The View from Above
The angel above the usual academic heaven to whom Lawrence first appealed was Frederick G. Cottrell, who had grown rich combating the powers of darkness. In 1906, while an assistant professor of chemistry at Berkeley, Cottrell had invented an electrostatic precipitator that removed noxious particles from the smoke of a local Dupont plant. The trick worked for other industrial polluters too; and in 1914 Cottrell endowed a not-for-profit business, the Research Corporation, to "serve the growing number of men in academic positions who evolve useful and patentable inventions from time to time in connection with their work and [who] without looking personally for any financial reward, would gladly see these further developed for the public good." Its charter required its board of directors, which included T. Coleman Dupont, Elihu Thomson, and other powerful men of American industry, to seek out and support research projects that might lead to profitable patents. Cottrell expected that proceeds from working or leasing the patents would repay the Corporation's investment in the research behind them and replenish its capital fund.[1]
The conservatism of the Corporation's board and the indifferent return on its patents during the war kept it from fulfilling its
[1] Cameron, Cottrell , 151–60; Coles, in Cottrell symposium , xi–xvi, quote.
charter until the year of the crash, when it gave the Smithsonian Institution a grant to study the biological effects of radiation. Then, under an aggressive president, Howard A. Poillon, who wished to cut a figure in the world of scientific giving, and with the advice of Cottrell, who was retained as a consultant, the Corporation collected what it could from its precipitators and shopped for patentable material at research universities. By the end of 1932 it had given $120,000 in aid of research to universities and other public institutions.[2] At the time the Corporation began to stir, the universities were awakening to the predicament into which the new relations between science and industry, or research and commercialization, had placed them. Who if anyone should protect the patentable results flowing from academic laboratories? Should not the universities whose facilities produced the results? And ought not educational institutions to prosecute their rights with what vigor they could manage during the downturn in the economy, to offset losses in endowment income and state allocations?[3] But then, would it not be compromising, and even immoral, to obtain royalties from inventions made at tax-exempt institutions supported by public monies or private gifts? The farmer whose taxes underwrote agricultural research at a state university would not be pleased to pay for it again through royalties on the patents it furnished. Would not the farmer—and everyone else—decide to leave a university so conducted to make its own way? "Why should gifts intended for the general welfare play the rôle of capitalizing a business?"[4]
These questions were aired frequently during the early 1930s, in the pages of professional journals, in a report by the Committee on Patents of the AAAS, in a Symposium on Patents at the Patent Office, and at the NRC.[5] A minority preached that universities should have nothing to do with patents—the proximity to commer-
[2] Cameron, Cottrell , 273, 280–2, 285, 292, and RC, Board of Directors, minutes, 534, 556, 589, 699–700, 710–11, 734–5, 742–3, 782, 791–3, 796, 848–9, 864–5, 969 (RC).
[3] Gray, Harper's, 172 (1936), 540, 542; Cottrell, Am. Inst. Chem. Eng., Trans., 28 (1932), 224.
[4] Gregg, Science, 77 (1933), 259.
[5] E.g., Am. Inst. Chem. Eng., Trans., 28 (1932), 183–234, the Patent Office's Symposium; and AAAS, Comm. Patents, Protection , which quotes copiously from the journals.
cialization would demoralize the professoriate, threaten impartiality and openness, promote jealousy, ruin academic standards, debase learning, and exterminate the race of Faradays and Maxwells who did science for the love of it and made discoveries that transformed the world.[6] Another minority held that "there is nothing laudatory in the fact that [Faraday and Maxwell] and their colleagues failed to visualize the vast network of power utilities and communication systems which have evolved from their investigations" and urged scientists to pursue whatever financial gain their discoveries might bring them; "'Truth for truth's sake' is a delusion of so-called savants."[7] The majority favored some sort of protection. The AAAS's Committee on Patents, on which Cottrell served, urged patenting by or on behalf of universities, and not primarily for profit. That would be counterproductive: "A scientist who is impelled only by a motive of profit is far less likely [than others] to make any important contribution to knowledge." The main interests of both the inventive professor and his university should be to control the products resulting from his research: to oversee their quality, price, and advertising; to protect the public; and to return enough to pay for the oversight and, perhaps, to support further research.[8]
The AAAS's Patent Committee drew attention to two practices that enabled universities to obtain some measure of control and return without entering into business directly. One set up a special board within the institution, as Caltech, MIT, and the universities of Illinois and Minnesota had done. The other left the administration in the hands of a special corporation, of which the cynosure was the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), established in 1925 with a Wisconsin professor's patent on vitamin D as its capital. WARF put its profits back into research at the university; and by 1937 it had given about $700,000 and an endowment that yielded over $125,000 a year. This success inspired other hard-pressed universities. By 1936 Cincinnati, Columbia, Cornell, Iowa State, Lehigh, Penn State,
[6] Gregg, Science, 77 (1933), 259; Gray, Harper's, 172 (1936), 544, 548; Flexner, Science, 77 (1933), 325; Withrow, Am. Inst. Chem. Eng., Trans., 28 (1932), 207.
