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ABSTRACT
The quartz clock, the first to replace the pendulum as the time standard and later a ubiquitous and highly influential technology, originated in research on means for determining frequency for the needs of telecommunication and the interests of its users. This article shows that a few groups in the US, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands developed technologies that enabled the construction of the new clock in 1927–28. To coordinate complex and large communication networks, the monopolistic American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and national laboratories needed to determine and maintain a common ‘standard’ frequency measurement unit. Exploiting novel piezoelectric quartz methods and valve electronics techniques, researchers in these organizations constructed a new crystal-based frequency standard. To ensure its accuracy they compared it to an accepted absolute standard - an astronomical clock, constructing thereby the first quartz clock. Other groups, however, had different, though connected, technological aims, which originated from the diverse interests of the industrial, governmental and academic institutes to which they belonged, and for which they needed to measure, control and manipulate with frequencies of electric oscillations. The present article suggests a comparative examination of the research and development paths of these groups on their incentives, the technological and scientific resources they utilized, and the kind of research carried out in the various institutional settings.
Acknowledgements
I thank Jaume Navarro for his comments on an early draft, the anonymous referees for their suggestions, David Miller for his helpful editorial work, and George Kupczack for his help at AT&T archives. I am grateful to the institutions that supported my research on and writing of this article as a Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the history of science, and a Marie Curie Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation (M4HUMAN) at Tel Aviv University.
Notes
* The following abbreviations are used, NB — Notebooks held at AT&T Archives, Warren NJ; IRE Proceedings – Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers; AIEE Transactions – Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; NPL Annual Report – Annual Report of the National Physical Laboratory (Teddington, National Physical Laboratory) for the year mentioned (published in the successive year).
1 About 3 billion quartz timekeepers (including wristwatches, mobile phones and computers) were produced in 2012 alone, Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, ‘The Swiss and world watchmaking industry in 2012’, http://www.fhs.ch/statistics/watchmaking_2012.pdf [accessed 1 September 2013], for telephones http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2335616 [accessed 1 September 2013].
2 ‘Standard’ in this context is a device that keeps a known particular value of a physical magnitude (in this case frequency) allowing the comparison and measurements of other quantities of the same magnitude (e.g. frequency) in its own terms. Although its existence is a prerequisite for a regulating standard, normally ‘measuring standard’ does not set any regulations. E.g. the frequency standard does not determine the breadth of the waveband allocated to each radio station, but to enforce such a breadth one needs a reliable means for measuring frequency. See also the discussion below.
3 David Cahan, An Institute for an Empire, The Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, 1871-1918 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989); Leonard S. Reich, The Making of American Industrial Research, Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876-1926 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Guy Hartcup, The War of Invention, Scientific Developments, 1914-18 (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1988). Robert E. Kohler, Partners in Science, Foundations and Natural Scientists 1900 - 1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
4 The definition and methods of measurements of both basic magnitudes like length and derived magnitudes like electric resistance involved controversies with such overtones, Simon Schaffer, ‘Metrology, Metrication, and Victorian Values’, in Victorian Science in Context, ed. by Bernard Lightman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 438–74; Joseph O’Connell identified a ‘Calvinist’ ideology in modern standards, ‘Metrology, The Creation of Universality by the Circulation of Particulars’, Social Studies of Science, 23 (1993), pp. 153–7. On these and other aspects of standardization see also the articles in M. Norton Wise, ed., The Values of Precision (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), and literature cited below.
5 Bruce J. Hunt, ‘The Ohm Is Where the Art Is, British Telegraph Engineers and the Development of Electrical Standards’, Osiris, 9 (1994), 48–63.
6 An important exception is David Pantalony, Altered Sensations, Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Dordrecht, Springer, 2009), pp. 99–105, which discusses Koenig’s determination of his tuning forks as a standard of acoustic frequency by a chronometer in 1877–79.
