The floods that hit the Northeast U.S. in April nearly wiped out one of
the motherlodes of analog history. Thanks to heroic work, most of the documents at the David Sarnoff Library in
Princeton were saved. But it took a major
effort and donations from the IEEE, the
Antique Radio Club of Illinois, and other
private and institutional donors.
To really appreciate the library, you
have to be an alpha geek like my friend
Charlie Osborn. Charlie got deeply
involved with the library through his
research into the RCA Selectron vacuum-tube memory element. (See http://home.att.net/~thercaselectron/index1.html,
and be sure to mouse over the pins at the base of the tube.) That led him to MacGyver a flatbed scanner so Alex Magoun, the library's executive director, could copy ancient bound volumes without cracking
the spines (). These books included some
of the notebooks of John von Neumann.
Charlie contacted me after the floods,
when Alex was seeking donations to pay
for the document salvage efforts. He says
you can almost sense the ghosts of those
pioneer engineers. "The successful and
directly observed ‘output' from the labs of RCA are so numerous and all pervasive, it is tough make a list," he says.
"Weather satellites are taken for granted, but Tiros-I was damned near magical," he says. "TV reception direct from satellites is possible because of the traveling
wave tubes—semiconductors still can't do
the job—beaming the signals back down
to an entire continent. Color TV was going
to need huge spinning wheels in front of a
regular TV except for the engineers—and
yes—the attorneys of RCA."
Charlie also notes that the basic
CMOS structure used in computer
processor chips was developed at RCA,
when "Lefty" Leverenz began synthesizing CRT phosphors in the 1930s. "Seventy years later, as Sarnoff Corporation,
phosphors for CRTs and plasma displays
are still being developed by the scientists in Princeton. Other chemists developed materials and processes ranging
from vinyl records to solar cells. And fuel
cells. And nuclear fusion," he says.
That sums up the magic that's in the air
at the library. Alex Magoun puts it more
prosaically: "I won't pretend that this is
popular material... But we saved these
collections from Dumpsters because they
are essential to understanding—and
admiring—the innovative spirit that the
United States has always enjoyed."
Alex also says these documents represent primary source material for scholars
and researchers, as well as electronics
restoration experts. As such, they lay the
groundwork for popular histories, documentaries, Web sites, textbooks, and
movies about our electronic past.
"More broadly, they represent the fruit
of intellectual creativity by thousands of
engineers and scientists, working at particular times in particular places, and
significantly contributing to the shape of
our material world and the ways we communicate today," Alex says.
The David Sarnoff Library
www.davidsarnoff.org
