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From automation to Silicon Valley: the automation movement of the1950s, Arnold Beckman, and William Shockley

David C. Brock*

Most studies mark the start of silicon electronics in Silicon Valley with WilliamShockley and Arnold Beckmans creation of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory.This study details how the automation movement of the 1950s shaped the careers ofboth Shockley and Beckman, and formed an indispensible context for their creation ofShockley Semiconductor. Shockley was engaged in automation from the early 1950s,promoting his vision of an automatic trainable robot to revolutionize manufacturing.

Beckman was deeply involved in automation in the mid-1950s, orienting his companyto key technologies for the automatic factory: instrumentation and computers. Beck-man and Shockleys entrepreneurial involvements with electronics and automation ledthem to create Shockley Semiconductor to pursue silicon transistors in 1955.

Keywords: Silicon Valley; William Shockley; Arnold Beckman; automation;transistors; industrial robotics; instrumentation; computers

Anyway, it started with Shockley.

Arnold O. Beckman (1985)1

Preamble

The emergence of Silicon Valley as the worlds foremost high-technology district was farfrom inevitable. Much ink has been spilled in attempts to comprehend the many factors,forces, and actors involved in Silicon Valleys rise from the 1950s to the present. Many

perhaps most analysts, historians, and commentators place the start of silicon electron-ics in Silicon Valley in 1955 when William Shockley, a leading solid state physicist whowas intimately involved in the development of semiconductor electronics and the transis-tor, established the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory directed specically toward sili-con transistors on the San Francisco Peninsula.2 At the end of 1957, a group spun offfrom Shockleys organization to create Fairchild Semiconductor just over a mile away.Fairchild also pursued silicon electronics and by 1961 had introduced transistors and inte-grated circuits; both based on the breakthrough planar process, a manufacturing technol-ogy the rm developed. Increasingly, these silicon transistors and microchips replacedelectron tubes. Electronics and semiconductor electronics became synonymous.3

From the 1960s into the 1980s, spinoffs from Fairchild in silicon microchips, and inequipment and materials for producing them, populated the San Francisco Peninsula.Counting the spinoffs of these spinoffs, Fairchilds descendants numbered several

*David Brock is Senior Research Fellow, Center for Contemporary History and Policy, ChemicalHeritage Foundation. Email: [email protected]

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hundred. To create these new industries and technologies around silicon microchips,entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, and engineers drew upon the existing social, business,and manufacturing resources in the region, the existence of a lucrative military marketfor silicon microchips, and the prospect of large future commercial markets for them. Outof this ferment surrounding silicon electronics the business, technological, legal, and cul-tural infrastructure for successive waves of high-technology development in the region

personal computing, software, biotechnology, advanced instrumentation, and the Internet strengthened and became widely recognized. Reecting the importance of the siliconmicrochip industry, and its dramatic growth across the 1960s, in the early 1970s theregion became known as Silicon Valley.

This study examines how silicon electronics was rst established in Silicon Valley,and the context for it. By 1955 organizations in the US East Coast, Texas, SouthernCalifornia, and Europe had already initiated silicon electronics. It was by no means agiven that William Shockley would or could assemble an organization devoted to siliconelectronics in the Bay Area. That is, the seminal event in the evolution of Silicon Valley

was far from inevitable. The creation of a research organization in advanced siliconelectronics required the signicant investment of organizational and nancial resources.William Shockley did not possess these resources himself. He required a partner.

Across 1954, William Shockley was in active discussions with a number of EastCoast and Los Angeles Basin semiconductorrms about pursuing silicon electronics withthem. In February 1955, William Shockley began a dialog with Arnold O. Beckman, aformer California Institute of Technology (Caltech) chemistry professor and then the lea-der of a successful high-technology company in the Los Angeles Basin, BeckmanInstruments, Inc., that produced electronic instruments, components, and computers. Start-ing with their shared belief that automation was key to the technological and industrial

future, the discussion between Beckman and Shockley led to their creation of theShockley Semiconductor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments, Incorporated in late 1955.This study details Arnold Beckman and William Shockleys engagement with what I callthe automation movement of the 1950s and how this engagement led to their creationof the organization that established silicon electronics in Silicon Valley. In doing so, thestudy presents previously unknown and or unexamined activities of both Beckman andShockley in automation, activities that provide helpful illumination on the scope andmeaning of this movement, and its contribution to the earliest history of Silicon Valley.

A meeting of minds

February 2, 1955 fell on a Saturday. That evening in New York City some 500 membersof MITs Alumni Association braved snow and freezing temperatures for an event featur-ing two of MITs faculty stars: servomechanisms pioneer and head of MIT ElectricalEngineering Gordon Brown and the mathematician and cybernetics leader Norbert Wie-ner. Their joint subject was the question, Automation: What is it? Automation was a

prominent subject of conversation among technical, business, labor, and government com-munities in 1955. At the heart of this movement was the image of an automatic factory:a plant in which electronically controlled machinery manufactured products largelywithout direct human intervention. Instead, the machinery of such an automatic factorywas to be directed by electronic computer brains on the basis of inputs from electronic

instrumentation senses. Several wartime technological developments were the basisfor this image: electronic digital and analog computers; servomechanisms and closed-l f db k l l i i i d ll i f i

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theory and cybernetics. The potential of automation to revolutionize industrial produc-tion, and restructure labor relations, became much discussed following the 1952 publi-cation of the book Automation: The Advent of the Automatic Factory by JohnDiebold. Diebold based his book on a Harvard Business School report that he and hisclassmates had prepared for their professor the pioneering venture capitalist GeorgesDoriot in 1951.4

Several hours after the MIT event began, under much more congenial skies anotherdinner event got underway, this one in Los Angeles. Arnold O. Beckman chaired a gala

banquet of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce that night, honoring two toweringgures in the electronics community: Lee De Forest, the inventor of the groundbreakingaudion vacuum tube, and William Shockley, perhaps the leading gure in transistor

physics. Beckman, Shockley, and De Forest all had strong connections to the Los Ange-les Basin. Beckman earned his PhD in physical chemistry from Caltech in the 1920s,served on its faculty for a decade, and started an instrumentation company in Pasadena

based on his invention of an integrated, electronic pH meter. By the start of 1955, Beck-

man had grown his enterprise into a large, publicly traded corporation headquartered inFullerton, California. Beckman Instruments, Incorporated (BII) pursued a variety of hightechnology products, with its approximately 2000 employees generating around US$20million in sales. BII was a signicant Orange County employer, leading Arnold Beckmanto become a board member and vice-president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Com-merce. Shockley was an undergraduate alumnus of Caltech, who had gone on to a PhDin solid-state physics at MIT and an unparalleled spate of transistor innovation at the BellTelephone Laboratories (Bell Labs) in the 1940s and early 1950s. Indeed, Shockley had

just spent 1954 at Caltech as a visiting professor. De Forest, an inveterate inventor andserial (although largely unsuccessful) entrepreneur, moved to Los Angeles in 1930 where

he pursued inventions in television and motion picture technology, collaborating withBeckman on one of these projects in the 1930s.5

The automation movement of the early 1950s connected these two events that even-ing. As Beckman and Shockley conversed at the Los Angeles Chamber gala, they discov-ered that both were strong automation enthusiasts. Beckman had completely refashionedBII around automation as his central business strategy. Shockley, in similar fashion, hadvigorously pursued automation as a major technological target since 1950, going so faras to extract an extraordinary deal from Bell Labs that gave him permission to patent forhimselfhis invention of an electro-optical eye for what he called an automatic trainablerobot. Shockley believed that his trainable robot could revolutionize American manufac-turing. At the end of the gala, Shockley promised to send Beckman his newly issued pat-ent on the electro-optical eye for the latters evaluation for possible use at BII.6 This

promise initiated an ongoing conversation that led, nine months later, to Beckman andShockley signing a contract to create the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory of Beck-man Instruments, Inc. and the establishment of silicon electronics in Silicon Valley.

This study recovers the importance of automation as the primary context for the for-mation of Arnold Beckman and William Shockleys joint activity in silicon electronics.As such, it forms a reappraisal of this seminal alliance that rst established silicon elec-tronics in Silicon Valley. The primacy of automation as context is revealed along threelines. First is an elucidation of the automation movement of the 1950s and its role inshaping Beckman and Shockleys individual and joint activities in the mid-1950s. Second

is the recognition that Beckman Instruments was a signicant presence in electronic com-puting ca 1955, with Beckmans participation in computing oriented toward its applica-

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strong commitment to automation, revealed in his work on his electro-optical eye, hisvision for revolutionizing American manufacturing with automatic trainable robots, andhis pursuit of this vision with one of the eras most sophisticated venture investors,Georges Doriot. Together, these three lines of inquiry make clear that the automationmovement of the 1950s profoundly shaped the careers of both Beckman and Shockley,and, thereby, the evolution of Silicon Valley.

