by Jon Gertner
Also, a word about the oral histories listed in the following pages, which I’ve quoted from with the permission of the American Institute of Physics, AT&T, the California Institute of Technology, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and Harriet Zuckerman of the Columbia University Oral History Project. I am grateful to all of these institutions and historians for giving me access to this work. But one oral historian in particular—Lillian Hoddeson—deserves special recognition. Her dogged efforts in the 1970s to track down the origins of solid-state physics, and her insightful interviews of Shockley, Fisk, Bardeen, Pearson, Ohl, and a number of other Bell Labs researchers, have been a resource for a generation of writers. These interviews now reside with the American Institute of Physics. I’m particularly lucky to have been directed to her interview of Katherine Kelly, Mervin Kelly’s widow, in the AIP archives, which helped add flavor to the life of a man who left few clues, and several mysteries, behind.
IN THIS BOOK I’ve tried to describe a group of Bell Labs researchers whose lives have never been the subject of an ensemble narrative; I’ve also made it my priority to contextualize their achievements within the social, scientific, and commercial world of Bell Labs. What I have not done, however, is go as deep into the details of various innovations as some other historians. Fortunately, for readers more interested in, say, communications sciences or solid-state physics, a number of authors have done so. Their books have enriched my own reporting and are worth searching out in their own right. All of these texts are included in the bibliography on the pages that follow. A few are worth an additional plug here.
The definitive scientific and technological history of the Bell System is a seven-volume set, published by AT&T between 1975 and 1982, that comprises about forty-eight hundred pages. Though the writing is technical and uneven (and in places far too favorably disposed to its parent company), the set is illuminating and indispensable. Four of the volumes in particular—on the Bell System’s early years; on transmission technology; on switching history; and on wartime service—were especially useful to me. A companion, eighth volume in the series entitled Engineering and Operations in the Bell System also proved helpful, especially in its methodical unraveling of the phone system’s technical and organizational complexity.
These books should not be thought of as the final word, however. In the science literature about Bell Labs and its era, more accessible—and more independent-minded—histories abound. Daniel Kevles’s The Physicists is a valuable book that explains the rise and influence of physics in America; Leonard Reich’s The Making of American Industrial Research is an expert summation of the early rise of scientific research at GE and Bell Labs. Robert Buderi’s The Invention That Changed the World is essential reading for anyone interested in the development of wartime radar systems. For those interested in a deeper history of the transistor and semiconductor electronics, meanwhile, two books in particular are worth seeking out. Revolution in Miniature, by Ernest Braun and Stuart Macdonald, is a thoughtful exploration of the invention and its implications. Crystal Fire, by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, is an authoritative account of the transistor’s birth and development. Two other excellent books—The Chip, by T. R. Reid, which focuses mostly on Jack Kilby; and The Man Behind the Microchip, by Leslie Berlin, which explores the life of Robert Noyce—explain how the transistor gave way to an even more powerful invention, the integrated circuit.
Claude Shannon is not yet the subject of a full biography. Yet his encyclopedia-sized Collected Papers, edited by Neil Sloane and Aaron Wyner, includes all of Shannon’s seminal (and well-written) papers on Boolean algebra, cryptography, information, chess, and juggling. It also contains a wide-ranging and valuable interview of Shannon, done originally for Omni magazine, by Anthony Liversidge. (Another valuable interview of Shannon, which I relied upon but is unfortunately not included in the book, was conducted by Robert Price for the IEEE.) For a better understanding of how Shannon’s work fits into the science of cryptography, there is David Kahn’s monumental book The Codebreakers. For a better sense of how Shannon’s work formed the basis of communications engineering, there is Bob Lucky’s Silicon Dreams and Robert Gallager’s Principles of Digital Communication. James Gleick’s The Information, which was published as this book was in the final stages of editing, struck me as essential reading for anyone interested in how Shannon’s work fits into the evolution of our information-based society. And for those wishing to get more of a flavor for Shannon’s life and thought process, I suggest watching the engaging thirty-minute documentary “Claude Shannon: Father of the Information Age,” which is available for viewing on YouTube. I likewise suggest Googling “The Essential Message,” an unpublished MIT thesis on Shannon by Erico Marui Guizzo, which is an insightful look into how he created information theory. Finally, no list of books on Shannon would be complete without Fortune’s Formula, William Poundstone’s entertaining narrative of how in the 1960s Shannon and his friend Ed Thorp tried to beat the Las Vegas casinos and Wall Street.
