 21, 1945. The $417,000 cost was illegible in the latter and is taken from the former. AT&T archives.
8 Brattain’s notebooks from 1945 to 1948 are the ur-text of the transistor’s genesis. I reviewed them at the AT&T archives.
9 William O. Baker, interviewed by Marcy Goldstein and Jeffrey L. Sturchio at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, May 23 and June 18, 1985. Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, Oral History Transcript #0013. Quoted by permission.
10 J. H. Scaff, R. O. Grisdale, and J. K. Galt, “A History of the Chemical Laboratories, Part I,” internal Bell Laboratories document, p. 6. AT&T archives.
11 Frank B. Jewett, “Research Methods,” Bell Laboratories Record, July 1928.
12 Mervin J. Kelly, Testimony Before the Public Utilities Commission of the State of California, Los Angeles, May 12, 1947. AT&T archives.
13 For my explanation of semiconductors, I’m particularly indebted to several sources: G. L. Pearson and W. H. Brattain, “History of Semiconductor Research,” Proceedings of the I.R.E., December 1955, Bell Telephone System Monograph 2538; K. K. Darrow, “Electronic Conductors,” Bell Laboratories Record, May 1955; J. H. Scaff, “The Role of Metallurgy in the Technology of Electronic Materials,” Metallurgical Transactions, March 1970; and Ernest Braun and Stuart Macdonald, Revolution in Miniature: The History and Impact of Semiconductor Electronics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
14 This episode is described in “The Story of the Transistor,” a 1958 Bell Labs pamphlet, and is explored in deeper detail in both Walter Brattain’s AIP oral history with A. N. Holden and W. J. King and an AIP oral history interview of Russell Ohl by Lillian Hoddeson.
15 Scaff, “The Role of Metallurgy in the Technology of Electronic Materials.”
16 Ibid.
17 Morgan Sparks, “Semiconductor Research,” Bell Laboratories Record, June 1958, p. 193.
18 Michael F. Wolff, “The R&D ‘Bootleggers’: Inventing Against Odds,” IEEE Spectrum, July 1975.
19 My rendition of the chronology of events leading up to the invention is drawn from a number of sources. Among the documents recounting the path to the transistor’s invention, a few have proven more essential and more frequently quoted in the science history literature than others. These are Walter Brattain’s two lengthy oral histories (one with Holden and King; the other with Weiner); an official and unpublished internal history, commissioned by the Labs in 1948 and written as a Memorandum for Record on December 27, 1949, by W. S. Gorton; William Shockley’s long and detailed article “The Invention of the Transistor—An Example of Creative-Failure Methodology,” Electrochemical Society Proceedings 98, no. 1 (1998); personal accounts written by Brattain (“Genesis of the Transistor,” Physics Teacher, March 1968) and Ralph Bown (“The Transistor as an Industrial Research Episode,” Scientific Monthly, January 1955); and J. H. Scaff’s “The Role of Metallurgy in the Technology of Electronic Materials,” Metallurgical Transactions, March 1970. Also essential was Charles Weiner, “How the Transistor Emerged,” IEEE Spectrum, January 1973. I consulted the 1956 Nobel Prize speeches of Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley, as well as a special issue of the Bell Laboratories Record on the transistor’s tenth anniversary (June 1958), especially for Morgan Sparks’s article “Semiconductor Research.” Shockley’s “Transistor Physics,” American Scientist, January 1954, and Brinkman, Haggan, and Troutman’s “A History of the Invention of the Transistor and Where It Will Lead Us,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 32, no. 12 (December 1997), added insightful points. I took a close look at the actual first transistor, now on display at Alcatel-Lucent headquarters in Murray Hill. Also, the oral histories of Lillian Hoddeson (especially Russell Ohl, Gerald Pearson, Addison White, and John Bardeen) and Harriet Zuckerman’s oral histories of Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley proved vital, as did the private Bell Labs memos and promotional and explanatory literature published by the Bell System that I reviewed at the AT&T archives.
20 Interview of Walter Brattain by Alan Holden and W. J. King, 1964, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
21 Author interviews; see also Brinkman et al., “A History of the Invention of the Transistor and Where It Will Lead Us.”