The automation movement

The broad and intense interest in automation during the 1950s in the USA still awaitsits historian, but its major features can be characterized. Starting in the second half ofthe 1940s, if not before, members of many overlapping communities technical, scien-tic, government, military, business, industrial, and organized labor began to discussthe industrial implications of wartime developments, particularly new scientic disci-

plines and technologies connected to mechanization and automatic control. New scien-

tic and technological capacities appeared to provide novel opportunities for recastingindustrial manufacturing that could dramatically increase productivity, but would therebydisplace many workers from their traditional roles: automatic machines would performtheir jobs.7

These discussions rapidly crystalized around the term automation in 19512 andexpanded thereafter. Automation was an obscure word in 1951 when Harvard BusinessSchool student John Diebold appropriated it for a topic report in Georges Doriots famousManufacturing course. Diebold, who had developed an interest in automatic controlsafter encountering automatic anti-aircraft guns during World War II, joined a group ofDoriots students interested in studying automatic control mechanisms. Topic reports

were a mainstay of Doriots course, in which students were asked to consider the futureconsequences of some contemporary development or problem.

Diebolds report, Making the Automatic Factory a Reality, collected the many streamsof discussion around new high technologies and scientic elds and the automatic controlof industrial production under the new subject heading, automation. Doriot wasimpressed, and Diebold privately printed copies of his report. Diebold and Doriotcirculated these copies through Doriots network of scientic, technological, military, and

business leaders. This circulation resulted in reports on automation appearing in nationalpublications like the Wall Street Journal and Scientic American, setting the stage forDiebolds publication of an expanded version of the report as the bookAutomation: TheAdvent of the Automatic Factory. The book garnered signicant attention, placing theterm automation into the public lexicon and launching Diebolds management consult-ing rm.8

Across the next several years, and reaching fever pitch in 19556, what can best bedescribed as an automation movement emerged. Proponents (and critics) of automation

promulgated an enthusiastic vision in which the key technologies identied by Dieboldwould, seemingly in the near term, be widely deployed with tremendous consequencesfor American industry and society. In this, the automation movement is similar to othersociocultural movements in the remainder of the twentieth century (and beyond) thatformed around scientic and technological developments: information theory, strongarticial intelligence, recombinant DNA technology, chaos theory, molecular nanotechnol-

ogy, personalized medicine, and synthetic biology, for examples. Diebolds opening toAutomationset the tone of immanent and revolutionary change:

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Automatic controls in some form have been in existence since the steam age . Duringthe last decade [19421952], however, developments in the elds of electronics, communica-tions, and electric network analysis have made possible the construction of a wide variety ofself-correcting and self-programming machines . These recent advancements have beenof such importance that they constitute the rst stages of what coming generations will lookupon as a second industrial revolution.9

Diebolds book is a useful guide to the basic features of the automation vision associatedwith this movement. Central to the notion of automation was (and is) its distinction frommechanization. Consider the heating of a room, and a machine to do so. If a simple timerturns the heater on and off at set times, the heating would be mechanized. If, however, ameasuring device sensed the temperature of the room and controlled the heater to keepthe room at a set temperature (i.e. a thermostat) then the heating of the room would beautomated. The key distinction here is between open and closed-loop control. Inclosed-loop control, the output of a system is measured by the control element of the sys-tem and used to regulate the behavior of the system. This is the principle of feedback. In

open-loop control, the control element of the system depends on an exogenous input, asfrom a timer or human operator. Feedback control and the so-called servomechanismsthat embodied it were deployed to great effect in a number of military systems duringWorld War II.10

Diebold and others believed that several rising technologies and scientic disciplinesheld the promise for extending feedback-control of machines to a wider variety offunctions and integrated systems. Electronic components could be used to create newinstruments and sensors for the crucial function of measurement. Further, these sameelectronic components could be employed to fashion new types of controls for acting onthese measurements. Between these instruments and the controls would lay the electronic

computer, able to quickly assimilate and analyze large sets of input data. In these threeelectronic systems instruments, computers, and controls lay the potential for a fullyautomatic factory.11

Of great interest in the 1950s, Diebold and others saw electronic analogcomputers asessential for the modeling required to build large automation projects. Analog computers

provided quick solutions to difcult mathematical and modeling problems by their den-ing analogic character, that is, by using electronic circuits that mimicked the mathemati-cal equations or physical systems involved. It was in their counterparts, electronic digitalcomputers, that Diebold and others saw the capability of rapid, exible processing ofstreams of input information into dynamic, effective control commands. As identied by

Diebold in Automation, the chemical industry and the electronics industry were sectors atthe forefront of the adoption of these technologies. Both these industries were indeedmajor locations for the development of the automation movement into 1955 and

beyond.12

William Shockley and the automation movement, 19501955

Immediately after World War II, the solid-state physicist William Shockley led a researchgroup at Bell Labs investigating the possible use of semiconductor materials to makeswitching and amplifying devices. As early as the 1930s, Bell Labs director of research,Mervin J. Kelly, had started Shockley and others on the search for new solid-state

devices to replace the vacuum tube ampliers and electromechanical switches that werethe core of telephony technology. Kelly had earned his PhD in physics from theU i i f Chi h h h d i d R b Millik hi N b l P i i i



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experiments on the charge of the electron.13 Two PhD physicists in Shockleys researchgroup Walter Brattain and John Bardeen created the rst transistor was a signicant

presence in at the end of 1947. From 1948 to 1950, Shockley was instrumental in devel-oping transistor physics and promoting the transistor. In 1948, at the age of 38, he con-ceived the groundbreaking junction transistor, made by forming three chemically distinctregions a slice of semiconductor crystal and the two junctions between these regions.At the time, Shockley conceived another device, formed of four regions and their three

junctions that was soon named the four-layer diode.14 In 1950 Shockley published Elec-trons and Holes, which became the central monograph on transistor physics for at least adecade. After Shockleys colleagues at Bell Labs the chemists Morgan Sparks and Gor-don Teal succeeded in making working devices from junctions formed in the crystalgrowing process, Bell Labs announced the junction transistor in 1951. It quickly becamethe central focus of the transistor industry. At that time, with the Korean War aame,Shockley was dividing his time between a Pentagon project on proximity fuzes and hisBell Labs research. During World War II, Shockley had become well known to US mili-

tary leadership for his Operations Research work for the Navy and the Army Air Forceson anti-submarine warfare and strategic bombing.15

In this period 1950 through 1951 Shockley became active in the automationmovement, an aspect of his career not yet covered in the historical literature. He devel-oped the concept of his automatic trainable robot, guided by an electro-optical eye ofhis invention, which he believed could revolutionize US industry, manufacturing, and

productivity. The genesis for Shockleys vision of industrial robotics a subject soontouched on by Diebold in Automation began with a conversation between Shockleyand the nations leading venture capitalist, Georges Doriot, in 1950.

General Doriot as he was frequently called was, like Shockley, an ongoing

consultant to the Pentagon. Doriot become a brigadier general during his wartimeservice, tackling problems of military supplies and logistics. Most prominently, Dori-ot was the founder and head of American Research and Development (ARD), a

public company devoted to funding high technology startups based on developmentscoming out of MIT and Harvard. By 1950, Doriot had led ARD to invest in MIT

physicist Robert Van de Graafs High Voltage Engineering Corporation, a leadingmanufacturer of particle accelerators, and Walter Bairds chemical instrumentationrm, Baird Associates. (In 1957, Doriot made his most successful ARD ventureinvestment, establishing a MIT Lincoln Laboratory spinoff, the Digital EquipmentCorporation, which enjoyed tremendous success in the 1960s with its PDP line ofminicomputers.)16

It is uncertain how Shockley and Doriot became acquainted whether throughmilitary, MIT, or technical circles but by 1950 they had a personal connection, call-ing one another Bill and Georges in their correspondence.17 In September 1950,Shockley visited Doriot at the ARD ofces in downtown Boston, and their conversa-tion turned to the subject of automatic control and feedback mechanisms. As theytalked the pair drew a connection between Doriots interest in new technologies andUS manufacturing and a patent application that Shockley had led in 1948, whichhad been classied secret. Evidently, Shockley was unconcerned with discussing hisclassied patent application given both his and Doriots ongoing relationships with theUS military.

