Cambridge, A Pioneer Home Of Electronics

By Harold B. Richmond*
Read October 28, 1952

A​s​ a sort of Christmas present last year, my very good friend and a distinguished citizen of Cambridge, the late Elmer A. Noden, appeared one day in my office to inquire if I would be the next speaker at the Cambridge Club and talk on the general subject of radio. The date specified was within forty-eight hours of the time I was leaving for a business trip to Brazil and the Argentine. I accepted on the basis that I could speak informally and without the necessity of doing any extended research.

Mr. Charles L. Hanson of your Society heard this talk and on my return to Cambridge asked that I prepare a paper on the same subject for your Society. Again, I accepted but again, time made it necessary that I be relieved from making any extensive historical research. This paper, therefore, is of a popular nature, but nevertheless I feel that the data given are historically correct in spite of the fact that no bibliography is appended.

A very fine collection of radio papers assembled by Mr. George H. Clark was presented a few months ago to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by him and by the Radio Corporation of America with whom Mr. Clark had been associated for many years. The publications of the Institute of Radio Engineers extending over the past forty years likewise contain a wealth of historical data. To one interested in the broader concepts of the history of radio, these two sources are especially recommended. I have drawn on them for part of the data I am presenting this evening.

Tonight, we are, however, particularly interested in the part Cambridge has played in the development of this interesting field; therefore, I have chosen as my subject, “Cambridge, a Pioneer Home of Electronics.” The use of electronics is simply the development of the older word wireless, later radio, and into far broader fields of activity than those confined by the limitations of point-to-point and broadcast communications. I am also guilty of using Cambridge at times in a somewhat metropolitan sense by straying across both the Charles River and the Alewife Brook.

At the turn of the century, it was neither Harvard University nor the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then located on the right bank of the Charles, that focused early radio attention on Cambridge. It was the American Telephone and Telegraph Company whose research laboratories were then in Boston. To be sure, the philosophers of Harvard, such as the mathematician B. O. Pierce, and of M.I.T., such as the physicist Charles R. Cross, to mention but two, made very substantial contributions through fundamentals which greatly aided in getting the new work established.

In the opinion of many, of whom I am one, radio in Cambridge and the art in general stems from the work, largely here in Cambridge, of a man well known at the time but little known today: Mr. John Stone Stone. Had he been less a brilliant scholar and distinguished mathematician and more publicity minded, his name would today undoubtedly replace some of those more popularly associated with the field of electronics.

While the technical history of the communications art is replete with the great contributions of Mr. Stone, this paper is of a popular nature and only brief reference will be made to them here. Stone was, however, such a unique personality and such a distinguished gentleman that he rates high in that company of great men who have been associated with the cultural and scholastic life of Cambridge. It therefore seems appropriate to include here a bit of his personal life. For this data, I am largely indebted to a biography of Stone prepared by Mr. George H. Clark.

John Stone Stone descended from a long line of distinguished, cultured and patriotic ancestors of English stock who were among the earliest settlers of New England; in fact, Deacon Gregory Stone came from England in 1634, settling here in Cambridge. He was one of the original proprietors of Watertown. John Stone Stone’s father was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1824.

His mother’s family, also of the name Stone, settled in Virginia in 1640, later moving to Maryland. Her family, too, contained many distinguished personages such as the first Governor of Maryland under Lord Baltimore and also an Episcopal Bishop of Maryland.

The father of John Stone Stone, Charles Pomeroy Stone, a man whose own biography would make delightful reading, was appointed to the United States Military Academy from Massachusetts, and with a tremendously brilliant career in the Mexican and Civil wars rose to the rank of Lieutenant General. He is credited with saving President-elect Lincoln from the kidnap plot to seize him in Baltimore during his trip from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington for his inauguration. For his personal courage and leadership in battle, Stone received several distinguished citations.

It was during the Civil War that General Stone met Annie Jeannie Stone, who became his wife and then the mother of John. She was described as brilliant, beautiful and utterly fearless, as her actions in the Civil War and later in Egypt proved. She was known as a “fitting wife for a great general.” It is quoted that when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first saw her here in Cambridge, he said, “Who is that beautiful golden-haired girl? She moves like a goddess and looks like a queen!”

General Stone was stricken with typhoid fever and his health failed, making necessary his resignation from the army in 1864. For the next five years, he was engaged in engineering work in Virginia. It was there at Dover that John Stone Stone was born on September 24, 1869.

At about this time, the Khedive of Egypt approached General Sherman as General-in-Chief of the United States Army for an officer to undertake the reorganization of the Egyptian Army. General Sherman recommended General Stone as the “best American officer for the highest rank in the Egyptian Army.” After some hesitation, General Stone accepted. Thus for the first fourteen years of his life, young Stone was brought up by private tutors in an atmosphere of princely surroundings. This was enhanced by the brilliance of his father’s successful accomplishments, which resulted in his being promoted to the grade of Lieutenant General, Ferik Pasha, the highest rank attainable by anyone not a Prince of the Blood. A palace atmosphere could have spoiled young Stone. Instead, it brought out the best in him and he became a most brilliant scholar, advancing far beyond his years particularly in mathematical subjects which became the basis for his future work. He also became an accomplished linguist, including classical as well as colloquial Arabic. Not alone a scholar, he became an expert horseman, learning even the wild riding of the men of the desert, and also a fine fencer.

The senior Stone died before the son had reached his eighteenth birthday. The son’s formal education was continued at Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities. During the summer before his senior year, young Stone returned to Europe where he had frequently visited during his Egyptian stay, this time, although only twenty, to assist in the exhibit of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company at the Paris Exposition. It is reported that he served not only with brilliance as an engineer, but with distinction as a diplomat. This made him a marked man to the Telephone Company so that on completion of his work at Johns Hopkins, he was very promptly installed as an engineer in their Experimental Department in Boston.

The brilliance of Stone continued in his work at the laboratories of the Bell Company. The late Mr. Hammond V. Hayes, the head of the laboratory and well known to the technical men in this area, wrote of Stone, “He was the first of my associates to show interest in the theoretical principles underlying the telephone art.” Many credit Stone as truly placing the Bell Company on the track leading away from rule of thumb experimenting to fundamental analysis which eventually brought about a program of research for the company that has placed it on its present high and advanced plane of development.