[7] Foote, RSI, 5 (1934), 59–60.
[8] AAAS, Comm. Patents, Protection , 10–1 (quote), 12–4, 18–22; Ryan, Am. Inst. Chem. Eng., Trans., 28 (1932), 209; Gray, Harper's, 172 (1936), 543.
Purdue, Rutgers, and Utah had similar organizations.[9] California was exceptional among the great land grant colleges in not having an equivalent of WARF.
The year that WARF began, the president of the University of California charged the Board of Research to formulate a patent policy. An overstrict system resulted: any member of the University who perfected a patentable invention was obliged to bring it to the attention of the president, who would appoint a special board to advise him what to do with it. Neither the institution nor its faculty gained much from this procedure. Six years later, in 1931, when WARF was assisting research at Wisconsin at $1,000 a day, Leonard Loeb, then chairman of the Patent Committee of the Board of Research, decided that more might be done in California. He approached Cottrell. Now Cottrell had originally wished to give his patents to the University and had set up the Research Corporation only when it became clear that no public body acceptable to him had the mandate or enterprise to accept them.[10] It now appeared that the relationship earlier proposed could be reversed and the Research Corporation set up as the holding company for the University. Discussions between Cottrell and the Board of Research in the late spring of 1931 seemed promising to both parties. Armin Leuschner, the board's head, tried the alliance with a successful application to the Research Corporation for $5,000 for general support of work in the natural sciences at Berkeley.[11]
These pourparlers had the endorsement of president Sproul, who met with Cottrell and inclined to put promising material "at the disposal of the Research Corporation or [its partner] the Chemical Foundation for consideration as to whether or not it desires to secure patents." Sproul believed in a symbiosis of capitalistic and academic industry. "This is the age of science and
[9] AAAS. Comm. Patents, Protection , 22; Gray, Harper's, 172 (1936), 542–3; Nicholls, Jl. farm econ., 21 (1939), 496.
[10] Board of Research, minutes, 23 Apr and 15 Dec 1925, 26 Jan 1926, 25 Mar, 5 and 22 Apr, 2 May, and 7 Oct 1927 (UCA, CU/9.1); Gray, Harper's, 172 (1936), 541; Cottrell, Am. Inst. Chem. Eng., Trans., 28 (1932), 222–3.
[11] Cottrell to Poillon, 6 Mar and 5 Apr, 1931, and RC Board of Directors, minutes, 16 Jan, 11 Mar, and 23 Apr (RC); Cottrell to Poillon, 7 Jul 1931, in Cameron, Cottrell , 289; Palmer, Pat. Off. Soc., Jl., 16:2 (1934), 122.