The reason why Shockleys patent application, Radiant Energy Control System, hadbeen classied was unambiguous: Figure 4 of the application was a large drawing of a

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electro-optical control system that could guide such a bomb to its target. Briey put,Shockleys system compared a series of photographic images such as on a roll ofdeveloped lm with the eld of view captured by a camera. Light entering the camera

passes through a frame of the photographic lm before falling on light-sensitive vacuumtubes. The better the match between the incoming light and the photographic frame, themore light would pass. The greater the amount of light hitting the tubes, the larger theelectrical signal. These signals, in turn, controlled servomotors that moved the ns ofthe bomb. The electronics of this eye incorporated feedback, the servomotors movingthe ns in an attempt to maximize the electrical signal, the t between the eld of viewand the photographic frame. If the series of frames were aerial photographs of a targetat various altitudes, the electro-optical system would use feedback control to y the

bomb to its target.In his patent application of 1948, Shockley had envisioned other, less destructive

applications of the system: facial recognition systems for access control to buildings orrooms, the identication of paper money in vending machines, checking the weight of

postal packages against their stamps to ensure they were for an adequate amount, and most vaguely used in factory production to sort items and inspect them.18 In their dis-cussion in September 1950, it was this last of Shockleys suggested applications thatseized Doriots attention. He encouraged Shockley to think hard about ways that his elec-tro-optical automatic pattern-matching system could be extended and applied to industrialmanufacturing broadly.19

In 1951, Shockley was back at Bell Labs full time, but his thinking and activitieswere increasing directed outward. Despite Shockleys tremendous successes and reputa-tion in semiconductor electronics, he remained the leader of a relatively small researchgroup. Mervin Kelly, who had started Shockley on the path toward transistors, had risen

to become president of Bell Labs. Kelly and his colleagues felt it best not to giveShockley wider managerial responsibilities. Part of the reason was that the year before

both Bardeen and Brattain proclaimed they could not work with the acutely competitiveShockley. Bardeen left Bell Labs, and Brattain moved to a different group.20

Shockley, along with the rest of the Bell Labs staff, had signed an agreement as acondition of employment, giving Bell Labs the rights to all of their patents, patentapplications, and patentable inventions. By the start of 1951, Shockley began to thinkthat in Doriots suggestion of the industrial application of his electro-optical pattern-matching control system was a chance for Shockley to get managerial and nancialrewards for his inventions outside of Bell Labs. Specically, Shockley convinced himselfthat Doriots intuition was correct: a modied version of his automatic control systemcould provide a general-purpose control for automatic industrial machinery and, more-over, for a new class of machines capable of exible production of different products,not just continuous runs ofxed standardized units.

For all of this, an electro-optical eye like that he had conceived for self-guidedbombs would be the key. In particular, Shockley envisioned that instead of a single xedcamera, three scanning cameras one for each of the three spatial dimensions would

be required for general-purpose control. Before acting to formally record or patent theseideas, Shockley requested an extraordinary modication agreement to his intellectual

property contract with Bell Labs. Specically, Shockley requested that Bell Labs granthim the right to patent his new electro-optical eye for manufacturing uses for himself .

Shockley thought that his idea was big enough, and good enough, to support anenormous amount of activity. He proposed to give the Bell System an irrevocable,



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royalty-free license to any such patents. This license would not be exclusive. Shockleycould personally strike deals with otherrms on the patents, rms like Doriots ARD.

ARDs patent lawyers in Boston fed Shockley suggestions about just how such amodication agreement should be phrased. Bell Labs leadership did not immediatelyreject Shockleys proposal. Yet in an industrial laboratory lled with top researchers in awide range of elds, making such a deal would be controversial, if not lead to a ood ofsimilar requests. Nevertheless, Bell Labs lawyers were told possibly by Kelly himself to work with Shockley to see if something could be worked out. Evidently, Bell Labs leadership thought that the risk of embarrassment and lost revenue in such an extraordi-nary agreement was worth it to keep Shockley, and his inventive mind, in the organiza-tion.21

Final resolution to Shockleys request required the whole of 1951, but in the end BellLabs and William Shockley signed off on their modication agreement on December 5,1951. The agreement gave Shockley the right to patent for himself inventions for thematching of patterns for use in machines such as paper money vending machines, letter

weighing and stamp checking machines, ticket checking machines, pass checkingmachines, nger-print recognizing machines, and face recognizing machines. This wasan extended list of the non-military applications Shockley had considered in 1948. Moreimportant for Shockley was that the agreement let him patent for himself inventions forthe matching of patterns and for utilizing the results of such matching in manufacturing

processes, such as processes for fabrication and processes for the inspection of parts,assemblies, or subassemblies. This was the broad industrial use he envisioned for hisautomatic control system. In addition to specifying that all the companies of the Bell Sys-tem would have a permanent free license to any patents Shockley might get in theseareas, the modication gave Bell Labs an important out: the agreement would last for just

one year. Shockley could patent what he could, but after December 1952 it would be asif the modication had never existed.22

With the signed agreement in hand, Shockley and Doriot discussed how they mightproceed to develop a patent on Shockleys robotic eye and to create a new business toexploit it. For these discussions, Doriots student Diebold provided the new vocabularyof automation. As noted above, Diebold privately printed copies of his May 1951Harvard report on automation, and Doriot gave Shockley a copy. In March 1952, the pairagreed that ARD would pay its patent lawyers to do the background research for and tohelp Shockley prepare the patent application. In return, Doriot got Shockleys promisethat he would work in good faith to exploit the patent with ARD. Their idea was to forma new start-up company with an ARD investment, and then perhaps to approach a largeestablished company about acquiring the start-up. Raytheon and General Electric werenames they mentioned in this connection. It was a strategy that would becomecommonplace four decades later in Silicon Valleys dotcom boom.23

With his patent application all but ready to le in October 1952, Shockley wrote aremarkable memorandum to Kelly. While Shockley pursued automation projects outsideBell Labs with Doriot, he also suggested to Kelly that Shockley should lead a new top-

priority effort within Bell Labs to build an automatic trainable robot. Shockleys memoto Kelly on the A.T.R. Project echoed the rhetorical exuberance of the automationmovement found in Diebolds recently published book. The importance of the projectdescribed below is probably greater than any previously considered by the Bell System,

Shockley began. He explained, The foundation of the largest industry ever to exist maywell be built upon its development. It is possible that the progress achieved by industry

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in the next two or three decades will be directly dependent upon the vigor with whichprojects of this class are developed.24 Shockley had set the bar high.

In the remainder of his memo, Shockley pushed the limits that Diebold himself hadseen for automation. In Automation, Diebold devoted some pages to dispelling the notionthat automation had anything to do with robots: general-purpose machines performinghuman-like tasks with human-like forms.25 Shockley would brook no such limitation.What is aimed at in this project is the substitution of machines for men in production,his memo to Kelly continued, The concept is different from that usually associated withthe automatic factory. Self-regulating automatic machines for mass production of stan-dardized products were the key to the automatic factory. In contrast, Shockley s automa-tion project would be concerned with trainable robots. A trainable robot as conceivedof here can perform functions similar to manual operations of human operators and can

be readily modied to perform any one of a wide variety of operations. A trainable robotwill comprise hands, sensory organs, a memory and a brain which coordinatesthe information furnished by the sensory organs with the memory in order to perform

desired operations. Organized labor and cultural critics had voiced concern aboutDiebolds version of automation. For them, Shockleys version would be far morethreatening.26

Shockley suggested to Kelly that Bell Labs build up a large research effort to createsuch a robot starting with the robot eye that he was about to patent. From the eye,Shockley intimated that he had several ideas for a courageous direct attack on sense oftouch devices that can recognize parts and their orientation by feel. Shockley wouldrst give his robots sight and then touch. The trainable robot should not be thought ofas replacing the high-speed automatic machine but instead as increasing the semiskilledlabor force in this country. Thus the increase in productivity of the nation might be

doubled in a decade or less. As for Diebold and others of the automation movement,Shockleys revolution seemed imminent. And it was not just semiskilled industrialworkers who would be replaced by Shockleys robots: Another enormous potential fortrainable robots is in the home. In fact trainable robots are one of the few conceivableanswers to the problem of vanishing domestic help.27