In the ten-year period that Stone remained with the Bell Company in Boston, he was issued many patents covering his fundamental work in the general field of wave propagation. One application in particular has been of interest to scientists. It dealt with the theoretical explanation of circuits possessing solely resistance, or impedance, or permittance, or admittance. Stone showed the conditions which resulted in a current of a harmonically vibratory character of fixed periodicity. There seems to have been considerable time taken before the Bell Telephone Company filed the application, so that when it was received it was at once placed into interference with one previously filed by Michael I. Pupin, longtime professor at Columbia University. Long litigation followed, which took much of Stone’s time. The decision was adverse to Stone, the Examiner of Interference saying, “Even if it be held that Stone had established conception at or about the date claimed by him, he has not shown diligence in coming to the Office. Stone did not reduce to actual practice . . . Stone, therefore, cannot prevail.”

It was another case where the man of research and science had placed more emphasis on the search for fundamental knowledge than on taking the necessary steps to protect by patent that which already had been obtained. It is very similar to the case where Professor Dolbear of Tufts College lost out to Alexander Graham Bell. The Telephone Company acquired the Pupin patent and because of the long time taken in the interference procedure, obtained thereby longer protection than it would have obtained had the Stone application been filed earlier and a patent issued.

Irked by the work required in the interference case, and very eager to proceed with his high-frequency work outside the field of telephony, Stone resigned from the Bell Company in 1899 and devoted his time to his private studies and to consulting engineering. This also permitted him to accept the invitation of Professor Cross of M.I.T. to give yearly a course of lectures at M.I.T., the first of which had already been undertaken while he was still with the Telephone Company. These lectures on “Electrical Oscillations and Their Applications” were noted for their clarity and were eagerly sought after by the students.

Stone received a retainer from the Telephone Company as advisory expert in connection with patent litigation. Also his first and only client as a consulting engineer, Mr. Herman W. Ladd, soon appeared. Ladd had applied for his first wireless signaling patent in May, 1899, five months before Marconi first demonstrated his system in this country and years before there was a commercial station in operation here. Stone continued as consultant for Ladd for two years.

Intriguing as was this work with Ladd, Stone became more and more absorbed in the development of his own theories, particularly as they involved selective systems of transmission and reception as contrasted with the then impact systems. Through his patent attorney, Alexander Porter Browne, and after consulting a prominent Boston attorney, Louis D. Brandeis, who reported favorably, a few interested persons raised ten thousand dollars to enable Stone to continue his work. It was recognized that the gamble was large and the money could easily be a total loss. To formalize the unit, the Stone Wireless Telegraph Syndicate was formed and a small experimental laboratory opened early in 1901 at 40 Lincoln Street, Boston. To assist Stone in his work, a recent Harvard graduate with considerable mathematical experience, Mr. Ernest R. Cram, was engaged. After about a year of work, field tests were desired, and here Cambridge enters the picture. Two tar-paper huts with forty-foot poles for the antennae were erected on the marshland beside the Charles River. One hut was placed about one eighth of a mile either side of Massachusetts Avenue. These field tests proved so successful that further expansion seemed in order.

A new company was formed which on February 2, 1903, absorbed the old Syndicate. This new company was called the Stone Telegraph and Telephone Company — note the emphasis on telegraph. It was capitalized for ten million dollars of which seven hundred dollars was cash. Soon additional funds were subscribed by friends, but cash never became a burden to the company. It was, however, the owner of Stone patents which were both numerous and valuable.

In March, 1903, the pole at the west shack was replaced by a Navy-type 180-foot wooden mast. More research assistance was needed and George H. Clark, to whom I am so heavily indebted for data regarding Stone, was engaged following his graduation from M.I.T. in June, 1903. Lincoln Street, Boston, had been abandoned in favor of a laboratory and shop at 18 Western Avenue, Cambridge. Mr. Stone himself became a resident of Riverbank Court, now the Graduate House of M.I.T.

From here on, the Stone Company expanded rapidly. In 1905, it had installed stations at the Boston and Portsmouth Navy Yards replacing the less satisfactory sets which required a relay station on Thatcher’s Island. This success started a veritable flood of Navy orders, and stations were installed in considerable numbers both on ships and ashore. But this period was not without competition and patent difficulties. Years later, in a case appealed to the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice summed up the case well when he wrote: “Stone’s application shows an intimate understanding of the mathematical and physical principles underlying radio communication.” There can be no doubt that in the early history of radio in America, Stone was the outstanding authority.

With the brilliant success that the Stone Company had achieved both in its rapid advances in the technical field and in its sale of equipment, why did it close? Let George Clark himself tell the story:

For eight years, Stone had labored, and had built up a perfect system of wireless telegraphy. No other could compare to it. His transmitter, his receiver, were the most perfect in America. He had met every requirement, every test of the U. S. Navy and had come out first in every way. He had every reason to feel that the U. S. Navy would award the Stone Company large contracts, which would have made it possible for the company to obtain further capital in an honorable and conservative manner; and give him time to develop the “quenched gap” which he had discovered but had had no time to work on — but the Navy did not. A German engineer named Seibt brought to American shores his “quenched gap” system. The U. S. Navy, greatest user of wireless at that time, adopted it at once; and the hopes of the Stone Company were obliterated. It did not have the capital to carry on​.

This same type of story exists today. Contract after contract for electronic equipment is still let to the lowest bidder, regardless of competence, who does not even have to post a performance bond. Not long ago, a contract was let to a new bidder at one seventh the price the company with which I am associated had bid. We were thoroughly familiar with the equipment and for many years had been bidding competitively and quite successfully on this same class of equipment. Fortunately, we are not dependent, as was the Stone Company, on these whims of our government. As yet, the government has not obtained its material on this particular contract.

Stone received many high honors during his lifetime, such as medals from learned societies, the Presidency of the Institute of Radio Engineers, and membership in distinguished and learned organizations. During his lifetime, he was granted approximately 135 patents. From 1920 to 1935, he was retained again by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company as Engineer at Large. His failing health made it necessary for him to seek a warm climate, so that San Diego, California, became his home from 1919 until his death in 1943. He was a gentleman and a scholar, the association with whom Cambridge may well be proud of.

