The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (53 page)

Several people read through this manuscript before publication. Any errors within the text—technical, perceptual, judgmental—are completely my own. I nevertheless owe a debt to Bob Lucky, Robert Gallager, and Ross Bassett, all of whom saved me from embarrassment and offered excellent suggestions that made the text clearer and more accurate. Similar thanks go to copy editor Roland Ottewell.

On a somewhat tangential note: Every part of this book was written to music. I’m thankful for the compositions of Brad Mehldau, Radiohead, and the National. Also, to Andras Schiff, for his rendition (both books) of J. S. Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” and especially BWV 881.

.   .   .   

M
UCH TO MY SURPRISE
, family and friends offered unfeigned interest in this project for years on end. Special thanks to my brother and sister, David Gertner and Patricia Stern, and to the rest of our kin in Charlotte: Marianne Gertner (and Andrew and Jack); and David Stern (and Allie and Lexie). The San Francisco branch of the family has been great, too—and never hesitated to put me up for the night during my swings through the Bay Area. Thanks to Laura Weinstein and Mark Lorenzen (and to Lily and Joe). And thanks, too, to our Beltway office: Joey and Adrienne Weinstein (and to Aaron). Also, I am especially grateful to my in-laws, Henry and Roz Weinstein, who have been such a warm and supportive presence over the years. I am blessed to have them in my life.

Friends have helped in ways large and small over the past five years. Dave Henehan read an early version of the manuscript during his lunch breaks in Hood River, Oregon; and during his visits east, he and Kyndaron Reinier made our days and nights immeasurably brighter. J. P. Olsen kept me both amused and sane; I can’t imagine how I’d get by without his companionship, or without his demo tapes. Jim Kearns and Susan Panepento have offered unwavering friendship and have fed my family on every major Christian holiday since, like, forever. I’m grateful for the food, but really for the kindness. Mike Doheny and Paul McCormick have been trusted and valued friends. Peter Carbonara lent a sympathetic ear at the Millburn Diner. Also, a special thanks to Laurie Weber, who has graced my family with her friendship. Other debts go to our Columbus Day group—Jim and Susan, Adam, Danielle, Tom, Kathy, Sean, Cathy, April, John, and all the bazillion kids. They buoyed my flagging spirits every fall, wherever it was we traveled. The Wellfleet crew—Laurie W., Lauren, Tom, Hillary, Tony, and a kajillion kids—buoyed my spirits every August. I’m grateful, too, to old friends Tim and Jim Fullowan, Dave Allegra, Tony DePaolo, and Donna Romankow.

Thanks also go to Marty Weinraub for his good advice, and to Alex Levi, who helped me see why a new metaphor might help more than an old one. The journey was indeed better than the mountain.

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F
INALLY
, this book is dedicated to my children, Emelia and Ben, and to my wife, Lisabeth. I discovered it is not easy to be a parent, husband, journalist, and author at the same time. So to Em and Ben, I’ll say this: For my distractions; for my absorptions; for my weeks away from home during reporting trips; for all the times I should have closed the laptop to pay more or better attention; for the terrible and dull repetition of all those dinners I cooked—I beg forgiveness. Your patience and affection helped more than you’ll ever know these past few years. As for Lizzie, my partner in life, the debts are, I’m afraid, too great to express. For you, for you only, words fail me.

1
David A. Kaplan,
The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams
(New York: HarperPerennial, 2000), p. 41.

2
Arthur C. Clarke,
Voice Across the Sea
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 152.

1
Robert Conot,
A Streak of Luck: The Life and Legend of Thomas Alva Edison
(New York: Seaview Books, 1979), p. 86: “He had the Victorian aversion to water, and throughout his life took at most one bath a week … [his] appearance was often accentuated by a pungent odor of things organic and inorganic.”

2
Visitors can still see some of the items in the Edison stockroom firsthand, as I did, at Edison’s laboratory complex—now a national historic park—in West Orange, New Jersey.

3
M. D. Fagen, ed.,
A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: The Early Years (1875–1925)
(Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1975), pp. 69, 75.

4
Ronald W. Clark,
Edison: The Man Who Made the Future
(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1977), p. 10.

5
Daniel Kevles,
The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 8.

6
For details on Millikan’s life and experiments, I’ve relied on his book
The Autobiography of Robert A. Millikan
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950); Robert H. Kargon’s
The Rise of Robert Millikan: Portrait of a Life in American Science
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982); the National Academy of Sciences biographical memoir “Robert Andrews Millikan: 1868–1953,” by Lee DuBridge and Paul A. Epstein, 1959; and the National Academy of Sciences biographical memoir by Fletcher’s son, Stephen F. Fletcher, “Harvey Fletcher: 1884–1981,” 1992.

7
Fletcher, Millikan’s graduate student, almost certainly suggested the switch from water to oil and helped Millikan create the testing apparatus. Only after Fletcher’s funeral, in an autobiography that was deliberately left unpublished, Fletcher would assert that Millikan showed up at his apartment just before the publication of their results in the journal
Science
to inform Fletcher that he could not earn his PhD through a cowritten paper; Millikan would thus take full credit for the primary oil-drop
write-up, he suggested, and Fletcher could earn his doctorate on a different experiment they did together—one for which he could take the sole credit. “It was obvious that he wanted to be the sole author on the first paper,” Fletcher recalled. The graduate student didn’t like the idea but saw that he had no real alternative. Millikan had been gracious to him in every other respect; he had essentially nurtured Fletcher’s talents and made his career in physics possible. And so Fletcher, a devout Mormon, decided he could not—would not—challenge his mentor until both were dead. For reference, see Fletcher’s autobiography, now in the Brigham Young archives, or the National Academy of Sciences biographical memoir by Stephen F. Fletcher, “Harvey Fletcher: 1884–1981,” 1992.