Shockley led his patent application on November 6, 1952, just before his modica-tion agreement with Bell Labs expired. Ten days later, Shockley had his answer fromKelly: He would not support Shockleys proposal to create robots. Kelly had an internalgroup evaluate Shockleys suggestion, which returned a negative assessment with whichKelly agreed. Kelly was concerned that his no might drive Shockley to resign. He askedShockley to make no nal decisions until you and I have had an opportunity for discus-sion.28

Kellys rejection helped Shockley decide to take a leave from Bell Labs. He returnedto his undergraduate stomping grounds: the campus of Caltech in Pasadena. While serv-ing as a visiting professor for the 19534 academic year, Shockley made connections tothe booming electronics, instrumentation, and military aerospace industry in the surround-ing Los Angeles Basin. Close to campus, Shockley consulted over the year for the Con-solidated Electrodynamics Corporation (CEC) in Pasadena. Founded by the son ofHerbert Hoover, CEC drew on physics talent from Caltech to create the rst commercialmass spectrometers a powerful new electronic instrument for chemical analysis, able todetermine the identity and quantity of substances in a sample.29 CECs scientists and

engineers had also started production of electronic analog computers in 1946, and hadannounced their rst electronic digital computer in 1953. During his year at Caltech,

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junction transistors in digital circuits. In fact, Shockley led a patent application, whichhe assigned to CEC, on the use of specially matched pairs of junction transistors to createimproved digital circuits.30

Shockley also probed a number of possibilities with the electronics and aerospaceindustries for him to leave Bell Labs to establish a transistor company of his own. Inthese conversations, he sought both unfettered control of technological direction as wellas personal capture of nancial reward from his inventions. As early as September1952, Shockley initiated a correspondence with Texas Instruments (TI) dynamic leader,Patrick Haggerty, who had pushed TI into electronics and specically into the transistor

business.31 Toward the close of his year at Caltech, Shockley entered into seriousnegotiations with two Los Angeles corporations with the idea of staying in the areaand leading a new semiconductor research organization. International Telemeter Com-

pany (ITC), led technologically by a prominent nuclear physicist, radar and computerexpert, and a top advisor to the US Air Force, Louis Ridenour, offered Shockley thechance to establish and lead a semiconductor research group in the company at a much

higher salary than Shockleys at Bell Labs US$30,000 and with stock options. Inreturn, ITC would have his technological leadership and rights to his patents andinventions.32

If ITC was a semiconductor upstart in the Los Angeles Basin, the companies ofHoward Hughes formed their established rival. Before Shockley left Caltech, he startednegotiations with some of Hughes top R&D executives about consolidating the semicon-ductor efforts at Hughes Aircraft and at Hughes Tool into a single organization. Shockleyhoped that this would be a new subsidiary corporation of Hughes Aircraft in which hewould get an equity stake and prot sharing in return for his setting up and directing itsR&D organization and also for the rights to his inventions. He announced that if he

received a good offer from Howard Hughes personally, that he would then check withthe President of Bell Labs, the Vice President of General Electric, and the doyen of mili-tary-oriented high-technology, Vannevar Bush, to see if they thought that Shockleysacceptance of such an offer was in the interest of the nation. In July 1954, Shockleyreceived an offer over Howard Hughes signature to direct a new consolidated semicon-ductor division within Hughes Aircraft at a US$30,000 salary while they explored the

possibilities for creating a new company.33

Shockley returned to the East Coast, but not to Bell Labs. Instead, Shockley took ajob at the Pentagon, as the Director of Research for the Weapons Systems EvaluationGroup (WSEG). WSEG started in the late 1940s with a mission to apply OperationsResearch and other analytical methods to evaluate the effectiveness of various weaponssystems and their application. In 1954, WSEG grappled with issues such as how the USmilitary could bestght a full nuclear war in 1955, and the future potential for biologicalweapons. In these studies, Shockley helped to identify military, scientic, and engineeringexperts for consultation.34

At the start of December 1954, the Patent Ofce granted Shockleys patent on the eyefor the trainable robot. Immediately thereafter, in January 1955, he received an invitationfrom Arnold O. Beckman to return to Los Angeles for a gala of the Los Angeles Cham-

ber of Commerce honoring him and Lee De Forest. At the gala on February 2, 1955,with his mother as his guest, Shockley discovered that Beckman was a fellow devotee ofthe automation movement and promised to send Beckman a copy of his new patent on

the robot eye for consideration.35

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Arnold Beckman, instrumentation, and the automation movement

By his meeting with Shockley in February 1955, Arnold Beckman had adopted automa-tion as the central organizing principle and forward-looking strategy for his corporation.In the rst half of the 1950s, Beckman pushed his BII into electronic instrumentation and

components for automation and automatic controls. Of special interest to Beckman werethe chemical and aerospace industries. Beckmans focus on the chemical world was theresult of history his own and that of his company.

Arnold O. Beckman was 10 years Shockleys senior. In the mid-1920s, Beckman tooka leave from his graduate studies in chemistry at Caltech to take up a research position inthe central R&D organization of the Bell System, the Western Electric EngineeringDepartment, located in downtown New York City. Beckman became one of the rst staffmembers of Bell Labs in 1925 when the Bell System merged most Western Electric andAT&T R&D activities into the new organization. Steeped in the vacuum-tube electronicstechnology that pervaded Bell Labs, Beckman returned to Caltech where he completedhis PhD research, experimentally connecting the new physics of quantum mechanics tolight-sensitive chemical reactions.36

After earning his PhD in 1928, Beckman joined the chemistry faculty at Caltech. Inthe early 1930s, he became a partner in a small company in order to exploit several pat-ents related to ink and printing that he had developed as a consultant for the rm. Mostimportantly, in 19345 Beckman led the development of a general-purpose integratedelectronic instrument for measuring acidity or alkalinity: the pH meter. Familiar with vac-uum tube electronics, Beckman devised the powerful electronic amplier circuit at theheart of the pH meter, providing chemical researchers with quick and accurate results forthis fundamental chemical property.37

In the second half of the 1930s, Beckman took increasing control of the small ink

and inking rm, renaming it National Technical Laboratories (NTL), an echo of the BellTelephone Laboratories (BTL). Beckman grew NTL rapidly through production of hissuccessful pH meter, one of the rst instruments integrating electronics with direct chemi-cal measurement. In 1940, Beckman left Caltech to run NTL full time.38 A decade later,in 1951, Beckman decided to take his company public as Beckman Instruments, Incorpo-rated. By this time, Beckman was convinced of the importance of electronics, instrumen-tation, and automatic process control. Across the 1940s, Beckman and his colleaguesintroduced a series of popular electronic instruments for chemical research: pH meters,infrared spectrophotometers, and ultraviolet spectrophotometers. Common to all was theuse of vacuum-tube electronics to make possible novel, rapid, and powerful chemical

measurements. As researchers adopted these new electronic instruments, they changed thecharacter of the chemical laboratory. They displaced traditional wet methods, accelerat-ing the pace and expanding the scope of research. So great were these changes in chemi-cal research empowered by new electronic instruments that historians have dubbed this

period the Second Chemical Revolution and the Instrumentation Revolution in chem-istry.39 Perhaps less recognized by historians, but acutely recognized by Beckman at thetime, was the fact that during World War II researchers employed Beckman s instrumentsto control new and important chemical production processes for the US military: the pro-duction of synthetic rubber, explosives, and high octane aviation fuel. In addition, Beck-man produced a version of his pH meter that could provide continuous readout of pH,especially designed for monitoring chemical production processes.40

Beckmans wartime experience also included a leap into manufacturing precision elec-tronic components at the behest of the US military. In 1940, Beckman had designed a



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precision dial control, a potentiometer, called a Helipot. It was more precise than mostother potentiometers on the market. While BII initially made Helipots for its own use in

pH meters, researchers in the wartime development of radar uncovered their superior per-formance and the US military requested that Beckman manufacture Helipots for the radareffort. Seemingly insatiable military demand for precision potentiometers led Beckman tocreate the Helipot Corporation as a subsidiary in the 1940s. By 1951, the Helipot Corpo-rations sales of electronic components comprised 40% of the total combined sales ofBeckmans two rms. It was responsible for much of the prots as well.41

Shortly before Beckman took BII public, he received a letter from Steve Coha, a staffreporter for the Wall Street Journal. Coha posed several broad questions about Beckmans

business and its prospects. Beckmans reply reveals how instrumentation, electronics, andautomatic controls for industry formed the centerpiece of Beckmans strategy. Beckmandescribed to the reporter that his instruments, this new electronic equipment, was chang-ing the nature of production in the chemical industry. He saw an increasing applicationof our instruments to the process industries. Instruments which were developed initially

only for laboratory measurements are being applied to process control and there is a verydecided trend in this direction. Whereas older methods for control of plant operationsinvolved the taking of samples to the laboratory and from the results obtained theredeciding what to do about adjusting ow, temperature, etc., in the plant, in many casesthese steps are now done entirely automatically by process control instruments.42 Inother words, automation was Beckmans vision.