The first decade of this century was a period of rapid advance in the infant field of wireless and its associate field of high frequency. It was only natural, therefore, that three persons who were interested in these developments and who had met in connection with some work for Earle Ovington, an aviation pioneer from Greater Boston, should give thought to establishing their own manufacturing company to enter the high-frequency field. Messrs. J. Emory Clapp, W. O. Eddy, who was a classmate of George Clark at M.I.T., and Melville Eastham, a recent arrival from Portland, Oregon, did just this and organized the firm of Clapp, Eddy, Eastham Company, which established itself on Boylston Street, Boston, opposite the Boston and Albany Railroad yards. Within a year, Eddy withdrew from the company and the firm name was changed to the Clapp-Eastham Company.

The business prospered and more space was required. At about the same time, the Stone Company had received its severe jolt from the Navy and decided to liquidate. The Clapp-Eastham Company had been doing some manufacturing for the Stone Company, was familiar with the Stone space, and considered it quite adapted to its own needs. Arrangements were soon made for the Clapp-Eastham Company to leave Boston and occupy 18 Western Avenue, Cambridge, thus becoming another Cambridge industry. In addition to taking over the Stone space, much of its tool equipment was also acquired. Later, when more expansion was required, a second move was made to 139 Main Street, which became the address of that Company for many years, in fact, until it was later absorbed by other interests and moved out of the state. Many persons will recall in the early twenties the trade name, Radak, under which the Clapp-Eastham Company sold its broadcast receiving radio sets. Although Mr. Clapp left the company just before the move to Cambridge, his place being taken by O. Kerro Luscomb, and Mr. Eastham withdrew in 1917, as will be recorded later, the name of the company remained unchanged. Many old-time radio men still cherish the memories of Clapp-Eastham of Cambridge with its fine line of commercial and experimental transmitting and receiving equipment.

We have just seen how the Stone Company was the pioneer radio manufacturer here in Cambridge and how through its demise it brought to Cambridge the Clapp-Eastham Company. For the next few moments, let us review the history of a company born here in Cambridge and which still remains with us. As far as it has been able to ascertain, it is now the oldest company in the United States organized solely for the purpose of radio manufacturing which still retains that purpose and which also still retains its original name and management except as the hand of time inevitably has moved forward. It is the General Radio Company.

As the Clapp-Eastham Company continued to develop, its high-frequency activities decreased and soon its work lay solely in the field of wireless — or radio as it was beginning to be called. One great factor which was retarding the high-frequency research field was the lack of instruments which would make possible accurate measurements at these frequencies. Stone had been obliged to develop his own standards. More work in instrumentation had already been done in Europe than in this country. Lord Kelvin had said that until one could assign numbers to a quantity, one knew little about it. One of the first truly radio instruments made in this country was the famous Kolster decremeter, introduced in 1912. Frederick Kolster, its inventor, had been a former Stone employee. Later, his brother, Charles Kolster, was for many years a federal radio inspector with headquarters in Boston.

This lack of high-frequency instruments had been pounding in the mind of Melville Eastham. His mind had also been busy thinking about the rapid development of the quenched-gap type of transmitter on which he had applied for patents which he later obtained. Radio was a new art and very few of its patents had been adjudicated. Where did the quenched-spark type of transmitter stand? Was there really a field in the United States for radio instrumentation? Eastham was interested in finding out. Luscomb did not want the Clapp-Eastham Company to be put in possible jeopardy. The solution was to form a new company to explore these fields. The principal capital of the new company would be supplied by Eastham and Luscomb. Thus, the General Radio Company was formed on June 14, 1915. A separate shop was established at 11 Windsor Street where Eastham soon found that he was devoting all of his time while Luscomb was devoting his time to the Clapp-Eastham Company.

Two years later found this country engaged in World War I. The philosophies of Eastham and Luscomb differed sufficiently in the amount the companies should participate, so that it seemed best for Eastham to dispose of his interest in the Clapp-Eastham Company and for Luscomb to dispose of his interest in General Radio, which company then became heavily engaged in war work for the armed services. For this work, a military citation was received.

At the close of the war, return was made to the broad field of instrumentation. There have since been many tempting openings to depart from that field, such as the manufacture of radio and television sets, to say nothing of special military communication equipment, but the company has remained steadfast to its original purpose. This, however, did not prevent it from receiving five “E” Awards during World War II.

While other radio companies have grown by leaps and bounds, and while some have fallen by the wayside, General Radio has continued to limit its activities to the broad field of communications instrumentation, which in turn may explain why its annual sales have reached only about ten million dollars while the annual volumes of some newer radio companies have climbed to ten or more times this amount.

This has also, until this year, made it possible for the company to conduct its activities entirely in Cambridge. Were manufacturing space its only problem, all activities would still be conducted here in Cambridge.

The development and manufacture of technical equipment requires both highly trained technical and skilled manufacturing personnel. Such personnel usually drive to and from work in automobiles. Finding off-street parking space for these vehicles has been a very serious problem, but it is not all. Leaving these parking spaces at the end of the day is truly a major feat. It is not unusual, particularly in the wintertime, for nearly one half hour to be required to cross the Charles River at the close of the working day. Skilled employees who are in great demand tend to migrate to places more easily accessible. Because of this, the Company has acquired an eighty-acre tract in Concord on the turnpike and is now operating a 72,000 square foot, newly-erected plant there. This is purely an addition and it is to be hoped that our headquarters will continue to remain, as it has for over thirty-seven years, right here in Cambridge.

Any reference to the history of radio, either nationally or here in Cambridge, must include the Raytheon Manufacturing Company. Development work had been done by Dr. Vannevar Bush and Dr. C. G. Smith at Amrad (American Research and Development Corporation) in Medford Hillside on a new type of rectifier tube. Patents were applied for, principally by Smith, and assigned to Amrad. Later, these patents became an important asset of what remained in the liquidation of Amrad.

There was formed in Kendall Square, Cambridge, in 1922, a company known as the American Appliance Company, which was working on thermostatic equipment of Mr. J. A. Spencer. Dr. Bush also became associated with this company. After Amrad experienced financial difficulties the American Appliance Company ultimately purchased the Smith tube patents.

The Smith patents covering the new type of rectifier tube which did not require any heating filament was one of the early contributions the company made to the electronics field. The use of two cathodes in this tube made full-wave, instead of the customary half-wave, rectification possible, thus materially reducing the hum in the early types of radio sets. It should be recalled that at this period radio receivers were operated by batteries, which were inconvenient and required frequent renewing. Rectifier tubes were an important step in the process of making radio receivers operatable directly from the electric lighting circuits. Other types of tubes were made and new products added. This expansion required the company to seek a new location and a plant was found in Newton; thus, Cambridge lost another of its children. Today, the company has plants in several cities of Massachusetts and is reported to have an annual volume of business of nearly $200,000,000.