democracy," he said in his inaugural address in 1930, "an age of strain and steel, electricity, chemistry, and science." "The work of the laboratory capitalized in the factory and by industry has built up a great civilization." Sproul had graduated from Berkeley in engineering in 1913 and returned with two years' experience to begin the climb from the Comptroller's Office to the presidency. He declared that no one belonged on the faculty who did not do research; for research, especially scientific and engineering research, research that might eventuate in patents, was the pump of progress. "Endlessly going over old lessons is a narcotic to progress."[12] He would have liked, though he could not have afforded, a faculty of Lawrences. To him, the aggressive policies of the Research Corporation fit the circumstances of the University perfectly: the strain of the age, the obligation to research, the cut in the budget. He rescinded the patent policy of 1926, in order, he said, to give faculty members full freedom of action. But he recommended that the action go to the Research Corporation.[13]
And the Corporation was aggressive. To work its major asset, it set up a worldwide cartel so restrictive and unfair in its practices that the U.S. government felt obliged to force the American branch to change its ways. The Corporation fought in the courts as vigorously as General Electric, pushed development of the inventions entrusted to it, and hunted out promising professors. It was more combative than WARF, which did not always behave gently either (the Corporation restricted the number of licenses of its primary patents and eventually also had to alter its ways). But WARF's ties to the university moderated its commercialism.[14] The Research Corporation had fewer inhibitions. Lawrence was to adopt its methods as well to profit from its support.
Cottrell became Lawrence's agent as well as his angel. The first job was to secure a big old Poulsen magnet, one of a pair of derelicts belonging to Federal Telegraph. At the prompting of its
[12] Sproul to Poillon, 4 Sep 1931 (25/2); Pettitt, Twenty-eight years , 3–9, 23, 57, and 195, 199 (first two quotes), 42 (last quote); Cottrell, "Diary and letter file," 3 Sep 1934 (RC).
[13] Sproul to Archie Palmer, 14 June 1932 (RC); Palmer, Pat. Off. Soc., Jl., 16:2 (1934), 123.
[14] Vaughan, U.S. patent system , 161, 307–8; Nicholls, Jl. farm econ., 21 (1939), 496–8.
former employee and Lawrence's colleague in the School of Engineering, Leonard Fuller, Federal seemed willing to give one to the University. But the magnet required much reworking to answer Lawrence's purpose. Not then believing that the cyclotron had sufficient promise to justify a very large investment by the Research Corporation, Cottrell recommended that Lawrence stop in Saint Louis in the spring of 1931 on his way to a meeting of the NAS; the Radiological Research Institute there might give something toward refurbishing the magnet. The president of the institute, E.C. Ernst, had an interest, but no principal, to invest in Lawrence's projects. Cottrell next suggested the Chemical Foundation, set up by the government in 1920 to administer 5,000 German chemical patents seized during World War I. The Foundation was intended to protect American chemical industry while it developed domestic strength on German innovations, and in the shade of a high tariff wall, it earned royalties that amounted to nearly $9 million by 1932. Its charter obliged it to spend its income "for the advancement of chemical and allied science and industry," a mission very liberally interpreted, or stretched, by its chief officers Francis Garvan and William Buffum. Its adventure of greatest interest to us was the licensing of two patents it held on high-voltage x-ray tubes. When GE brought a suit for infringement against the license, the Foundation and the Radiological Research Institute countersued, with the consequence that both suits were dismissed and the field opened to further development.[15]
This connection may have been important when, on Cottrell's urging, Poillon went to see the executives of the Chemical Foundation some time in July 1931 to work out cooperative support for Lawrence's project. The connection: the quashing of GE's patents on x-ray tubes had saved Federal Telegraph over a million dollars. "[Buffum] is going to approach Federal and see how appreciative they are and suggest that they not only donate the magnet, but condition it." Then, Poillon continued to Cottrell, Lawrence would need but $7,000, which the Research Corporation
[15] Lawrence to Ernst, 30 May 1931 (15/16) and 9 June 1931 (RC); to Cottrell, 3 Jul 1931, and Ernst to Lawrence, 30 June 1931 (RC); Palmer and Garvan, Aims and purposes , 49, quote; Anon., Chem. ind., 36 : suppl. (1939), 139–43.