As BII went public, Arnold Beckman used the new and large market capitalization todrive the rm even more strongly into automation. In the spring of 1952, Beckman andhis top lieutenant the young, technophilic Harvard MBA, Jack Bishop wanted toexpand the rm into the manufacture of electronic computers and further into process

instruments: the brains and the senses of Diebolds automatic factory. With the HelipotCorporation, Beckman observed growing sales of potentiometers for industrial and mili-tary automatic controls. On the industrial side, potentiometers were a key component forelectronic analog computers, servomechanisms, and electronic controls. In military appli-cations, potentiometers were used in radar, re control systems, guided missiles, ighttrainers, and aircraft controls. Automatic control and computing were the essence of the

potentiometers popularity in industry and the military. On the basis of this expertise inpotentiometers, and the rms longstanding expertise in vacuum-tube circuitry going backto the pH meter, Beckman and Bishop believed that the company could compete in thegrowing market for electronic analog computers. Vacuum-tube circuits called operationalampliers along with potentiometers were the dening components of the electronic ana-log computer, and chemical researchers and engineers were using them for simulation,calculation, and process control. In particular, Beckman hoped to open up a new marketfor analog computers by creating a very low cost system at the US$5000 price point: theEASE computer, for Electronic Analog Simulation Equipment. At the same time, Beck-man had another of his engineers evaluate US manufacturers of infrared gas analyzers, arising type of process control instrument. The engineer concluded that a Connecticutrm,Liston Becker, produced the best products. Arnold Beckman purchased Liston Becker in1955.43

In July 1952, Beckman made a deal to purchase Berkeley Scientic Instruments, asmall company based in Richmond, north of Berkeley on the San Francisco Bay. Berke-

ley Instruments expertise was in digital electronic circuitry for high-speed counters.These high-speed digital counters were primarily used for measurements involving

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digital computing for industrial applications and research.44 It was the digital counterpartto the analog EASE. With the Berkeley acquisition, BII was now a company with 1400employees, US$8 million in sales, US$700,000 in prot, and locations in Pasadena,South Pasadena and Richmond.45

In Arnold Beckmans very rst report to his shareholders in October 1952, he echoedthe strong rhetoric of the automation movement that was of the moment in the USA.Beckmans description of BIIs activity began with a slogan: Machines liberate men. Inthe generation preceding ours, Beckman explained, this liberation took place in verysweeping terms. On the farms and the factories, machines took over the laborious taskswhich men had performed manually. Beckmans father had been a blacksmith after all.In our times, a new set of machines is effecting new kinds of liberation, he continued.Mid-twentieth century advances in elds of electronics and optics have yielded instru-ments which can perform more rapidly and at higher levels of precision than man alonecan achieve . It is in this new and promising eld of instrumentation that BeckmanInstruments has taken its place. Beckman announced that these machines that had

surpassed human capabilities were widely used for both science and industry, for thecontrol of existing processes and operations and for the research which makes possiblethe exploration of new horizons.46

Though Beckman emphasized the connection between instrumentation and automa-tion, his involvement in electronic components was an equally strong driver of his inter-est in automation. The popularity of his precision potentiometers in automatic andelectronic controls was responsible for a large fraction of sales and prots. In keeping,Beckman moved BII into the production of a new form of electronic component inextri-cably associated with automatic control: the synchro.47 Used in guided missiles, gun con-trols, radar, sonar, and analog computers, synchros were very much like simple electric

motors. However, synchros had the ability to transmit an electrical signal representing theposition of its rotating shaft or the ability to turn its shaft in response to such incomingsignals. In this way, one synchro could be used to remotely control the movement ofremote, but connected, synchros, enabling the creation of a variety of remote andfeedback-control systems.

Between February and October 1952, a group under Jack Bishop at BII succeeded inquickly building the EASE computer. The rm debuted the system as the lowest pricedquality instrument in the eld of analog computers. The announcement explained thatanalog computers were used as an equation solver, simulator or tester by design engi-neers in industrial, military, research and educational organizations . Because mostelectronic computing equipment is extremely costly, this Beckman innovation, which sellsfor approximately US$5000, and which has broad application in many elds, is consid-ered to be a particularly promising addition to the Beckman roster.48 At the end of 1952then, BII was active in both analog computers and digital computing devices. At this timethere were closer to 50 than 100 total installations each of analog and digital computersin the USA. Beckmans interest in electronic computing was prescient.49

In keeping with his interest in automation and process control, Beckman approvedanother of Jack Bishops initiatives at BII: a drive into the market for mass spectrometers,another form of electronic chemical instrumentation. While most mass spectrometers were

precision laboratory instruments, BIIs strategy was to develop instruments designed forindustrial control. BII engineer Walter Donner, working under Jack Bishop, developed a

cheaper and more rugged mass spectrometer based on radio-frequency linear accelerationtubes: miniaturized versions of the high power atom smashers in Berkeley and Stanford.

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analyzer in process streams and in oil well prospecting and as a highly sensitive leakdetector.50 In this same period, Beckman and his colleagues secured a large order for cus-tomized process control mass spectrometers from the US Atomic Energy Commission(AEC). In charge of US stocks of uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons and elec-tricity generation, the AEC ordered 100 custom mass spectrometers of its own designfrom BII. Delivered by Beckmans rm in 1955, the process control instruments wereused to monitor uranium isotopes and the purity of uranium hexauoride in a large gas-eous-diffusion plant. As reported in a technical publication at the time, Beckmans AECmass spectrometers mark a signicant step toward plant automation. By continuouslymonitoring the process stream the instruments enable plant operators to take immedi-ate corrective measures.51 Arnold Beckmans push into mass spectrometry was a pushinto automation.

Arnold Beckmans strong orientation of BII to automation was successful for the rmand for him personally. By the end of 1954 sales had more than doubled, as had thevalue of BIIs stock. Prot approached US$1 million, and the number of employees

climbed to 1750. Caltech elected Arnold Beckman to its Board of Trustees, the rst of itsalumni so honored.52 So rewarded, Beckman expanded his commitment to his automationvision. He purchased Arga, a specialized synchro manufacturer with a team of PhD-levelresearchers, to secure military contracts for synchro-systems for missiles, re control, andthe like and also to manufacture commercial synchros for analog computing and auto-matic electronic controls. To expand geographically, Beckman personally oversaw theestablishment of a European subsidiary for BII in Germany.53

Beckmans success and ambitions in automation caught the attention of the nationalbusiness press. The May 22, 1954 cover of Business Weekfeatured a portrait of ArnoldBeckman over the caption Automation is his market. Things are moving so fast right

now for Dr. Arnold O. Beckman, the article opened, that even one of his own electroniccomputers might get out of breath keeping tally of the many things are going on. Thistally, the article concluded, would prominently include BIIs sale of its 100,000th pHmeter, electronic computers for automated process control, the construction of a new US$2 million headquarters in Fullerton, California, and the construction of a plant inMunich, Germany as the seat of his European subsidiary. The build-out was the expres-sion of Beckmans commitment to the automation movement. As Business Weekexplained, [Arnold Beckmans] object is to construct an organization equipped to supplycomplete control systems for the automatic factories he sees multiplying in the future.54

BIIs Annual Report for 1954 followed on the heels of the Business Weekcover arti-cle, and, likely the result of a coordinated strategy, contained a very strong articulation ofthe rms commitment to the automation movement. The core of the report is a sectionon Beckman Instruments in Automation. The report acknowledged that the automationhad become a buzzword in the USA, and that it was closely associated with the vision ofthe completely automatic factory in which instruments will take over many of the bur-dens of management and operators. The ideal automatic factory will have a brain, i.e.an electronic Computer . The completely automatic factory is not just around thecorner. Much development remains to be done.

Despite the work to be done, the report positioned BII at the vanguard of this revolu-tionary movement: The Companys position in the automatic control eld is muchstronger than might appear at rst glance. Many Beckman products are sensing devices

which can and are being incorporated without substantial modication. pH meters, spec-trophotometers, mass spectrometers, and colorimeters are used in automatic systems.