The new rectifier tube, then known as the S-tube, was so popular that it became desirable to give both the company and the tube a distinctive name. The word Raytheon was chosen. In 1925, the tube business was separated in a new company called Raytheon, Inc. There was also formed, in 1927, another associated company known as the Raytheon Manufacturing Company, which acquired part of the stock of the American Appliance Company. Then finally, in 1928, Raytheon, Inc. and the remaining interest of the American Appliance Company were consolidated in the one company, Raytheon Manufacturing Company.

As the years passed, Raytheon absorbed other companies, such as the Submarine Signal Company of Boston. One of these companies is of interest to Cantabrigians. At the end of World War I, an employee of General Radio, Ashley C. Zwicker, decided to leave and form his own manufacturing company to specialize in transformer manufacturing. He was assisted by Claude Cairns of the Submarine Signal Company. The company was named the Acme Apparatus Company and its home was first on Windsor Street and later on Osborne Street. The company was very successful during the days of home receiver building, but in the slump which subsequently followed, the failure of several receiver manufacturing companies to whom Acme had sold transformers caused the liquidation of Acme. Out of it, however, in 1930, grew a new company, the Delta Manufacturing Company. Its principals were G. E. M. Bertram, also a former employee of Submarine Signal, who liquidated the defunct Acme Company, and Dr. Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, formerly of the staff of M.I.T. In 1933, the Delta Manufacturing Company was acquired by Raytheon and moved from Cambridge to Waltham. Bertram continued with Raytheon and today heads the Special Products Division, which is an outgrowth of the old Delta Company.

Another very early Cambridge wireless manufacturing company was the Cutting and Washington Company, which started in the Cambridge-port section before World War I. It made considerable military equipment but later in the days of home receivers was combined with Colonial Radio and has not been a Cambridge resident for many years.

Starting before World War I and continuing for nearly twenty years, Cambridge was the home of the National Company. Expansion also caused it to leave Cambridge. Its home became, as it is now, Maiden, while a second plant is maintained in Melrose. The company has been a pioneer specialist in amateur radio equipment as well as an important supplier to the armed services.

Associated with Harvard and M.I.T. in the period from the turn of the century to World War II were many names familiar to early radio men. In mentioning just a few, there should be included Professor George W. Pierce, who in the very early days organized the Massachusetts Wireless Equipment Company but who will be best remembered for his work in the field of piezo-electric crystals. There also were Professors E. Leon Chaffee and Arthur E. Kennelly, Sewall Cabot, V. Ford Greaves, Doctors Harvey Hayes, Lewis Hull, Stuart Ballantine, and Ellison S. Purington, as well as Messrs. Browning and Drake of circuit fame by that name.

Although his work was carried on largely on the opposite side of Alewife Brook from Cambridge, no work pertaining to radio in this area should omit reference to Professor Amos E. Dolbear of Tufts College. There are many who still credit the invention of the telephone to him in spite of the adverse patent decision and other data pertinent to the early work in this field. Through the courtesy of his son, Benjamin L. Dolbear, I have just had the pleasure of reading Professor Dolbear’s personal account of the telephone development three quarters of a century ago. The associated development work of Dolbear in the field of instrumentation clearly shows his understanding of the subject. His lack of financial means, of the importance of prompt disclosure, and of understanding of the patent art may have cost him a fortune and fame.

It is radio, however, rather than telephony with which we are dealing. In 1882, Dolbear, while following his telephone development work, actually set up a spark transmitter with aerial and ground, working over distances of about a mile. It was strictly of the untuned type which Stone later improved through his tuned circuits. Dolbear also experimented with a kite aerial. His use of added capacitance in the antenna long preceded even experimental practice.

Professor Dolbear received a small amount of financing from two gentlemen to whom the development of new devices was assigned. They were not interested in this new radio communications development and it remained idle for about ten years. In 1892, Dolbear asked for a release under the 1879 financing agreement, but it was not given. One of the financiers had died and the other felt that he did not have sufficient financial means himself to advance more funds. Dolbear had no means of his own to work aggressively on this problem, so again there was lost to Dolbear fame and perhaps fortune.

At the same College Hill on which Dolbear worked, Harold J. Power, Tufts ’14, carried on his wireless work under the name of Amrad. Dr. Vannevar Bush was his chief engineer. Through lack of administrative experience, this company after brief fame ceased operations. What remained was absorbed by another company and moved to Indiana.

Newercomers in the field of radio in Cambridge include such companies as Harvey Radio, Hermon Hosmer Scott and Krohn-Hite Instrument Company. But more important is the great extension of the field of electronics such as computors, geophysics, guided missiles, automatic gun laying especially for aircraft and anti-aircraft use. The majority of this work has centered around special projects at Harvard and M.I.T. Companies engaged in the field of radioactivity have not been included in this summary. The Sanborn Company, however, which has had its home in Cambridge since 1924 started in Boston in 1917 in the field of medical apparatus, but today its greatest volume is in electronic equipment in spite of its ever-expanding medical field. Thus perhaps some of those now in the field of radioactivity may some day become large suppliers of electronic equipment.

The places of Harvard and M.I.T. in World War II in the field of electronics will forever be a credit to Cambridge. Nor was their activity limited to this field. Tremendous contributions in the very broad fields of technology were made by these institutions, and in this service to our country their respective presidents played stellar roles. Large numbers of the staffs of these two colleges contributed far beyond any ordinary call to duty.

In this paper, I have tried to impress upon you the truly great place Cambridge has played in the field of electronics from its very inception to the present time. In making frequent mention of the companies which have left Cambridge, I do not want to imply that Cambridge has been hostile to them, but rather that it is a mature city rather fully occupied by its homes, manufacturing companies, and educational institutions. Like the mother who sees her sons grow up and leave for wider fields, so has Cambridge been an ideal protector of young companies, but with the same heartache as the mother experiences with her departing sons, so has Cambridge been forced to bid some of hers a fond farewell.

* During World War II Dr. Richmond was chairman of Division 5 of the National Defense Research Committee, the group which looked after the development of guided missiles for the military. This was a very important assignment as it covered the direction of a very large amount of research work which proved of great value during the war and has since been the base on which the Army and Navy have built a large program.