7 In ‘Reinventing Accuracy, The First Quartz Clock of 1927’, Carlene E. Stephens (in Die Quarzrevolution, 75 Jahre Quarzuhr in Deutschland 1932–2007, ed. by Johannes Graf (Furtwangen, Dt. Uhrenmuseum, 2008), 12–23) focuses on the work of the Bell group, without examining similar works by other researchers. In his own history of the quartz clock, Marrison provides a fair, if incomplete, description of parallel efforts at universal frequency and time standards, Warren A. Marrison, ‘The Evolution of the Quartz Crystal Clock’, The Bell System Technical Journal, 27 (1948), 510–88.
8 Joseph W. Horton, Norman H. Ricker and Warren A. Marrison, ‘Frequency Measurement in Electrical Communication’, AIEE Transactions, 42 (1923), 730–41, quote on p. 730; Marrison, NB 1112-2, p. 38 (29.5.1922), which mentions also earlier work, Riker, NB 1097-2 (June 21–December 22).
9 The division was also called the Research Department.
10 E. H. Colpitts and O. B. Blackwell, ‘Carrier Current Telephony and Telegraphy’, AIEE Transactions, 40 (1921), 205–300.
11 E.g. Leonard S. Reich, Making of American Industrial Research; Robert MacDougall, ‘Long Lines, AT& T’s Long-Distance Network as an Organizational and Political Strategy’, Business History Review, 80 (2006), 297–327, the first quote is from AT&T president Theodore Vail in 1910, on p. 303. Milton Mueller, Universal Service, Competition, Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 92–103, second quote, which is dated 1910, on p. 98.
12 Simon Schaffer, ‘Rayleigh and the Establishment of Electrical Standards’, European Journal of Physics, 15 (1994), 278; Hunt (note 5); Arne Hessenbruch, ‘Calibration and Work in the X-Ray Economy, 1896–1928’, Social Studies of Science, 30 (2000), 397–420.
13 The unit Hertz was introduced in the late 1920s, but researchers in the field had already used the same unit under other names throughout the period discussed here. For simplicity I use the unit Hertz in this paper.
14 Horton, Ricker and Marrison (note 8), 730.
15 Joseph Warren Horton, Excursions in the domain of physics, a typed manuscript, 1965, by courtesy of the American Institute of Physics library, quotations on pp. 2, 4; Obituary in IEEE Spectrum, 4 (1967), 38–9; James E. Brittain, ‘Joseph Warren Horton’, Proceedings of the IEEE, 82 (1994), 1470. On his teachers and their teaching and work see John W. Servos, Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling, The Making of a Science in America (Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 103–6. Despite Brittain’s claim (which is repeated by others), Horton probably did not have a prior experience with piezoelectricity. Although he did research on ultrasonic detection, he worked in Nahant on passive hydrophones, which unlike sonar-like detectors did not employ the effect.
16 ‘Chart of Western Electric Company Research Department, Dec. 1922’, manuscript at ‘Norman Hurd Ricker Papers’, in Woodson Research Center, Foundren Library, Rice University (14/142); W. R. Topham, ‘Warren Marrison - Pioneer of the Quartz Revolution’, NAWCC [The National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors Bulletin], April (1989), 126–34. Marrison’s first dated notebook entry in AT&T is from June 1920; Marrison’s ‘record card’ at Harvard University Archives and his application in UAV161.201.10, Box 71. I thank the staff of both archives for providing me the relevant material.
17 Horton (note 15), pp. 3–4.
18 Henri Abraham and Eugène Bloch, ‘Entretien des oscillations d’un pendule ou d’un diapason avec un amplificateur à lampes’, Journal de physique théorique et appliquée, 9 (1919), 225–33; W. H. Eccles, ‘The Use of the Triode Valve in Maintaining the Vibration of a Tuning Fork’, Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, 31 (1919), 269.