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The Company has established a foothold in the computer eld with the development ofthe EASE Analog Computer.55 It was automation and its promise that supplied ArnoldBeckmans underlying logic for the many and diverse activities of the growing rm.

With the rising value of BII stock, Arnold Beckman made two new acquisitions inthe rst half of 1955 that continued his investments in new and powerful instruments forscientic research and industrial automation: Liston-Becker and Spinco. Liston-Beckerwas the producer of infrared gas analyzers especially suited to process control, led by itsco-founder and lead engineer Max Liston. Spinco was the San Francisco Bay area pro-ducer of the ultracentrifuge, a critical instrument for the rise of molecular biology, andled by its developers Edward Pickels and Maurice Hanan.56

In the mid-1950s, Arnold Beckman kept his rms pursuit of electronic computingfocused on automation and process control. Between 1953 and 1959, BII delivered over300 electronic data processing systems to customers: analog computers, analog andanalog-to-digital data recorders, and process control systems.57 BIIs systems engineersdelivered an analog data recording system, the Model 111, to an Esso Oil laboratory in

1954 where chemical engineers explored its use for automated process control in petro-leum and petrochemical manufacturing.58 In 1955, Beckmans engineers were developinga new system around an EASE computer for the closed-loop, real-time control of a windtunnel. Installed at the Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tullohoma, Tennessee,this BII system represented strong automation: electronic sensors fed directly into theEASE that, in response, directly controlled temperature, pressure, and ow in the windtunnel for simulations of missile climbs and dives.59 With these accomplishments andsales, BII was recognized as a signicant US producer of analog computers, and a leaderin process control computing.60

Beckmans success in analog and process control computing did not go unnoticed

by others in the computer industry. In October 1955, Paul Hammond, a principal in aboutique Park Avenue mergers and acquisitions rm, the Hammond, Kennedy andLegg Company, contacted Arnold Beckman. Introducing himself as a closeacquaintance of Beckmans archrival in Pasadena, CECs CEO Phil Fogg, Hammondsuggested to Beckman that he had a very interesting possibility for you to consider.Hoping to impress Beckman and to meet with him as he returned to California fromMunich, Hammond invited Dr Beckman to lunch in the Delegates Dining Room ofthe United Nations, to which Hammonds rm was a nancial consultant. Hammondfollowed his letter with a telegram stressing HOPE VERY MUCH YOU CAN SPARETIME TO SEE US IN NEW YORK REGARDING ATTRACTIVE POSSIBILITIESOF MERGER.

Beckman did meet with Hammond and the other principals of his rm in their ofcesadjacent to Grand Central Station. Hammond revealed to Beckman that he was workingon behalf of IBM, and that it was interested in merging with Beckman Instruments.While IBM was rising to dominance of the market for electronic digital computers, it didnot have a strong presence in analog or in process control computing. This was the basisfor IBMs interest in BII: quick entry to the forefront of these other elds of computing.Arnold Beckman would have nothing of it, telling Hammond that we were not interestedin being purchased by any large company. Rather, Beckman suggested to Hammond thatif he and his colleagues knew of small companies whose operations would t into ouroverall plans, we should be glad to have them brought to our attention. In rejecting fur-

ther discussions with IBM, Arnold Beckman revealed the strength of his ambitions forBII.61



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Creating the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory

Paul Hammonds approach to Arnold Beckman on behalf of IBM came just one monthafter Beckman had made another signicant expression of his ambition: an agreementwith William Shockley to get BII into semiconductor electronics. This agreement, signed

on September 5, 1955, called for the creation of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratoryof Beckman Instruments. The events that led to Beckman and Shockley to create theirdeal stretched across most of 1955. They began with Beckman and Shockleys meetingat the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce gala in February 1955, and Shockleys

promise to send Beckman a copy of his recently granted robot eye patent for the lattersconsideration for BIIs automation efforts.

As soon as Shockley returned to the East Coast and his Pentagon job with theWSEG, he sent a copy of the patent to Beckman asking for any reactions you haveabout its potential usefulness. Evidently, Beckman was focused on the more immediateconcerns of his acquisitions of Liston-Becker and Spinco along with his expansion intoEurope. He sat on Shockleys patent for nearly two months before passing it along toJack Bishop, the enterprising technophile who got BII into electronic computing, askingBishop to solicit R&D comments on Shockleys robot eye.62

One of Bishops trusted engineers gave him a rapid, and negative, evaluation ofShockleys patent: This system appears to me to be primarily of academic interest and should not be given serious consideration at this time. The engineer thought that inactual industrial application, there would be easier and cheaper approaches than Shock-leys general-purpose system, and that despite the fact that the ideas are good hethought that the patent did not have viable business application. In his opinion, one couldeasily circumvent Shockleys patent if they in fact did want to employ this type of con-trol system.63 As a result, Beckman was in no hurry to reply to Shockley, and he sat on

the R&D evaluation for another month and a half. Beckman did, eventually, get aroundto responding to Shockley. In a note from mid-May 1955 addressing Shockley as Bill,and signing as Arnold Beckman informed Shockley that, I have asked our engineer-ing group to examine your patent on an electro-optical control system to see whether anyof the equipment which we now make or which is under development could utilize yourinvention . It appears that there are no projects at this time . It was a pleasure tosee you again and I hope that our paths may cross frequently.64

Waiting for Beckmans reply could not have been the utmost of Shockleys concernsin the rst half of 1955. During those months, Shockley had considered, and ultimatelyrejected, Howard Hughes offer for Shockley to lead a new consolidated semiconductor

operation at Hughes Aircraft. Similarly, Shockley had mulled over and then declinedLouis Ridenours proposal that Shockley start a semiconductor R&D operation at Interna-tional Telemeter. In the academic realm, Shockley had in these months also explored, andthen set aside, generous offers to join the physics departments of the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley and Yale University. These academic and industrial offers were allextremely prestigious and lucrative. Yet they were all also fundamentally conventional:Becoming an employee of another high technology rm to which he would consign hisintellectual output, or becoming a professor for whom the public sphere would be the

beneciary of his patents and publications. Shockley apparently wanted a more radicalchange for himself. By June 1955, at the age of 45, Shockley decided to leave Bell Labs,to resign from his high-level Pentagon job, and to exit his marriage.65 He wanted a newlife, and a company of his own through which he would be the primary beneciary ofhis labors.

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In June, Shockley discussed his decision to leave Bell Labs with his associate ofnearly 20 years, Mervin Kelly, President of Bell Labs. Kelly was likely prepared forShockleys announcement. Back at the end of 1952 Kelly had thought that Shockleymight leave after Kelly scuttled Shockleys trainable robot initiative. Almost three yearslater, Kelly was not only accepting of Shockleys decision; he was also prepared to help.He offered to introduce Shockley to Laurance S. Rockefeller. Rockefeller was GeorgesDoriots strongest rival for the mantle of the leading venture capitalist in the USA. WhileDoriot had created a publicly traded company as the vehicle and source of capital for hishigh-technology venture investments, Rockefeller had created a private partnership in1946 as his vehicle: Rockefeller Brothers, Incorporated. Laurence Rockefeller led the

partnership, which invested US$1.5 million of his and his siblings wealth in a variety ofinvestments including high technology particularly in aerospace. In mid-July 1955,Shockley left Bell Labs and immediately became a consultant to Rockefeller Brothers forone month. Rockefeller and Shockleys goal for the arrangement was to see if they coulddevelop a plan to partner in the creation of a new company in semiconductor electron-

ics.66Rockefeller and Shockleys month of connection was not immediately successful,

failing to produce a Rockefeller-supported company for Shockley. But it nonethelessprovided an opportunity for Shockley to develop his pitch for forming a new company inthe competitive world of semiconductor electronics. Shockleys technological and busi-ness proposition would, in the future, become the classic spin-off pitch: taking the bestcutting-edge technological developments from an established organization and then mov-ing quickly and with singular focus to bring the new technology to market. In July andearly August 1955, Shockley developed the case for his own Bell Labs spin-off. His newcompany would use Bell Labs recent experimental work in diffusion techniques for mak-

ing silicon transistors as its starting point. Using this technology, with which Shockleywas intimately familiar, Shockley contended that his new company would move quicklyinto the automated mass production of diffused silicon transistors. Where Bell Labs andWestern Electric would be forced to move cautiously and deliberately in brining suchtransistors into production for use in the telephone system, Shockleys new companycould move quickly and boldly.67