 

<i><span style=”font-weight: 400;”>This article can be found in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society Volume 34, from the years 1951-1952.</i>

By Harold B. Richmond*
Read October 28, 1952

A​s​ a sort of Christmas present last year, my very good friend and a distinguished citizen of Cambridge, the late Elmer A. Noden, appeared one day in my office to inquire if I would be the next speaker at the Cambridge Club and talk on the general subject of radio. The date specified was within forty-eight hours of the time I was leaving for a business trip to Brazil and the Argentine. I accepted on the basis that I could speak informally and without the necessity of doing any extended research.

Mr. Charles L. Hanson of your Society heard this talk and on my return to Cambridge asked that I prepare a paper on the same subject for your Society. Again, I accepted but again, time made it necessary that I be relieved from making any extensive historical research. This paper, therefore, is of a popular nature, but nevertheless I feel that the data given are historically correct in spite of the fact that no bibliography is appended.

A very fine collection of radio papers assembled by Mr. George H. Clark was presented a few months ago to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by him and by the Radio Corporation of America with whom Mr. Clark had been associated for many years. The publications of the Institute of Radio Engineers extending over the past forty years likewise contain a wealth of historical data. To one interested in the broader concepts of the history of radio, these two sources are especially recommended. I have drawn on them for part of the data I am presenting this evening.

Tonight, we are, however, particularly interested in the part Cambridge has played in the development of this interesting field; therefore, I have chosen as my subject, “Cambridge, a Pioneer Home of Electronics.” The use of electronics is simply the development of the older word wireless, later radio, and into far broader fields of activity than those confined by the limitations of point-to-point and broadcast communications. I am also guilty of using Cambridge at times in a somewhat metropolitan sense by straying across both the Charles River and the Alewife Brook.

At the turn of the century, it was neither Harvard University nor the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then located on the right bank of the Charles, that focused early radio attention on Cambridge. It was the American Telephone and Telegraph Company whose research laboratories were then in Boston. To be sure, the philosophers of Harvard, such as the mathematician B. O. Pierce, and of M.I.T., such as the physicist Charles R. Cross, to mention but two, made very substantial contributions through fundamentals which greatly aided in getting the new work established.

In the opinion of many, of whom I am one, radio in Cambridge and the art in general stems from the work, largely here in Cambridge, of a man well known at the time but little known today: Mr. John Stone Stone. Had he been less a brilliant scholar and distinguished mathematician and more publicity minded, his name would today undoubtedly replace some of those more popularly associated with the field of electronics.

While the technical history of the communications art is replete with the great contributions of Mr. Stone, this paper is of a popular nature and only brief reference will be made to them here. Stone was, however, such a unique personality and such a distinguished gentleman that he rates high in that company of great men who have been associated with the cultural and scholastic life of Cambridge. It therefore seems appropriate to include here a bit of his personal life. For this data, I am largely indebted to a biography of Stone prepared by Mr. George H. Clark.

John Stone Stone descended from a long line of distinguished, cultured and patriotic ancestors of English stock who were among the earliest settlers of New England; in fact, Deacon Gregory Stone came from England in 1634, settling here in Cambridge. He was one of the original proprietors of Watertown. John Stone Stone’s father was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1824.

His mother’s family, also of the name Stone, settled in Virginia in 1640, later moving to Maryland. Her family, too, contained many distinguished personages such as the first Governor of Maryland under Lord Baltimore and also an Episcopal Bishop of Maryland.

The father of John Stone Stone, Charles Pomeroy Stone, a man whose own biography would make delightful reading, was appointed to the United States Military Academy from Massachusetts, and with a tremendously brilliant career in the Mexican and Civil wars rose to the rank of Lieutenant General. He is credited with saving President-elect Lincoln from the kidnap plot to seize him in Baltimore during his trip from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington for his inauguration. For his personal courage and leadership in battle, Stone received several distinguished citations.

It was during the Civil War that General Stone met Annie Jeannie Stone, who became his wife and then the mother of John. She was described as brilliant, beautiful and utterly fearless, as her actions in the Civil War and later in Egypt proved. She was known as a “fitting wife for a great general.” It is quoted that when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first saw her here in Cambridge, he said, “Who is that beautiful golden-haired girl? She moves like a goddess and looks like a queen!”

General Stone was stricken with typhoid fever and his health failed, making necessary his resignation from the army in 1864. For the next five years, he was engaged in engineering work in Virginia. It was there at Dover that John Stone Stone was born on September 24, 1869.

At about this time, the Khedive of Egypt approached General Sherman as General-in-Chief of the United States Army for an officer to undertake the reorganization of the Egyptian Army. General Sherman recommended General Stone as the “best American officer for the highest rank in the Egyptian Army.” After some hesitation, General Stone accepted. Thus for the first fourteen years of his life, young Stone was brought up by private tutors in an atmosphere of princely surroundings. This was enhanced by the brilliance of his father’s successful accomplishments, which resulted in his being promoted to the grade of Lieutenant General, Ferik Pasha, the highest rank attainable by anyone not a Prince of the Blood. A palace atmosphere could have spoiled young Stone. Instead, it brought out the best in him and he became a most brilliant scholar, advancing far beyond his years particularly in mathematical subjects which became the basis for his future work. He also became an accomplished linguist, including classical as well as colloquial Arabic. Not alone a scholar, he became an expert horseman, learning even the wild riding of the men of the desert, and also a fine fencer.

The senior Stone died before the son had reached his eighteenth birthday. The son’s formal education was continued at Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities. During the summer before his senior year, young Stone returned to Europe where he had frequently visited during his Egyptian stay, this time, although only twenty, to assist in the exhibit of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company at the Paris Exposition. It is reported that he served not only with brilliance as an engineer, but with distinction as a diplomat. This made him a marked man to the Telephone Company so that on completion of his work at Johns Hopkins, he was very promptly installed as an engineer in their Experimental Department in Boston.

The brilliance of Stone continued in his work at the laboratories of the Bell Company. The late Mr. Hammond V. Hayes, the head of the laboratory and well known to the technical men in this area, wrote of Stone, “He was the first of my associates to show interest in the theoretical principles underlying the telephone art.” Many credit Stone as truly placing the Bell Company on the track leading away from rule of thumb experimenting to fundamental analysis which eventually brought about a program of research for the company that has placed it on its present high and advanced plane of development.