8
John Brooks,
Telephone: The First Hundred Years
(New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 102.

9
Bell and Gray raced to the patent office on the same morning—February 14, 1876. Various historical analyses seem to point in the direction that Gray was more deserving of the patent, and that Bell’s lawyers used some of Gray’s advances to support the claims of Bell’s invention. Nevertheless, the patent was awarded to Bell, sparking several years of litigation.

10 Brooks,
Telephone
, p. 109.

11 Vail had been president of AT&T briefly in the 1880s and had, in the decades since, traveled the world as a businessman and bon vivant.

12 Leonard S. Reich,
The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876–1926
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 151.

13 Brooks,
Telephone
, p. 144. Vail’s full quote reads: “Society has never allowed that which is necessary to existence to be controlled by private interest.”

14 Ibid., p. 132. In Vail’s 1907 annual report for AT&T, he noted he “had ‘no serious objection’ to public control over telephone rates, ‘provided it is independent, intelligent, considerate, thorough, and just.’”

15 Louis Galambos, “Theodore N. Vail and the Role of Innovation in the Modern Bell System,”
Business History Review
66, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 95–126.

16 Albert Bigelow Paine,
Theodore N. Vail: A Biography
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929), p. 238. “In 1908 the publicity department of the telephone company prepared a statement setting forth the close relationship between the American Telephone and Telegraph and the associated Bell companies.” Curiously, according to Paine, some phone company executives worried even then that the slogan might be evidence that the Bell System “had the characteristics of a trust.”

17 Frank B. Jewett, “Carty—The Engineer and the Man,”
Bell Laboratories Record
, September 1930.

18 Millikan,
The Autobiography of Robert A. Millikan,
p. 117.

19 Fagen, ed.,
A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System,
p. 264. The exact cost in 1915 was $20.70 for three minutes.

1
Oliver Buckley, “Frank Baldwin Jewett: 1879–1949,” National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoir, 1952.

2
George Eberhardt, author interview.

3
The early history of research at Bell Labs is an interesting story in its own right. It is best chronicled in two definitive papers by Lillian Hoddeson, “The Emergence of Basic Research in the Bell Telephone System, 1875–1915,”
Technology and Culture
22 (1981): 512–44; and “The Roots of Solid-State Research at Bell Labs,”
Physics Today
, March 1977. I’ve also relied on the Bell System’s internal history,
A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System:
The Early Years (1875–1925)
, edited by M. D. Fagen (Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1975), as well as Leonard Reich’s
The Making of American
Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876–1926
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

4
M. J. Kelly, “Dr. C. J. Davisson,”
Bell System Technical Journal
, October 1951; Mervin J. Kelly, “Clinton Joseph Davisson: 1881–1958,” National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoir, 1962.

5
Claude S. Fischer,
America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 50.

6
The Willis-Graham Act followed from an important event eight years before. In 1913, AT&T proffered a document called the Kingsbury Commitment, named after its vice president Nathan Kingsbury, that made certain concessions to the government in exchange for allowing AT&T’s near-monopoly to remain intact. AT&T agreed that it would cease buying up local phone companies. Also, it would offer to the independent phone companies that still existed access to its long-distance system.

7
“Telephone Co. Forms Concern for Research,”
New York Times
, December 18, 1924.

8
In a private November 9, 1925, memo, Frank Jewett noted, “Duality of interest in the physical equipment and the specialized personnel for its operation bespoke joint ownership of the A.T.&T. and Western Electric in this organization and payment of its operating expense in proportion to the work done for each company.” Though some functions of AT&T’s Department of D & R (development and research) were to be assumed by Bell Labs upon its establishment, the department was not formally folded into Bell Labs until the 1930s. AT&T archives.

9
Reich,
The Making of American Industrial Research.
By 1930, moreover, the Bell Labs budget had grown substantially. According to “Bell Telephone Laboratories: A Description of the Laboratory Research Organization of the Bell System” (booklet, December 1930), “At the present time [the Labs’] budget of such authorized expenditures is at the rate of nineteen million dollars per year, and the personnel engaged in those activities is approximately forty-six hundred.” AT&T archives.

10 Harold Arnold, “Organizing Our Researches,”
Bell Laboratories Record
, June 1926.

11 M. J. Kelly, “The Manufacture of Vacuum Tubes,”
Bell Laboratories Record
, June 1926.

12 Interview of Katherine Kelly by Lillian Hoddeson, July 2, 1976, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD;
www.aip.org/history/ohilist
.

13 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
. As it happens, in the AT&T archives I came across Harvey Fletcher’s notes on potential recruits of the era. His entry on Dean Woolridge reads, “evidences good judgment and has very good personality best man [M]illikan has had in many years.”

14 Charles Townes,
How the Laser Happened
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 17.

15 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. 51.

16 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
.

17 Townes,
How the Laser Happened
, p. 35.

1
Interview of Karl Darrow by Henry Barton and W. J. King, April 2, 1964, and June 10, 1964, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD;
www.aip.org/history/ohilist
.

2
Richard P. Feynman,
Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
(Reading, MA: Helix/Addison-Wesley, 1995), pp. 33–34.

3 “News of the Month,”
Bell Laboratories Record
, November 1935.

4
Interview of William B. Shockley by Lillian Hoddeson, September 10, 1974, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD;
www.aip.org/history/ohilist
.

5
F. Barrows Colton, “Miracle Men of the Telephone,”
National Geographic
, March 1947.