John Pierce wrote many technical books that are still available through used booksellers; with Mike Noll, he also wrote Signals, a useful and accessible introduction to the science of communications. Alas, one of Pierce’s most captivating pieces of writing was My Career as an Engineer, an autobiography (unpublished in the United States) that he wrote—very quickly, I’m sure—for a small Japanese publisher upon receiving the Japan Prize in 1985. It is not available to a general readership, but I had the good fortune to get my hands on a copy thanks to Mike Noll. Another book useful for understanding Pierce and the developments that led to the early communications satellites is Arthur C. Clarke’s Voice Across the Sea. Also, to get a better understanding of the laser and fiber optics work that went on under Pierce’s deputy Rudi Kompfner, I recommend The Laser in America, Joan Lisa Bromberg’s history of the device, as well as Jeff Hecht’s exhaustive examination of the invention and development of fiber optics, City of Light.
Finally, there are a multitude of books on telephone history and AT&T that informed my conclusions. Among the best are Claude Fischer’s America Calling, which documents the telephone’s early social history, and John Brooks’s Telephone, which deftly explains the business decisions that shaped AT&T’s first hundred years. Two books on AT&T’s breakup, meanwhile, though differing in their perspective, are especially well-written and compelling: The Fall of the Bell System, by Peter Temin, and The Deal of the Century, by Steve Coll. And two other books on the Bell System are worth noting as well. Sonny Kleinfield’s The Biggest Company on Earth presents a vivid snapshot of AT&T just before the breakup, and Jeremy Bernstein’s Three Degrees Above Zero captures life at Bell Laboratories in the midst of the empire’s early-1980s transition.
Other books, along with many magazine and journal articles that proved useful, are listed in the selected bibliography below.
—J.G.
INTERVIEWS
Rod Alferness
Phil Anderson
Joe Baker
Norma Barzman
Walter Brown
Alan Chynoweth
Steven Chu
Edward E. David
Gerry DiPiazza
Phil DiPiazza
Irwin Dorros
Robert Dynes
George Eberhardt
Chuck Elmendorf
Joel Engel
Alan English
Gary Feldman
Bill Fleckenstein
Dick Frenkiel
Robert Gallager
Ted Geballe
Randy Giles
Eugene Gordon
Robert Gunther-Mohr
David Hagelbarger
Ira Jacobs
Bill Jakes
Mary Jakes
William Keefauver
Jeong Kim
Leonard Kleinrock
Herwig Kogelnik
Henry Landau
Arthur Lewbel
Tingye
Li
Sandy Liebsman
Bob Lucky
John MacChesney
Max Mathews
John Mayo
Brock McMillan
Debasis Mitra
Cherry Murray
Michael Noll
Doug Osheroff
Joe Parisi
Arno Penzias
Henry Pollak
Ian Ross
John Rowell
Mannfred Schroeder
Betty Shannon
David Slepian
Neil Sloane
Dave Stark
Morris Tanenbaum
Robert Von Mehren
SELECTED ORAL HISTORIES
William O. Baker (Chemical Heritage)
William O. Baker (National Reconnaissance Office [NRO])
John Bardeen (American Institute of Physics [AIP])
John Bardeen (Harriet Zuckerman/Columbia University)
Nicolaas Bloembergen (AIP)
Walter Brattain (Alan Holden and W. J. King/AIP)
Walter Brattain (Charles Weiner/AIP)
Walter Brattain (Harriet Zuckerman)
C. Chapin Cutler (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE])
Karl Darrow (AIP)
James Fisk (AIP)
Thornton Fry (AT&T)
Cal Fuller (Chemical Heritage)
William Golden
Eugene Gordon (IEEE)
Richard Hamming (AT&T)
Conyers Herring (AIP)
Alan Holden (AIP)
Charles Kao (AIP)
Katherine Kelly (AIP)
Jack Kilby (Charles Babbage Institute)
Robert Lucky (IEEE)
John Mayo (IEEE)
Stanley Morgan (AIP)
Foster Nix (AIP)
Russell Ohl (AIP)
Barney Oliver (Hewlett-Packard)
Eugene O’Neill (IEEE)
Gerald Pearson (AIP)
John Pierce (Caltech)
John Pierce (AT&T)
John Pierce (IEEE)
Ian Ross (IEEE)
Arthur Schawlow (Stanford University)
Claude Shannon (IEEE)
William Shockley (AIP)
William Shockley (Harriet Zuckerman)
Gordon Teal (AIP)
Charles Townes (AIP)
Addison White (AIP)
Dean Woolridge (AIP)
Selected Bibliography
Adams, Stephen, and Orville Bustler. Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Anderson, John B. Digital Transmission Engineering. 2nd ed. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press/John Wiley & Sons, 2005.