In the ten-year period that Stone remained with the Bell Company in Boston, he was issued many patents covering his fundamental work in the general field of wave propagation. One application in particular has been of interest to scientists. It dealt with the theoretical explanation of circuits possessing solely resistance, or impedance, or permittance, or admittance. Stone showed the conditions which resulted in a current of a harmonically vibratory character of fixed periodicity. There seems to have been considerable time taken before the Bell Telephone Company filed the application, so that when it was received it was at once placed into interference with one previously filed by Michael I. Pupin, longtime professor at Columbia University. Long litigation followed, which took much of Stone’s time. The decision was adverse to Stone, the Examiner of Interference saying, “Even if it be held that Stone had established conception at or about the date claimed by him, he has not shown diligence in coming to the Office. Stone did not reduce to actual practice . . . Stone, therefore, cannot prevail.”

It was another case where the man of research and science had placed more emphasis on the search for fundamental knowledge than on taking the necessary steps to protect by patent that which already had been obtained. It is very similar to the case where Professor Dolbear of Tufts College lost out to Alexander Graham Bell. The Telephone Company acquired the Pupin patent and because of the long time taken in the interference procedure, obtained thereby longer protection than it would have obtained had the Stone application been filed earlier and a patent issued.

Irked by the work required in the interference case, and very eager to proceed with his high-frequency work outside the field of telephony, Stone resigned from the Bell Company in 1899 and devoted his time to his private studies and to consulting engineering. This also permitted him to accept the invitation of Professor Cross of M.I.T. to give yearly a course of lectures at M.I.T., the first of which had already been undertaken while he was still with the Telephone Company. These lectures on “Electrical Oscillations and Their Applications” were noted for their clarity and were eagerly sought after by the students.

Stone received a retainer from the Telephone Company as advisory expert in connection with patent litigation. Also his first and only client as a consulting engineer, Mr. Herman W. Ladd, soon appeared. Ladd had applied for his first wireless signaling patent in May, 1899, five months before Marconi first demonstrated his system in this country and years before there was a commercial station in operation here. Stone continued as consultant for Ladd for two years.

Intriguing as was this work with Ladd, Stone became more and more absorbed in the development of his own theories, particularly as they involved selective systems of transmission and reception as contrasted with the then impact systems. Through his patent attorney, Alexander Porter Browne, and after consulting a prominent Boston attorney, Louis D. Brandeis, who reported favorably, a few interested persons raised ten thousand dollars to enable Stone to continue his work. It was recognized that the gamble was large and the money could easily be a total loss. To formalize the unit, the Stone Wireless Telegraph Syndicate was formed and a small experimental laboratory opened early in 1901 at 40 Lincoln Street, Boston. To assist Stone in his work, a recent Harvard graduate with considerable mathematical experience, Mr. Ernest R. Cram, was engaged. After about a year of work, field tests were desired, and here Cambridge enters the picture. Two tar-paper huts with forty-foot poles for the antennae were erected on the marshland beside the Charles River. One hut was placed about one eighth of a mile either side of Massachusetts Avenue. These field tests proved so successful that further expansion seemed in order.

A new company was formed which on February 2, 1903, absorbed the old Syndicate. This new company was called the Stone Telegraph and Telephone Company — note the emphasis on telegraph. It was capitalized for ten million dollars of which seven hundred dollars was cash. Soon additional funds were subscribed by friends, but cash never became a burden to the company. It was, however, the owner of Stone patents which were both numerous and valuable.

In March, 1903, the pole at the west shack was replaced by a Navy-type 180-foot wooden mast. More research assistance was needed and George H. Clark, to whom I am so heavily indebted for data regarding Stone, was engaged following his graduation from M.I.T. in June, 1903. Lincoln Street, Boston, had been abandoned in favor of a laboratory and shop at 18 Western Avenue, Cambridge. Mr. Stone himself became a resident of Riverbank Court, now the Graduate House of M.I.T.

From here on, the Stone Company expanded rapidly. In 1905, it had installed stations at the Boston and Portsmouth Navy Yards replacing the less satisfactory sets which required a relay station on Thatcher’s Island. This success started a veritable flood of Navy orders, and stations were installed in considerable numbers both on ships and ashore. But this period was not without competition and patent difficulties. Years later, in a case appealed to the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice summed up the case well when he wrote: “Stone’s application shows an intimate understanding of the mathematical and physical principles underlying radio communication.” There can be no doubt that in the early history of radio in America, Stone was the outstanding authority.

With the brilliant success that the Stone Company had achieved both in its rapid advances in the technical field and in its sale of equipment, why did it close? Let George Clark himself tell the story:

For eight years, Stone had labored, and had built up a perfect system of wireless telegraphy. No other could compare to it. His transmitter, his receiver, were the most perfect in America. He had met every requirement, every test of the U. S. Navy and had come out first in every way. He had every reason to feel that the U. S. Navy would award the Stone Company large contracts, which would have made it possible for the company to obtain further capital in an honorable and conservative manner; and give him time to develop the “quenched gap” which he had discovered but had had no time to work on — but the Navy did not. A German engineer named Seibt brought to American shores his “quenched gap” system. The U. S. Navy, greatest user of wireless at that time, adopted it at once; and the hopes of the Stone Company were obliterated. It did not have the capital to carry on​.

This same type of story exists today. Contract after contract for electronic equipment is still let to the lowest bidder, regardless of competence, who does not even have to post a performance bond. Not long ago, a contract was let to a new bidder at one seventh the price the company with which I am associated had bid. We were thoroughly familiar with the equipment and for many years had been bidding competitively and quite successfully on this same class of equipment. Fortunately, we are not dependent, as was the Stone Company, on these whims of our government. As yet, the government has not obtained its material on this particular contract.

Stone received many high honors during his lifetime, such as medals from learned societies, the Presidency of the Institute of Radio Engineers, and membership in distinguished and learned organizations. During his lifetime, he was granted approximately 135 patents. From 1920 to 1935, he was retained again by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company as Engineer at Large. His failing health made it necessary for him to seek a warm climate, so that San Diego, California, became his home from 1919 until his death in 1943. He was a gentleman and a scholar, the association with whom Cambridge may well be proud of.