The market opportunity for diffused silicon transistors was, for Shockley and others,clear. Diffusion lent itself to mass production, since it was inherently a chemical batch

process in which many device structures were created on multiple wafers at the sametime. If diffusion batch processing could be automated, there was the possibility for sig-nicantly lowering the production cost of transistors. The US military was actively inter-ested in silicon junction transistors in 1955, having funded a signicant fraction of theR&D and manufacturing costs for junction transistors and then purchasing them at high

prices for several years. Silicon junction transistors were more reliable than other formsof transistors, as they could tolerate high temperatures. This resilience made them attrac-tive to the US military for the aerospace and ICBM technologies at the heart of its ColdWar strategy. Silicon junction transistors made by diffusion would have advantages overother silicon junction transistors in the competition for this military market because oftheir switching speed. Diffusion allowed engineers to create thinner layers of chemicallydistinct layers in silicon, and these thinner layers meant faster transistors. Beyond thisimmediate, proven military market lay future industrial and commercial markets for

rugged, reliable transistors.68

Though Shockley had formally separated from Bell Labs in July 1955, his strongi i l d hi d i d h i d i f



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them forwarded Shockley a copy of Bell Labs plan for the upcoming years effort insolid state physics. The formal plan clearly conrmed what Shockley already knew andhad adopted as the core of his plan for his new company: Bell Labs was committed to

both silicon and diffusion. The Bell Labs plan succinctly made the case for Shockleysspin-off pitch: Techniques for diffusion into silicon have been developed which arevery promising for device application certain of the diffusion techniques for these sili-con devices, recently developed in this work, will be applicable to mass production .The success of diffusion in silicon suggested its application to transistors of both germa-nium and silicon . The application of diffusion to transistor fabrication has met withsuch success that the program has expanded almost fourfold. The techniques which haveled to success with germanium transistors have been applied to silicon transistors, withthe expectations that the latter will eventually excel their germanium counterparts.69

In any other situation but one involving Bell Labs and semiconductor electronics,Shockleys spin-off pitch would have been from a business perspective ridiculous. IfBell Labs was already committed to diffused silicon transistors, how could Shockleys

proposed rm possibly compete against the R&D resources of Bell Labs, the manufactur-ing expertise and capacity of Western Electric, and the nancial might of AT&T? Further,did not Bell Labs already possess the key patents on diffusion, silicon, and the junctiontransistor? What made Shockleys proposal for his new company plausible was the factthat AT&T and the US Department of Justice had nearly nalized a very particular reso-lution to an anti-trust suit rst launched by the government against the telephone monop-oly in 1949. AT&T and the US government signed this consent decree in 1956, but in1955 the outlines of the resolution were already well established. Western Electric waslimited to the production of transistors and semiconductor devices for use by the BellSystem in communications and military projects. Bell Labs and Western Electric had to

provide licenses to the basic patents on semiconductor electronics to those who wantedthem, and for a low price: US$25,000, a business executives salary for a single year.70

These profound restrictions on the competitiveness of the Bell System in semiconductorelectronics created the very possibility for a semiconductor industry, and, more narrowly,the plausibility of Shockleys idea for his own company.

In his month working with Rockefeller, Shockley decided against yet another offer hewas entertaining in favor of his desire for a company of his own. The leaders of Ramo-Wooldridge a Los Angeles based spin-off of Hughes Aircraft that was the US AirForces prime contractor for the development of ICBMs had moved into silicon transis-tors in 1954, forming Pacic Semiconductors as a subsidiary corporation. In July 1955,Shockley decided against an offer from Ramo-Wooldridge to join their silicon electronicseffort. Again, Shockley rejected a conventional, albeit highly prestigious and lucrative,offer. His sights were rmly set on his own semiconductor electronics company, one thatwould exploit the advantages of silicon, diffusion, and automated mass production. Afterrejecting Ramo-Wooldridge at the end of July, Shockley responded to Arnold Beckmansrecent letter which declined the robotic eye patent but encouraged ongoing contacts with a phone call. During the call, Shockley told Beckman about his desire to start a newcompany and introduced his pitch. Unlike his reaction to Shockleys robot eye, Beckmanacted immediately. He asked Shockley to come meet with him in Orange County withoutdelay. Shockley did, and he and Beckman met for serious discussions on Saturday,August 13th.71

Beckman was attracted to Shockleys aim of the automated mass production ofdiffused silicon transistors, most probably for its t with Beckmans overarching automa-i f k d i i l i l d l i

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instrumentation, silicon transistors would be a new, valuable component for making theseproducts. The high temperatures, strong vibrations, and challenging chemical environ-ments of chemical plants and petroleum reneries posed severe challenges for the use ofvacuum-tube electronics. Rugged and reliable silicon transistors would open up new pos-sibilities for controls and process instruments and their application. In this, reliability andspeed were also important considerations: Closed-loop control of large-scale chemicaloperations needed to take place in real time, without breakdowns. If the components inthe automatic control system for a petrochemical plant broke down, the result might verywell be a literal catastrophe. Beyond this, Beckman surely appreciated the value of themilitary market for silicon transistors. The protability of BII was predicated on themilitary markets for the Helipot. Beckman may also have seen a possibility for silicontransistors in BIIs computing systems business, especially for rugged, real-time processcontrol and military computers.

Further, Beckman and Shockley were personally much impressed with one another.The similarities between them must have aided their mutual conclusions: both had PhDs

in the physical sciences from leading technological institutes, had been educated at Cal-tech, had been members of the technical staff of Bell Labs, and possessed the rare Qsecurity clearance which gave them access to US nuclear secrets.72 Each had also madeera-marking inventions: Shockley, with his role in the rst transistor and his conceptionof the junction transistor, had provided the foundation of the transistor industry andBeckman, with his development of the pH meter and ultraviolet spectrophotometer, inau-gurated the modern analytical instrument industry. Shockleys junction transistor had

proved vital to military systems and digital computing, just as Beckmans Helipot haddone earlier for military radar and analog computing. In their initial interactions,Beckman responded positively to Shockleys admiration, which elicited something of a

student-mentor dynamic. Though it is unclear if Beckman in fact taught Shockley duringthe latters undergraduate years at Caltech, Shockley would soon refer to Beckman as hisold chemistry professor, and told Beckman that he had helped Shockley to create anexperimental apparatus during those years.73

Beckman and Shockley left their Saturday August 13 meeting with the intention ofmaking a deal. The pair had briey discussed two possible scenarios: the immediatecreation of a new company and the creation of a new organization within BII thatcould eventually spin out as a separate company. Beckman was apparently open to both

possibilities, depending on which scenario was most advantageous to BIIs legal andtax positions. Shockleys stated preference was to create a new company from the out-set. In order to compare the two possibilities after the meeting, Beckman outlined a

possible deal for immediately creating a new diffused silicon transistor company. Hisidea was that a new California corporation initially would be a wholly owned subsidi-ary of BII. Of the 100,000 shares of the new company, Shockley and his group wouldhave an option to buy 49,000 over two years, with BII having the right to purchaseany of these shares if Shockley or others wished to later sell them. BII would also loanthe new company US$200,000 for its rst years operational budget. This ideaamounted to Beckman becoming the senior partner in the new company, in whichShockley could take nearly half ownership. Beckmans thought of US$200,000 for theinitial establishment of an advanced transistor manufacturer, in the highly competitiveand fast moving industry, was meager.74 Nevertheless, Beckmans impulse was bold: to

use BII as a vehicle for venturing capital on a Bell Labs spin-off in the openingmarket for silicon transistors.