19 David Pantalony (note 6), pp. 22–5, and passim; Ja Hyon Ku, ‘Uses and Forms of Instruments, Resonator and Tuning Fork in Rayleigh’s Acoustical Experiments’, Annals of Science, 66 (2009), 371–95.
20 On the request from these bodies see NPL Annual Report for 1920 (p. 63), 1923 ‘standard . . . wavemeter required by the Services’ (p. 84), 1924 (p. 77), and D. W. Dye, ‘A Self-Contained Standard Harmonic Wave-Meter’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 224 (1924), 259–301 (300).
21 Marrison NB 1112-2, pp. 38–9, Horton, Ricker and Marrison (note 8).
22 On the benefits of absolute units and the difficulties in reaching consensus about them in other cases see Schaffer, ‘Rayleigh and the Establishment of Electrical Standards’, 278.
23 The idea of a mechanical tuning-fork clock preceded its use for calibration, and it continued to be used also for other ends. Pantalony (note 6), pp. 100–5.
24 J. A. Ratcliffe, ‘William Henry Eccles. 1875–1966’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 17 (1971), 195–214; David Dye, ‘The Valve-Maintained Tuning-Fork as a Precision Time-Standard’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 103 (1923), 240–60. At the time Eccles and Jordan published only secret reports on their method. Horton, Ricker and Marrison (note 8), 734–6; Marrison NB 1112-2, pp. 38–41, A report of R.V.L. Hartley to Harold Arnold, 28.11.1922 (loc 79 10 01 14, in Arnold’s papers at AT&T Archives), Marrison, (note 7), 528.
25 Marrison, NB 1444, passim. On quartz see also the list of suggestions in NB 2161, and NB 2161 and 2162. AT& T archives have not kept Horton’s notebook, so the discussion here relies more on Marrison’s research. His notebooks, however, mention also work of the group in general, without assigning a particular author.
26 Warren A. Marrison, ‘Some Facts About Frequency Measurement’, Bell Laboratories Record, 6 (1928), 385; Lloyd Espenschied, ‘The Origin and Development of Radiotelephony’, IRE Proceedings, 25, (1937), 1101–23; Russel W. Burns, ‘The Contributions of the Bell Telephone Laboratories to the Early Development of Television’, History of Technology, 13, 181–213; idem., Television, An International History of the Formative Years (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1998), 220–41.
27 Joseph. W. Horton and W.A. Marrison, ‘Precision Determination of Frequency’, IRE Proceedings, 16 (1928), 137–54 (142).
28 Shaul Katzir, ‘From Ultrasonic to Frequency Standards, Walter Cady’s Discovery of the Sharp Resonance of Crystals’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 62 (2008), 469–87; idem, ‘War and Peacetime Research on the Road to Crystal Frequency Control’, Technology and Culture, 51 (2010), 99–125.
29 W.G. Cady, ‘An International Comparison of Radio Wavelength Standards by Means of Piezo-Electric Resonators’, IRE Proceedings, 12 (1924), 805–16.
30 Marrison, NB 1112-1, p. 38 (29.5.22).
31 Cady-Arnold correspondence 1918-1921, AT&T archives loc, 79 10 01 03. Walter G. Cady, ‘The Piezo-electric Resonator’, IRE Proceedings, 10 (1922), 83–114 (91).
32 Katzir, ‘War and Peacetime Research’ (note 28) on 99, 118-120; see in addition entries in Cady’s diary kept at the Rhode Island Historical Society, MSS 326 – Cady Family Papers; Arnold on the potential value of Cady’s invention in a letter to O. [Otto] B. Blackwell 26.12.1923; Cady to Arnold 17.2.24, AT&T archives loc, 79 10 01 05.
33 A few researchers at the company, prominently Alexander Mclean Nicolson, gained experience with piezoelectric oscillators following their application for submarine detection. Yet, except for providing crystals to Horton’s group the experts on piezoelectricity were not involved in the company’s research on frequency standards. E.g. Marrison, NB 1444, pp. 25, 30 (28.8.24, 4.9.24) on Rochelle Salt crystals received by Nicolson.