The first decade of this century was a period of rapid advance in the infant field of wireless and its associate field of high frequency. It was only natural, therefore, that three persons who were interested in these developments and who had met in connection with some work for Earle Ovington, an aviation pioneer from Greater Boston, should give thought to establishing their own manufacturing company to enter the high-frequency field. Messrs. J. Emory Clapp, W. O. Eddy, who was a classmate of George Clark at M.I.T., and Melville Eastham, a recent arrival from Portland, Oregon, did just this and organized the firm of Clapp, Eddy, Eastham Company, which established itself on Boylston Street, Boston, opposite the Boston and Albany Railroad yards. Within a year, Eddy withdrew from the company and the firm name was changed to the Clapp-Eastham Company.

The business prospered and more space was required. At about the same time, the Stone Company had received its severe jolt from the Navy and decided to liquidate. The Clapp-Eastham Company had been doing some manufacturing for the Stone Company, was familiar with the Stone space, and considered it quite adapted to its own needs. Arrangements were soon made for the Clapp-Eastham Company to leave Boston and occupy 18 Western Avenue, Cambridge, thus becoming another Cambridge industry. In addition to taking over the Stone space, much of its tool equipment was also acquired. Later, when more expansion was required, a second move was made to 139 Main Street, which became the address of that Company for many years, in fact, until it was later absorbed by other interests and moved out of the state. Many persons will recall in the early twenties the trade name, Radak, under which the Clapp-Eastham Company sold its broadcast receiving radio sets. Although Mr. Clapp left the company just before the move to Cambridge, his place being taken by O. Kerro Luscomb, and Mr. Eastham withdrew in 1917, as will be recorded later, the name of the company remained unchanged. Many old-time radio men still cherish the memories of Clapp-Eastham of Cambridge with its fine line of commercial and experimental transmitting and receiving equipment.

We have just seen how the Stone Company was the pioneer radio manufacturer here in Cambridge and how through its demise it brought to Cambridge the Clapp-Eastham Company. For the next few moments, let us review the history of a company born here in Cambridge and which still remains with us. As far as it has been able to ascertain, it is now the oldest company in the United States organized solely for the purpose of radio manufacturing which still retains that purpose and which also still retains its original name and management except as the hand of time inevitably has moved forward. It is the General Radio Company.

As the Clapp-Eastham Company continued to develop, its high-frequency activities decreased and soon its work lay solely in the field of wireless — or radio as it was beginning to be called. One great factor which was retarding the high-frequency research field was the lack of instruments which would make possible accurate measurements at these frequencies. Stone had been obliged to develop his own standards. More work in instrumentation had already been done in Europe than in this country. Lord Kelvin had said that until one could assign numbers to a quantity, one knew little about it. One of the first truly radio instruments made in this country was the famous Kolster decremeter, introduced in 1912. Frederick Kolster, its inventor, had been a former Stone employee. Later, his brother, Charles Kolster, was for many years a federal radio inspector with headquarters in Boston.

This lack of high-frequency instruments had been pounding in the mind of Melville Eastham. His mind had also been busy thinking about the rapid development of the quenched-gap type of transmitter on which he had applied for patents which he later obtained. Radio was a new art and very few of its patents had been adjudicated. Where did the quenched-spark type of transmitter stand? Was there really a field in the United States for radio instrumentation? Eastham was interested in finding out. Luscomb did not want the Clapp-Eastham Company to be put in possible jeopardy. The solution was to form a new company to explore these fields. The principal capital of the new company would be supplied by Eastham and Luscomb. Thus, the General Radio Company was formed on June 14, 1915. A separate shop was established at 11 Windsor Street where Eastham soon found that he was devoting all of his time while Luscomb was devoting his time to the Clapp-Eastham Company.

Two years later found this country engaged in World War I. The philosophies of Eastham and Luscomb differed sufficiently in the amount the companies should participate, so that it seemed best for Eastham to dispose of his interest in the Clapp-Eastham Company and for Luscomb to dispose of his interest in General Radio, which company then became heavily engaged in war work for the armed services. For this work, a military citation was received.

At the close of the war, return was made to the broad field of instrumentation. There have since been many tempting openings to depart from that field, such as the manufacture of radio and television sets, to say nothing of special military communication equipment, but the company has remained steadfast to its original purpose. This, however, did not prevent it from receiving five “E” Awards during World War II.

While other radio companies have grown by leaps and bounds, and while some have fallen by the wayside, General Radio has continued to limit its activities to the broad field of communications instrumentation, which in turn may explain why its annual sales have reached only about ten million dollars while the annual volumes of some newer radio companies have climbed to ten or more times this amount.

This has also, until this year, made it possible for the company to conduct its activities entirely in Cambridge. Were manufacturing space its only problem, all activities would still be conducted here in Cambridge.

The development and manufacture of technical equipment requires both highly trained technical and skilled manufacturing personnel. Such personnel usually drive to and from work in automobiles. Finding off-street parking space for these vehicles has been a very serious problem, but it is not all. Leaving these parking spaces at the end of the day is truly a major feat. It is not unusual, particularly in the wintertime, for nearly one half hour to be required to cross the Charles River at the close of the working day. Skilled employees who are in great demand tend to migrate to places more easily accessible. Because of this, the Company has acquired an eighty-acre tract in Concord on the turnpike and is now operating a 72,000 square foot, newly-erected plant there. This is purely an addition and it is to be hoped that our headquarters will continue to remain, as it has for over thirty-seven years, right here in Cambridge.

Any reference to the history of radio, either nationally or here in Cambridge, must include the Raytheon Manufacturing Company. Development work had been done by Dr. Vannevar Bush and Dr. C. G. Smith at Amrad (American Research and Development Corporation) in Medford Hillside on a new type of rectifier tube. Patents were applied for, principally by Smith, and assigned to Amrad. Later, these patents became an important asset of what remained in the liquidation of Amrad.

There was formed in Kendall Square, Cambridge, in 1922, a company known as the American Appliance Company, which was working on thermostatic equipment of Mr. J. A. Spencer. Dr. Bush also became associated with this company. After Amrad experienced financial difficulties the American Appliance Company ultimately purchased the Smith tube patents.

The Smith patents covering the new type of rectifier tube which did not require any heating filament was one of the early contributions the company made to the electronics field. The use of two cathodes in this tube made full-wave, instead of the customary half-wave, rectification possible, thus materially reducing the hum in the early types of radio sets. It should be recalled that at this period radio receivers were operated by batteries, which were inconvenient and required frequent renewing. Rectifier tubes were an important step in the process of making radio receivers operatable directly from the electric lighting circuits. Other types of tubes were made and new products added. This expansion required the company to seek a new location and a plant was found in Newton; thus, Cambridge lost another of its children. Today, the company has plants in several cities of Massachusetts and is reported to have an annual volume of business of nearly $200,000,000.