Baldwin, Neil. Edison: Inventing the Century. New York: Hyperion, 1995.
Bardeen, John. “Semiconductor Research Leading to the Point Contact Transistor.” Nobel Prize Lecture, December 11, 1956; http://130.242.18.21/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1956/bardeen-lecture.html.
Barzman, Norma. The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate. New York: Nation Books, 2004.
Bell Laboratories Record, 1925–1986, vols. 1–64. Published by Bell Telephone Laboratories. Warren, NJ: AT&T Archives.
Bello, Francis. “The World’s Greatest Industrial Laboratory.” Fortune, November 1958.
Berlin, Leslie. The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Bernstein, Jeremy. Three Degrees Above Zero. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984.
Block, Fred, and Matthew Keller. “Where Do Innovations Come From: Transformations in the U.S. National Innovation System, 1970–2006” (July 2008). Information Technology & Innovation Foundation; www.itif.org.
Bown, Ralph. “The Transistor as an Industrial Research Episode.” Scientific Monthly 80, no. 1 (January 1955).
Braun, Ernest, and Stuart Macdonald. Revolution in Miniature: The History and Impact of Semiconductor Electronics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Brinkman, William, et al. “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).
Bromberg, Joan Lisa. The Laser in America, 1950–1970. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.
Brooks, John. Telephone: The First Hundred Years; The Wondrous Invention That Changed a World and Spawned a Corporate Giant. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Buckley, Oliver E. “Bell Laboratories in the War.” Bell Telephone Magazine, Winter 1944.
Buderi, Robert. The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution. New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Christensen, Clayton. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business. New York: HarperBusiness, 2003.
Clark, Mark. “Suppressing Innovation: Bell Laboratories and Magnetic Recording.” Technology and Culture 34, no. 3 (July 1993): 516–38.
Clark, Ronald W. Edison: The Man Who Made the Future. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1977.
Clarke, Arthur C. Voice Across the Sea. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
Clarke, Sally H., Naomi R. Lamoreaux, and Steven W. Usselman, eds. The Challenge of Remaining Innovative: Insights from Twentieth-Century American Business. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2009.
Clogston, A. M. “The Scientific Basis of Solid-State Technology, with Case Histories.” From Physics in Perspective. National Academy of Sciences, 1972.
Coll, Steve. The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T. New York: Atheneum, 1986.
Colton, F. Barrows. “Miracle Men of the Telephone.” National Geographic, March 1947.
Conot, Robert. A Streak of Luck: The Life and Legend of Thomas Alva Edison. New York: Seaview Books, 1979.
Danielian, N. R. A.T.&T.: The Story of Industrial Conquest. New York: Vanguard Press, 1939.
DuBridge, Lee, and Paul A. Epstein. “Robert Andrews Millikan: 1868–1953.” National Academy of Sciences, 1959.
Fagen, M. D., ed. A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: The Early Years (1875–1925). Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1975.
———. A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: National Service in War and Peace (1925–1975). Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1975.
Feynman, Richard. Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher. Reading, MA: Helix/Addison-Wesley, 1995.
Fischer, Claude. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Fletcher, Stephen F. “Harvey Fletcher: 1884–1981.” National Academy of Sciences, 1992.
Galambos, Louis. “Theodore N. Vail and the Role of Innovation in the Modern Bell System.” Business History Review 66, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 95–126.
Gallager, Robert G. “Claude E. Shannon: A Retrospective on His Life, Work, and Impact.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 47, no. 7 (November 2001).
Gavaghan, Helen. Something New Under the Sun: Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age. New York: Copernicus/Springer-Verlag, 1998.
Gertner, Jon. “Mad Scientist: Can Legendary Bell Labs—and Its Struggling Parent, Alcatel-Lucent—Be Saved by a ‘Crazy Risk Taker’ Who’s Betting That Innovation Can Be Captured in a Mathematical Formula?” Fast Company, February 2008.
———. “The Lost World: What Did We Gain—and Lose—in the Telecom Revolution? Searching for Answers in the Fate of Lucent and Bell Labs.” Money, March 2003.
Goodell, Rae. The Visible Scientists. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977.
Guizzo, Enrico Marui. “The Essential Message: Claude Shannon and the Making of Information Theory,” master’s thesis, MIT, 2003.
Hamilton, Loren Henry. A Missouri Boyhood. Self-published, 1983. Daviess County Library, Gallatin, MO.
Hayes, Brian. Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
Hecht, Jeff. City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics. Revised and expanded edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hoddeson, Lillian Hartmann. “The Roots of Solid-State Research at Bell Labs.” Physics Today, March 1977.