22 Interview of James Fisk by Lillian Hoddeson, June 24, 1976, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
23 Shockley, “The Invention of the Transistor—An Example of Creative-Failure Methodology.”
24 Walter Brattain, interviewed by Harriet Zuckerman, 1964, as part of her larger study of the research careers of Nobel laureates in the sciences, Columbia Oral History Research Office. See Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States (New York: Free Press, 1977), and the enlarged edition (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1996). Quoted by permission of Dr. Zuckerman.
25 Interview of Walter Brattain by Alan Holden and W. J. King, AIP.
26 Walter Brown, author interview.
27 William Shockley, “The Invention of the Transistor—An Example of Creative-Failure Methodology,” draft version, July 31, 1973. AT&T archives.
CHAPTER SIX: HOUSE OF MAGIC
1 William Shockley, “The Invention of the Transistor—An Example of Creative-Failure Methodology,” Electrochemical Society Proceedings 98, no. 1 (1998).
2 Interview of Walter Brattain by Alan Holden and W. J. King, 1964, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
3 Ibid.
4 Walter Brattain, interviewed by Harriet Zuckerman, 1964, as part of her larger study of the research careers of Nobel laureates in the sciences, Columbia Oral History Research Office. See Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States (New York: Free Press, 1977), and the enlarged edition (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1996).
5 William Keefauver, former Bell Labs patent attorney, author interview.
6 In Shockley’s recollection, it was Harvey Fletcher, not Ralph Bown, who issued this challenge.
7 Walter Brattain, interviewed by Harriet Zuckerman, 1964. By permission of Dr. Zuckerman.
8 Bell Telephone Laboratories, “Memorandum for File: Terminology for Semiconductor Triodes,” May 28, 1948. AT&T archives.
9 Ralph Bown, “Memorandum to Those Working on Surface States Phenomena,” July 16, 1948. AT&T archives.
10 Memorandum, “BTL Confidential,” May 27, 1948. AT&T archives.
11 J. H. Scaff, “The Role of Metallurgy in the Technology of Electronic Materials,” Metallurgical Transactions (March 1970).
12 W. Shockley, letter to Robert Gibney, June 29, 1948. AT&T archives.
13 “Press Release from Bell Telephone Laboratories: A.M. Papers of Thu
rsday, July 1, 1948.” AT&T archives.
14 J. Bardeen and W. H. Brattain, “A Semi-Conductor Triode.” AT&T archives.
15 Quoted in Shirley Thomas, Men of Space, vol. 4 (Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1962), p. 175.
16 William Shockley, interviewed by John L. Gregory on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the transistor, April 1972.
17 Shockley, “The Invention of the Transistor—An Example of Creative-Failure Methodology.”
18 Interview of Walter Brattain by Charles Weiner, May 28, 1974, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
19 Shockley, “The Invention of the Transistor—An Example of Creative-Failure Methodology.”
20 Bell Labs document, March 23, 1953. AT&T archives.
21 Phil Anderson, “Physics at Bell Labs, 1949–1984,” unpublished. Given to the author by Anderson.
22 Interview of Addison White by Lillian Hoddeson, September 30, 1976, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; www.aip.org/history/ohilist.
23 Shockley, “The Invention of the Transistor—An Example of Creative-Failure Methodology.”
24 Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 655. Rhodes notes that the Trinity core could not have been larger “than a small orange.” While he put the weight at eleven pounds, other descriptions of the plutonium core have ranged higher—up to fourteen pounds, and the size of a softball.
25 Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), p. 164.
26 Letter, Jay W. Forrester to Ralph Bown, July 22, 1948. AT&T archives.
27 Letter, Ralph Bown to Jay W. Forrester, July 26, 1948. AT&T archives.
28 A discovery of similar import occurred in the early 1960s at Bell Labs, when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave radiation that remained from the Big Bang. The men later won the Nobel Prize for their work. Jansky would have almost certainly been considered for the prize, too, had he not suffered an early death, in 1950, at the age of forty-five. After Jansky’s death, a lingering and insoluble disagreement arose over Bell Labs’ suggestion that Jansky move on from his discovery and redirect his research to more practical matters. Jansky’s brother, C. M. Jansky, has made the case that Bell management’s orders not only were shortsighted but were implemented against Jansky’s wishes. Jansky’s supervisor Harald Friis has disagreed.