34 Cady’s diary; H[erbert] M. F[reeman] ‘The use of the Piezo-electric effect for establishing fixed frequency standards’, report Bureau of standards, 11.9.1920 (in Cady’s file at American Institute of Physics); Wilbert F. Snyder and Charles L. Bragaw, Achievement in radio, seventy years of radio science, technology, standards and measurement at the National Bureau of Standards, (Washington, National Bureau of Standards) 1987, pp. 248–51. NPL Annual Report for 1924 contains the first mention of NPL work on the quartz resonator on p. 79. The previous annual report mentioned Cady’s own resonators (p. 86) and implied that the crystals promised a higher accuracy than the tuning fork. The PTR reports appeared as ‘Die Tätigkeit der Physikalisch-Technischen Reichsanstalt im Jahre . . .’, in Zeitschrift für Instrumentkunde of the following year. The first mention of piezoelectricity is in the report of 1925, ibid., 46 (1926), 112–13.
35 See Cady’s diary entries from 30.8.20, and 31.5.21. Christopher S. McGahey, Harnessing Nature’s Timekeeper, A History of the Piezoelectric Quartz Crystal Technological Community (1880–1959) (PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009), p. 185.
36 Arnold to O. [Otto] B. Blackwell 26.12.1923, AT&T Archives loc,79 10 01 05; The interest in piezoelectric technology is evident in the extant notebooks of Marrison and the list of his suggestions which appears at the beginning of NB 2161, from 4.5.1926.
37 Chen-Pang Yeang, Characterizing Radio Channels, The Science and Technology of Propagation and Interference, 1900-1935 (PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004), 327–56; Hugh Richard Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation, Broadcast Technology in the United States, 1920-1960 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 24–6.
38 Marrison to Dr. William O. Baker, July, 12, 1977 (AT&T Archives, loc, 86 08 03 02).
39 Cf. Marrison NB 1444, e.g. on thermal coefficients pp. 19 (12.8.24), pp. 81–84 (18.12.24). Unfortunately AT&T archives do not hold contemporary notebooks of other members of the group.
40 These companies employed the technique to stabilize the high frequency of the otherwise unstable short wave transmitters, used for long distance transmission (McGahey (note 35), pp. 111–12, and passim). In 1928, Bell Labs are mentioned along with the Navy Department and the BoS as the only USA organizations making absolute measurements of piezo-resonators. I haven’t found any hint of interest in the task from a commercial company outside the US, J. H Dellinger, ‘The Status of Frequency Standardization’, IRE Proceedings, 16 (1928), 582.
41 Horton, Ricker and Marrison (note 8), 731.
42 Marrison, NB 1444 p. 55 (15.11.24), p. 129 (19.3.25), p. 177 (20.7.25),
43 On the use of this range for multiplex at the Bell system see Colpitts and Blackwell (note 10); T. E. Shea and C. E. Lane, ‘Telephone Transmission Networks Types and Problems of Design’, AIEE Transactions, 48 (1929), 1031–44.
44 See Marrison’s notebooks for efforts to extend the range of quartz frequencies, and for attempts to use the same oscillator for a few frequencies. For an explicit mention of control at these frequencies see Hecht in Marrison NB 2162, p. 169 (15.11.26).
45 Marrison, NB 1444, pp. 168–9 (25.6.25), NB 2161 pp. 28 (23-31.7. 26), 32 (2.8.26), 35 (5.8.26), 62–3 (10-17.11.26), NB 2162, pp. 169–71 (15.11.26).