The new rectifier tube, then known as the S-tube, was so popular that it became desirable to give both the company and the tube a distinctive name. The word Raytheon was chosen. In 1925, the tube business was separated in a new company called Raytheon, Inc. There was also formed, in 1927, another associated company known as the Raytheon Manufacturing Company, which acquired part of the stock of the American Appliance Company. Then finally, in 1928, Raytheon, Inc. and the remaining interest of the American Appliance Company were consolidated in the one company, Raytheon Manufacturing Company.

As the years passed, Raytheon absorbed other companies, such as the Submarine Signal Company of Boston. One of these companies is of interest to Cantabrigians. At the end of World War I, an employee of General Radio, Ashley C. Zwicker, decided to leave and form his own manufacturing company to specialize in transformer manufacturing. He was assisted by Claude Cairns of the Submarine Signal Company. The company was named the Acme Apparatus Company and its home was first on Windsor Street and later on Osborne Street. The company was very successful during the days of home receiver building, but in the slump which subsequently followed, the failure of several receiver manufacturing companies to whom Acme had sold transformers caused the liquidation of Acme. Out of it, however, in 1930, grew a new company, the Delta Manufacturing Company. Its principals were G. E. M. Bertram, also a former employee of Submarine Signal, who liquidated the defunct Acme Company, and Dr. Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, formerly of the staff of M.I.T. In 1933, the Delta Manufacturing Company was acquired by Raytheon and moved from Cambridge to Waltham. Bertram continued with Raytheon and today heads the Special Products Division, which is an outgrowth of the old Delta Company.

Another very early Cambridge wireless manufacturing company was the Cutting and Washington Company, which started in the Cambridge-port section before World War I. It made considerable military equipment but later in the days of home receivers was combined with Colonial Radio and has not been a Cambridge resident for many years.

Starting before World War I and continuing for nearly twenty years, Cambridge was the home of the National Company. Expansion also caused it to leave Cambridge. Its home became, as it is now, Maiden, while a second plant is maintained in Melrose. The company has been a pioneer specialist in amateur radio equipment as well as an important supplier to the armed services.

Associated with Harvard and M.I.T. in the period from the turn of the century to World War II were many names familiar to early radio men. In mentioning just a few, there should be included Professor George W. Pierce, who in the very early days organized the Massachusetts Wireless Equipment Company but who will be best remembered for his work in the field of piezo-electric crystals. There also were Professors E. Leon Chaffee and Arthur E. Kennelly, Sewall Cabot, V. Ford Greaves, Doctors Harvey Hayes, Lewis Hull, Stuart Ballantine, and Ellison S. Purington, as well as Messrs. Browning and Drake of circuit fame by that name.

Although his work was carried on largely on the opposite side of Alewife Brook from Cambridge, no work pertaining to radio in this area should omit reference to Professor Amos E. Dolbear of Tufts College. There are many who still credit the invention of the telephone to him in spite of the adverse patent decision and other data pertinent to the early work in this field. Through the courtesy of his son, Benjamin L. Dolbear, I have just had the pleasure of reading Professor Dolbear’s personal account of the telephone development three quarters of a century ago. The associated development work of Dolbear in the field of instrumentation clearly shows his understanding of the subject. His lack of financial means, of the importance of prompt disclosure, and of understanding of the patent art may have cost him a fortune and fame.

It is radio, however, rather than telephony with which we are dealing. In 1882, Dolbear, while following his telephone development work, actually set up a spark transmitter with aerial and ground, working over distances of about a mile. It was strictly of the untuned type which Stone later improved through his tuned circuits. Dolbear also experimented with a kite aerial. His use of added capacitance in the antenna long preceded even experimental practice.

Professor Dolbear received a small amount of financing from two gentlemen to whom the development of new devices was assigned. They were not interested in this new radio communications development and it remained idle for about ten years. In 1892, Dolbear asked for a release under the 1879 financing agreement, but it was not given. One of the financiers had died and the other felt that he did not have sufficient financial means himself to advance more funds. Dolbear had no means of his own to work aggressively on this problem, so again there was lost to Dolbear fame and perhaps fortune.

At the same College Hill on which Dolbear worked, Harold J. Power, Tufts ’14, carried on his wireless work under the name of Amrad. Dr. Vannevar Bush was his chief engineer. Through lack of administrative experience, this company after brief fame ceased operations. What remained was absorbed by another company and moved to Indiana.

Newercomers in the field of radio in Cambridge include such companies as Harvey Radio, Hermon Hosmer Scott and Krohn-Hite Instrument Company. But more important is the great extension of the field of electronics such as computors, geophysics, guided missiles, automatic gun laying especially for aircraft and anti-aircraft use. The majority of this work has centered around special projects at Harvard and M.I.T. Companies engaged in the field of radioactivity have not been included in this summary. The Sanborn Company, however, which has had its home in Cambridge since 1924 started in Boston in 1917 in the field of medical apparatus, but today its greatest volume is in electronic equipment in spite of its ever-expanding medical field. Thus perhaps some of those now in the field of radioactivity may some day become large suppliers of electronic equipment.

The places of Harvard and M.I.T. in World War II in the field of electronics will forever be a credit to Cambridge. Nor was their activity limited to this field. Tremendous contributions in the very broad fields of technology were made by these institutions, and in this service to our country their respective presidents played stellar roles. Large numbers of the staffs of these two colleges contributed far beyond any ordinary call to duty.

In this paper, I have tried to impress upon you the truly great place Cambridge has played in the field of electronics from its very inception to the present time. In making frequent mention of the companies which have left Cambridge, I do not want to imply that Cambridge has been hostile to them, but rather that it is a mature city rather fully occupied by its homes, manufacturing companies, and educational institutions. Like the mother who sees her sons grow up and leave for wider fields, so has Cambridge been an ideal protector of young companies, but with the same heartache as the mother experiences with her departing sons, so has Cambridge been forced to bid some of hers a fond farewell.

* During World War II Dr. Richmond was chairman of Division 5 of the National Defense Research Committee, the group which looked after the development of guided missiles for the military. This was a very important assignment as it covered the direction of a very large amount of research work which proved of great value during the war and has since been the base on which the Army and Navy have built a large program.

This article can be found in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society Volume 34, from the years 1951-1952.