and the much richer Chemical Foundation could manage.[16] Federal did not care to square its obligation in this way. Poillon decided to contribute $5,000 and Buffum $2,500 of the $12,000 that Lawrence deemed necessary to rebuild, transport, and set up the magnet. Sproul put up the difference.[17]
From the standpoint of the Research Corporation and the Chemical Foundation, the most promising of the applications of magnets that Lawrence had in mind in the early summer of 1931 was the acceleration not of positive ions but of electrons, in the manner tried with no conspicuous success by Walton and by Tuve and Breit. Lawrence explained in a long memorandum, written in June, how he would improve on Walton's arrangement by multiplying magnets to hold the accelerating electrons on their paths. Lawrence's electrons would have energy high enough to penetrate the marketplace. "[They] carr[y] us straight into the field of high voltage x ray tubes and as such may prove medically and economically highly important," Cottrell wrote Poillon after studying Lawrence's memorandum. He also reminded the head of the Research Corporation that the head of the Chemical Foundation had "very definite ideas on the need for the development of x ray facilities." Following his policy and his penchant, Cottrell urged Lawrence to patent his scheme and to keep quiet about it until he had.[18]
After the pledge by the Research Corporation and the Chemical Foundation of the money toward the cyclotron—and after Lawrence had been told to patent it—Cottrell returned to the business of the early spring, "closer and more effective teamwork in general on patent matters" between the University and the Corporation. The goal might be secured in stages. "The Research
[16] Cottrell to Poillon, 7 Jul 1931, and Poillon to Cottrell, 31 Jul 1931 (RC).
[17] Poillon to Lawrence, 6 Aug 1931 (15/16): $4,000 for rebuilding, $1,000 for moving, $1,000 for a motor generator set, $1,500 toward operations for 1931/2; Leuschner to Sproul, 24 Sep 1931, and Sproul to Poillon, 8 Oct 1931 (25/2); Lawrence to Richtmeyer, 24 Jul and 18 Aug 1931 (25/2). The University paid for installation ($3,300) and for power; Leuschner to Sproul, 23 Sept 1931 (25/1). In a creative misinterpretation, Lawrence thought that the Research Corporation and the Chemical Foundation would pay for everything; Lawrence to Cooksey, 10 Aug [1931] (4/19), and to Poillon, 6 Aug 1931 (RC).
[18] Lawrence to Cottrell, 10 June 1931, enclosure, and Cottrell to Poillon, 7 Jul 1931 (RC).
Corporation [should] study the patents and University of California negotiations with the purpose of seeing if it could not more effectively handle exploitation in eastern territory at least as an entering wedge, and if all worked well the Research Corporation could eventually take over the whole works."[19] The regents' secretary, R.M. Underhill, the University's comptroller, R.C. Nichols, and Sproul agreed to this procedure; and Lawrence immediately assigned his patent rights to the Corporation.[20]
Lawrence himself was an important property to the leadership of the small philanthropies that had pledged to support him. Cottrell outlined a grand future: "I believe Lawrence is a mighty promising young man for us to keep in touch with and develop in connection with our major plans. . . . Lawrence's work seems to me a very good peg on which to hang definitely a concrete proposal of cooperation between not only Chem. Found. & R.C. but also with Max Mason & Rockefeller Foundation , and thus bring to a head the tentative contacts already started. This particular work of Lawrence's is right in Max Mason's own field and will keenly interest him technically I am sure, which is an added advantage for the present purpose. Even if you [Poillon] and Buffum feel that you want to cover the complete needs of this particular line of research so as to feel freer with regard to the patent matters developing out of it, I still think it would be well for Lawrence to have a visit with Max Mason and for you all to talk over the larger plan." If the Rockefeller Foundation would play, the Carnegie Corporation and the California State Legislature might join the game. An empire might be built on precipitators. Lawrence was to make the enterprising Research Corporation his headquarters during his many trips to New York to raise money for his Laboratory.[21]
There was a snag, however. Professors did not have the spirit of cooperative enterprise of the industrial research laboratory. Cottrell to Poillon: "I find there is greater unwillingness on the part of people to tell each other their innermost ideas and note
[19] Cottrell to Poillon, 9 Sep 1931 (RC).
[20] Sproul to Poillon, 4 Sep 1931, F.C. Stevens to A.O. Leuschner, 21 Sep 1931, and Lawrence to Poillon, 22 Sep 1931 (RC).
[21] Cottrell to Poillon, 21 Jul 1933 (RC); Lawrence to John Lawrence, 14 Apr 1936 (11/16).
that it is extremely prevalent among scientific men, especially when it comes to do with their colleagues." Nor did they immediately see the point of patents. Poillon to Cottrell: "If he [Lawrence] is one of the men that we are going to make awards to from time to time, it seems that we should develop his protective instincts."[22]