46 NB 2161, pp. 73–4 (27.1.1927)
47 To be more exact, the control tube and control inductance were tuned so that when the output wave advanced (due to an increase in the submultiple frequency), the phase difference between the two waves would increase and the positive voltage on the grid would decrease. Consequently the average current in the tube and in the control inductance in that branch would also decrease, resulting in an increase in its inductance and in the inductance of the submultiple oscillator which thereby lowered the frequency back to its desired value. Retardation of the output wave (due to a decrease of its frequency) would cause a reverse process, reducing the phase difference, which would increase the voltage on the grid, resulting in a lower inductance in the submultiple oscillator and an increase in its frequency to the desired value.
48 Horton and Marrison (note 27), p. 143.
49 Marrison, NB 2162.
50 Warren A. Marrison, ‘A High Precision Standard of Frequency’, IRE Proceedings, 17 (1929), 1102–22 on p. 1112, Steven J. Dick, Sky and Ocean Joined, The U.S. Naval Observatory 1830–2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), chapter 11, especially pp. 461–2.
51 Dellinger (note 40), 581. In the paper, sent in March 1928, Dellinger stated that ‘[t]emperature control is necessary for reaching an accuracy of 1 to 100,000’. The four organizations took part in a research project coordinated by the BoS to develop a radio frequency standard. McGahey (note 35), pp. 157–60, and below.
52 Dellinger (note 40); Marrison (note 26), 385.
53 Marrison (note 50), 1106.
54 Marrison (note 50), 1112.
55 Warren A. Marrison, ‘The Crystal Clock’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 16 (1930), 496–507. Still, at the early 1930s the national laboratories of Britain and Germany, which had a stronger interest in accuracy, exceeded the precision of AT&T’s clock.
56 Dellinger (note 40); Slotten (note 37), pp. 43–51.
57 Ibid. In an additional round the BoS sent oscillators to Canada and Japan, McGahey (note 35), pp. 159–60.
58 Simon Schaffer, ‘Accurate Measurement Is an English Science’, in Wise (note 4), pp. 135–72 (p. 161); O’Connell (note 4).
59 Dellinger (note 40), 582; Cady (note 29), 309.
60 Vallauri mentioned the use of the method in measuring the piezo-oscillator sent by the BoS, carried out in September 1926 and March 1927 (the dates are mentioned by Dellinger). Another, direct, method was used in the August 1927 measurement (see below). An earlier use of the direct method, which Vallauri does not mention, is implausible, especially as he did mention a similar and slightly earlier method by the BoS, and does not try to claim originality. Gaincarlo Vallauri, ‘Confronti fra misure di frequenza per mezzo di piezorisuonatori’, L’Elettrotecnica, 14 (1927), 445–52 (449). I thank Massimiliano Badino and Giuseppe Castagnetti for their help with the Italian sources.
61 Edoardo Savino, ‘Vallauri, Gian Carlo’, in La nazione operante , profili e figure (Milan: Vicolo Pattari, 1934), 2nd edn., pp. 341–2; Francesco Carassa, ‘Francesco Vecchiacchi’, Rendiconti del Seminario matematico e fisico di Milano, 27 (1957), XIX-–XXI.
62 To avoid this problem Horton and his group had included a modulator in their tuning fork standard system back in 1922.
63 Vallauri (note 60); C. B. Jolliffe and Grace Hazen, ‘Establishment of Radio Standards of Frequency by the Use of a Harmonic Amplifier’, Bureau of Standards Scientific Paper, 530 (1926), 179–89.
64 Ibid., p. 449.
65 G. Vallauri, ‘Confronti fra misure di frequenza per mezzo di piezorisuonatori’, L’Elettrotecnica, 14 (1927), 682–4. This paper from 25/9/27 is a supplement to the one from July under the same title; further information in Francesco Vecchiacchi, ‘Applicazione all’oscillografo catodico della demoltiplicazione statica di frequenza’, L’Elettrotecnica, 15 (1928), 805–14 (807).