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As Beckmans advisors looked into the implications of the two scenarios for BIIsbottom line, he wrote to Shockley on August 19, a week after their meeting in OrangeCounty. His purpose was to update Shockley on the ongoing review, and the evolution ofhis thinking about the deal. When you left here last Saturday, Beckman explained Ithought that we would be able to send you by today an outline of a proposed agreement

based on our discussions. The exploration of tax and legal aspects has taken longer thananticipated. Beckman told Shockley that the formation of a new company was a real

possibility along with the deferred formation they had also discussed. Beckmans inter-est in making the deal a reality had only intensied: The more we have thought aboutthe matter, the more enthusiastic we are becoming over the potentialities of your plan.We are eager to move along as rapidly as possible.75

In an internal memo developed for Beckmans use in upcoming negotiations withShockley, and for selling the deal to the BII board, Beckman and his team laid out themajor features of the proposal in clear, condential language. One section dealt with thetrade, THE BARGAIN, that was the heart of the deal: BII supplies all of the money

until the venture is proved or abandoned Shockley provides his services. The memoacknowledges that BII would likely have to invest at least US$500,000 over two years

before they could determine the success of the activity. The memo also captures a veryimportant part of the negotiation: the real signicance and meaning to Shockley of havinghis own company: it would allow him unfettered control to pursue R&D as he saw t. Itwas such control that was essential: Shockley has made it clear that he does not wish to

be bothered with, or hampered by, the administrative aspects of this venture; and he dis-claims having the requisite knowledge for that branch of the business. He wishes todevote his time to invention and development, and will be content to let others run the

business provided there is supplied to him when and where he needs it, facilities to

enable him and the men under his supervision to carry on the work of invention anddevelopment. Beckman and Shockley would need to agree on staff that could handle theconsiderable challenges in organization, nance, personnel, manufacturing, marketing,distribution, and sales.76

Shockleys fundamental expectations for total control of R&D and a complete lack ofresponsibility for all other aspects of the business was spelled out clearly in another sec-tion, CONDITIONS IMPOSED. Shockleys condition was, rst and foremost A freehand in the research, development, and production (prototypes) aspects of the business.Unhampered by slowing inuences usually found in large organizations. Shockley alsorequired that he would be guaranteed funds for his operation of his part of the businessfor not less than 2 years and thereafter if a fair appraisal of the results of the two yearsof operations indicated that the project should be continued. Shockley wanted fundingfor two years to do whatever he wanted in R&D, and then a decision at the two-year

point about how to continue. On Beckmans side, the only condition was a say in thefundamental nature of the business: The scope of the business at the outset shall be thedevelopment of mass production of semi-conductors (transistors). As time goes on, bymutual agreement the original purpose (development of means of mass production oftransistors) may be abandoned, or it may be continued along with other projects added. 77

Beckman wanted Shockleys unfettered R&D to give him mass-produced diffused silicontransistors for his efforts in automation and for military and other markets.

Despite Beckman and Shockleys mutual openness to immediately starting a separate

company, Beckmans advisors concluded that legal and tax considerations in fact favoredthe rival option of deferred formation, that is, beginning with Shockley leading a new

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separate corporation. Shockley found this approach still consonant with his fundamentalconditions: complete freedom of action for R&D, guaranteed funding for two years, anda decision made at that time about whether to create a new company.

The deferred formation approach of Beckmans was identical to the offer from How-ard Hughes that Shockley had previously rejected. It was Shockleys belief in Beckmanas a high-technology and automation entrepreneur that made the difference between thetwo offers, and Shockley indicated that in this deferred formation plan he would requirea new condition: Arnold Beckmans continuing personal involvement with the project.78

As Shockley would soon disclose to the editors ofFeedback, an internal employee publi-cation of the BII division engaged in automation, Before joining Beckman I did consid-erable looking around and nowhere could I nd an individual who had the samecombination of scientic and industrial attainment as Dr. Beckman.79 Less than twoweeks later, by September 8th, Beckman and Shockley countersigned a letter of agree-ment that laid out their deal in more formal, legally binding language. With this,they had created the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments,

Incorporated.In October and November 1955, Shockley was busily at work launching his new

organization within BII. Prominently, Shockley sought Beckmans consent to locate thenew laboratory near Palo Alto, California and the campus of Stanford University.Beckman had already acquired the Palo Alto-based Spinco, which produced ultracentri-fuges and was moving into other biochemical instrumentation. Shockley hoped that hisnew laboratory could join Spinco in a new facility in the Stanford Industrial Park, imme-diately adjacent to the campus on university property. For Shockley, Palo Alto had anumber of advantages. Frederick Terman, the prominent electrical engineer and powerfulStanford University provost, wanted Shockley to put his operation nearby in order to

build an industrial and academic community engaged with semiconductor electronics, justas Terman had encouraged previously in vacuum-tube electronics. Terman wanted to linkStanford to Shockley in as many ways as possible. Indeed, within a month after signinghis deal with Beckman, Shockley had extracted from Terman a promise to help himrecruit. Beyond the propinquity to Stanford, for Shockley the advantages of Palo Altomust have included its familiarity (Shockleys youth was spent there), family (his mother,to whom he was very close, was a resident), a vibrant scene in electron-tube productionfor military and commercial markets, nascent aerospace activities, the climate and naturalenvironment of the Peninsula, and the proximity of San Francisco as a nancial, military,commercial and cultural center.80

In November 1955, Shockley convinced Beckman to allow him set up the ShockleySemiconductor Laboratory in Palo Alto. The combination of Shockleys strong interest inthat location, Beckmans existing commitment to creating a facility for Spinco in theStanford Industrial Park, and the willingness of the areas electronics leaders to helpShockley recruit must have weighed in Palo Altos favor. Shockley had lined up not justStanfords Provost Terman but also its Professor John Linvill (who had just come fromBell Labs transistor effort to Stanford) as well as Bernard Oliver, the Director ofResearch at Hewlett Packard (and another recent Bell Labs alumni) to help Shockleyrecruit.81

That same month, Shockley drafted a press release to announce his new Laboratoryand his intentions to the world. Though he shared this draft with Arnold Beckman, it is

unclear if it ever was released. Nonetheless, it is remarkably revelatory of Shockleysthinking, of his desire to assemble a team of virtuosi for semiconductor innovation and,i d i i bi h i d i h i i l



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Shockleys draft announcement began with praise of Beckman himself: With the guid-ance of Dr. Beckman, whose combination of high abilities in science, business, andhuman relations is unique in my experience, and with the support of the exible and pro-gressive corporation he has organized, I plan to build the most creative team in the worldfor developing and producing transistors and other solid state devices. Clearly, Shockleywas focused to creating a team of creative researchers, exactly like those he had led atBell Labs. Nowhere did he mention any need for or interest in hands experienced in highvolume, automated, or semiconductor manufacturing. Shockley continued, The opportu-nity to contribute to the growth of a new electronics community will attract men of imag-ination and initiative along both social and technological lines. I hope to create a vehiclein which such men can make their maximum contributions and nd their greatest satis-factions and rewards. Here was Shockleys interest in creating a semiconductor commu-nity on the San Francisco Peninsula. His language of social and technological innovationand initiative, of greatest satisfaction and rewards resonates with the image that SiliconValley later attained, due in part to Shockleys efforts and aspirations.82

As Shockley moved his Laboratory from a rented Palo Alto storefront into an oldQuonset hut building at 391 San Antonio Road at the border of Palo Alto and MountainView, California, the primary news magazine of the American Chemical Society, Chemi-cal and Engineering News, ran a short note that presented Shockleys new effort withinthe context of Arnold Beckman and BIIs longstanding interest in automation and the roleof electronic instruments therein. Under the lead Transistors in industry gain impetus asBeckman Instruments establishes Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the note reportedthat, An early aim is to move transistors into industrial, automatic controls, where certainvacuum characteristics may hinder acceptance of automation, a primary Beckmaninterest.

A reader acquainted with the aims and challenges of industrial automation in thechemical industry could have immediately unpacked the sentence. Reliability was a

primary virtue and necessity for electronic controls and instrumentation in automatingchemical processes and plants. High temperatures, corrosive environments, and signicantvibrations associated with chemical processing severely challenged vacuum tubeelectronics. Transistors especially silicon diffused transistors could tolerate suchconditions much more handily. As such, transistors and other semiconductor devices werecentral to fullling the automation movements dream of the automatic factory,

particularly in the chemical domain.83

Coda

The full story of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory across the next four years iscomplex and important, but outside the scope of the present study. In terms of the estab-lishment of silicon electronics in Silicon Valley, the primary features of this story havealready been mentioned: the assembly of a capable laboratory staff who pursued diffusionapproaches to silicon electronics fabrication; the spinoff of this group to establish FairchildSemiconductor; the development of diffused planar technology, transistors, and integratedcircuits at Fairchild; and the spinoff of microchip rms (including Intel Corporation) andsemiconductor equipment and materials rms from Fairchild and its descendants.

Though incredibly productive in this sense, both Beckman and Shockley nevertheless

came to view the history of Shockley Semiconductor as one of personal failure. The lab-oratory never produced a silicon transistor, instead focusing on a more challenging

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1940s. Beckman poured funds into Shockleys pursuit of the four-layer diode for severalyears, and even granted Shockleys wish of transforming the laboratory into the ShockleyTransistor Corporation, albeit a wholly owned subsidiary of BII. In 1961, with few actualsales of f

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