66 The details of the time keeping system were published only after it was further refined by his former assistant Louis Essen. By 1936, ‘[t]he clock . . . enable[d] short intervals of time to be measured with a precision better than ±0.001 second and intervals of the order of several months with a precision of ±0.002 second.’ This was similar to the accuracy of the most precise pendulum timekeepers (‘The Dye Quartz Ring Oscillator as a Standard of Frequency and Time’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 155 (1936), 498–519 (518)) E. [Edward] V. A. [Appleton], ‘David William Dye. 1887-1932’, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society (1932–1954), 1 (1932), 75–8.
67 NPL 1927 Report, p. 91. On the division of labour from 1928, Louis Essen, Time for Reflection, Chapter 2, Timekeeping (unpublished memoirs), July 1996 in Ray Essen’s personal library.
68 Dye acted as the chairman of the commission responsible for standards at the October 1927 meeting in which Horton and Marrison presented their clock. Yet, Dellinger mentioned his visit to the British laboratory in summer 1927, when he probably had learnt about Dye’s method. It is still possible that Dye had learnt about the advancement in the Bell Laboratory, or about the work of other researchers, like Clapp and van der Pol and van der Mark (see below) through other channels and that they had encouraged the research at the NPL. NPL 1927 Report, pp. 3–4; Dellinger (note 40), 582. This is a published version from March 1928 of a talk given in January 1928.
69 NPL Reports 1925 (p. 11) and 1924 (p. 79).
70 Steven Shapin, The Scientific Life, A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 93–110.
71 NPL Reports for 1923 to 1928, quotation from 1925 report (p. 11). On the research of Dye in response to Radio Research Board request reports for 1926 (pp. 11—12) and 1928 (p. 13). D. W. Dye, ‘The Piezo-Electric Quartz Resonator and Its Equivalent Electrical Circuit’, Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, 38 (1926), 399–458.
72 Notwithstanding, a small number of researchers at Bell Labs, as at other industrial research laboratories, enjoyed a similar freedom to follow questions that were further from the immediate technological quest. Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer, for example, carried out research on electron diffraction during the same years. Arturo Russo, ‘Fundamental Research at Bell Laboratories, The Discovery of Electron Diffraction’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 12 (1981), 117–60.
73 Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, ‘Edward Bowles and Radio Engineering at MIT, 1920-1940’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 20 (1990), 313–37 (317–19); ‘James K[liton] Clapp’, American Men of Science (New York: Science Press, 1933), 5th edn.; James K. Clapp, ‘“Universal” Frequency Standardization from a Single Frequency Standard’, Journal of the Optical Society of America, 15 (1927), 25–47.
74 Clapp (note 73), 30.
75 For example, the 4th sub harmonic of 100 KHz oscillator would synchronize with the heterodyne as the original oscillator would at 100 KHz, but would return to that state also at 125, 150 and 175 KHz and again with the quartz oscillator at 200 KHz.
76 Clapp (note 73). George W. Pierce, ‘Piezoelectric Crystal Resonators and Crystal Oscillators Applied to the Precision Calibration of Wavemeters’, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 59 (1923), 81–106.
77 McGahey (note 35), pp. 158–9, Dellinger (note 40), 581.
78 Clapp (note 73), 32.
79 Ibid., 41–6.
80 Arthur E. Thiessen, A History of the General Radio Company, 1915–1965 (West Concord, MA: General Radio Company, 1965), 29–31. McGahey (note 35), pp. 184–8; ‘Hull, Lewis Madison’, Who’s Who in Aviation, 1942-43 (1942); Lewis M. Hull, in IEEE Global History Network (http,//www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Lewis_M._Hull [accessed 18 October 2012]. Between 1922 and 1928 Hull applied for more than fifteen patents relating to wireless technology, see Espacenet database.
81 The secondary standards were ‘piezo oscillators including quartz plates mounted in holders with adjustable air gaps. The plates are adjusted to within one-tenth of one per cent by grinding, and the final setting is made by adjusting the air gap with a screw provided for this purpose which is then locked.’ Lewis M. Hull and James K. Clapp, ‘A Convenient Method for Referring Secondary Frequency Standards to a Standard Time Interval’, IRE Proceedings, 17 (1929), 252–71 (268). James K. Clapp, ‘A New Frequency Standard’, The General Radio Experimenter, 3 (11) (April 1929), 1—2, 4 (available at http,//www.teradyne.com/corp/grhs/pdf/grx/GRX1929Mar.pdf).
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid., 256.
84 Ibid., respectively pp. 258, 259, 265
85 Following Michael Polanyi, Walter Vincenti sees the search for operating principles as characterizing engineering in relation to scientific research, even if it is not exclusive to the former. Likewise, research aimed to justify a particular operation is often done also in science, Walter G. Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It, Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1990), especially 112—36, 209.
86 Isaac Koga, ‘A New Frequency Transformer or Frequency Changer’, Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 15 (1927); ‘Isaac Koga 1899-1982’, URSI, Information Bulletin, No. 222 (September 1982), 88—91; Issac Koga, ‘Frequency demultiplication and the origin of frequency shift keying system’, The Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Communication Engineers of Japan, 56 (1973), 1335–40 (in Japanese). I am grateful for Shigehisa Hirose for providing me the text and an English summary along with further helpful information about Koga. Different transliterations of Koga’s first name follow contemporary practices.
87 Koga (note 86), ‘Frequency Demultiplication Origin’; Ibid (note 86), ‘New Frequency Transformer’.
88 Koga (note 86), ‘A New Frequency Transformer’, 672.
89 Progress in Radio in Japan (Tokyo: Japanese National Committee for URSI, 1963), 8—9.
90 Balthasar van der Pol and J. van der Mark, ‘Frequency Demultiplication’, Nature, 120 (1927), 363–4; Jan van der Mark and Balthasar van der Pol, ‘Improvements in or relating to electric frequency-transforming devices’, British patent, GB 296829, filed 14 June 1927 (complete specification 14 March 1928); the inventor’s name is not mentioned, but it appears on the American patent, US 1927425 (filed 29 May 1928); also the German, French and Belgian patents.
91 F. Kees Boersma, ‘Structural ways to embed a research laboratory into the company, A comparison between Philips and General Electric 1900-1940’, History and Technology, 19 (2003), 109–26; Marc J. de Vries, 80 Years of Research at the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (1914–1994), The Role of the Nat. Lab. at Philips (Amsterdam: Pallas Publications, 2005) (with contributions by Kees Boersma), especially 37—40; M. L. Cartwright, ‘Balthazar Van Der Pol’, Journal of the London Mathematical Society, 35 (1960), 367–76; ‘Pol, Balthasar van der’ J. C. Poggendorffs biographisch-literarisches Handwörterbuch für Mathematik, Astronomie, Physik, Chemie und verwandte Wissenschaftsgebiete , vol. 6, pp. 2040–1; ‘Jan van der Mark’ http,//vandermark.ch/vdmark-moran/195.html [accessed 25 May 2011].
92 Balthasar van der Pol, ‘On “relaxation-oscillations”’, Philosophical Magazine, 2 (1926), 978–92; Giorgio Israel, ‘Technological Innovation and New Mathematics, van der Pol and the Birth of Nonlinear Dynamics’, in Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems, Controlling, Managing, Organizing, ed. by M. Lucertini, A. Millán Gasca, and F. Nicolò (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2004), pp. 52–78.
93 Ibid., 987, emphasis in the original.
94 Quoted in Giorgio Israel, ‘The Emergence of Biomathematics and the Case of Population Dynamics A Revival of Mechanical Reductionism and Darwinism’, Science in Context, 6 (1993), 469–509 (476). Balthasar van der Pol, ‘Über ‘Relaxationsschwingungen’ II’, Jahrbuch der drahtlosen Telegraphie, 29 (1927), 114–18.
95 van der Pol (note 92), p. 988, (emphasis in the original); Ibid. (note 98), 118.
96 Winifred A. Leyshon, ‘On the Control of the Frequency of Flashing of a Neon Tube by a Maintained Mechanical Vibrator’, Philosophical Magazine, 4 (1927), 305–24, quote on p. 307, W. H. Eccles and W. A. Leyshon, ‘Some new methods of linking mechanical and electrical vibrations’, Proceedings of the Physical Society (London), 40 (1928), 229–33; W. A. Leyshon, ‘Forced Oscillations in Self-maintained Oscillating Circuits’, Philosophical Magazine, 46 (1923), 686–98; W. H. Eccles and W. A. Leyshon, ‘Some Thermionic Tube Circuits for Relaying and Measuring’, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 59 (1921), 433–436; Grace Briscoe and Winifred Leyshon, ‘Reciprocal Contraction of Antagonistic Muscles in Peripheral Preparations, Using Flashing Neon-Lamp Circuit for Excitation of Nerve’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, 105 (1929), 259–79; on Dye NPL 1919 Report, 50
97 Boersma (note 91), especially van der Pol’s letter from 24.4.1922, quoted in fn. 45, p. 125; Vries (note 91), pp. 36–62.
98 Leonard S. Reich, ‘Irving Langmuir and the Pursuit of Science and Technology in the Corporate Environment’, Technology and Culture, 24 (1983), 199–221.
99 In 1930 AT&T declined to sell a quartz clock to scientists from California. Instead it directed them to General Radio (on its clock see below). AT&T archives loc. 80 002 02 08, especially letters of A. Day to Arnold (17.5.30) and of H. P. Charlsworth to F. B. Jewett (9.12.30).
100 Marrison’s success in providing state of the art clocks contributed also to the reputation of the scientific and technological research at Bell Labs. As it was regarded an asset to AT&T, it provided the corporation an additional reason to fund this research.
101 Marrison (note 7), 545—60; on GR see McGahey (note 35), pp. 212–18.
102 Schaffer (note 58); Hunt (note 5); Gooday points out a pressure for higher stability, which allows higher accuracy, from technology in the case of secondary standards of industrial use. These, however, were much less accurate than the primary laboratory standard (in his case of electric resistance), Graeme Gooday, The Morals of Measurement, Accuracy, Irony, and Trust in Late Victorian Electrical Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 60–1.
103 This confluence of similar methods that originated from different needs deserves further historiographical attention. The development of the practical incandescent lamp by Edison and Swan (and a few other inventors) can be seen as a classical case of simultaneous invention following a common goal of constructing an electric light for in-house use. (Even if also in this case, as probably in most, Edison aimed at a lamp durable at a higher voltage than Swan, leading to differences in the design; see Robert Friedel and Paul Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, Biography of an Invention (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), pp. 90–1, 115–17). An example closer in subject, time and kind to the subharmonic provider is the inventions of methods for using the triode as an amplifier and oscillator, Sungook Hong, Wireless, From Marconi’s Black Box to the Audion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001) pp. 155–7, 181–9. On simultaneous invention see Shaul Katzir, ‘Scientific practice for technology, Hermann Aron’s development of the storage battery’, History of Science, 51 (2013), 481—500.
104 For earlier examples of transferring the ideal of exactitude from physics to technology see Kathryn M. Olesko, ‘Precision, Tolerance, and Consensus, Local Cultures in German and British Resistance Standards’, in Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards in 19th and Early 20th Century Germany and Britain, ed. by Jed Z. Buchwald (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), 117–56, especially the discussion of Philipp Brix on p. 122. Shaul Katzir, ‘Hermann Aron’s Electricity Meters, Physics and Invention in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany’, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 39 (2009), 444–81.
105 For these historiographical position see for example Norton Wise’s editorial essays in The Value of Precision (note 4), especially pp. 8–12, 226–30.