The AEI long-term research laboratory:an industrial experiment

Prof. T.E. Allibone, CBE, DSc, DEng, FEng, FIEE, FRS

Indexing terms: History, Management, Engineering administration and management, Engineering and society, Design

Abstract: Sir Arthur Fleming's earliest plans forresearch suffered from the 1920 depression; theyreceived a further setback in the 1930s. Hisconcept of a laboratory for long-term researchwas realised in the late 1940s at AldermastonCourt, in the Associated Electrical Industries(AEI) Group, but at arms length from the Labor-atories of the two constituent companies,Metropolitan-Vickers and British Thomson-Houston Co. Ltd. (BTH). The programmes andachievements are outlined, up to the time ofclosure due to the decline of AEI in the early1960s. There is much to be learned from thisaccount of how industrial research might benefitfrom more effective collaboration with, and bettermanagement of, the businesses that it serves.

1 Introduction

'The time has come', the Walrus said,'To talk of many things:Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax —Of cabbages — and kings —'

The days of string and sealing wax, during which manyleading physics laboratories flourished, have long sincepassed, but, only recently, the Institute of Physicsorganised a meeting on the theme of reminiscences ofphysicists [1], and it was salutory to recall what thekings of those days could achieve with such smallresources. Research in industry too lived on a shoestringin the early days of the Century, although apparatus wasmore easily come by than in the universities, but inindustry the winds of change could blow colder and itwas in the industrial research departments that the effectsof the depressions were first felt. They were felt in theearly 1920s, the 1930s and again in the 1960s; the story ofthe development of research in the Metropolitan-VickersCo. (M-V) and in the Associated Electrical IndustriesLtd. (AEI) is typical of that in many other companies, asstorms succeeded sunshine.

Part of this story has already been recounted by J.Blears [2]. This account is based on comprehensive

Paper 4364A (S7), first received 3rd March and in revised form 30thOctober 1986Lecture presented to the Science, Education & Technology Division,Professional Group S7 (History of Technology) at the IEE, SavoyPlace, London on 3rd April 1986Professor T.E. Allibone is now associated with the City University, andresides at York Cottage, Lovel Road, Winkfield, Windsor, BerkshireSL4 2ES, United Kingdom

diaries dating back to the 1920s, and on a very completeaccount written in 1971, while memory held the door, butwas never published: this and all the Annual Reports ofthe AEI Laboratory will probably be deposited in thearchival collections in Churchill College.

2 Long-term research in the M-V Co.

The origin of this concept goes back a very long time, 65years to be precise, to the year 1920. The concept was thebrainchild of Arthur Percy Morris Fleming (APMF forshort) an exceptionally far-sighted engineer who spent hiswhole life in industry, kept in close touch with academiccircles and followed the advances in the pure scienceswith a keen interest. I must, in fact, go back earlier than1920: Fleming was one of the young engineers taken byGeorge Westinghouse to Pittsburg in 1899 for a 2-yeartraining, came back to the British Westinghouse Co ofTrafTord Park, Manchester, and was soon made Managerof the Transformer Department which embraced Trans-former Test. It was here that he initiated research into allthe ingredients of a transformer, and it was from herethat his desire for a research laboratory like the one inPittsburg grew, a laboratory embracing any or all of theactivities which impinged on the Company's products. Alaboratory was sanctioned by the Board just before the1914 War, and he travelled to America to make a thor-ough study of industrial and academic laboratories there.His report was accepted by the Company as a basis forpost-war development, and it was also crucial to the deci-sion to set up a Department of Scientific and IndustrialResearch which would then finance industrial researchAssociations, financed 50% by the Government, to servethe longer-term interests of the different industries.

During the 1st World War he had been a member ofRutherford's team engaged on submarine detection andhad formed a close friendship with the professor thenliving in Manchester; he used to tell how he had beenimpressed with Rutherford's infectious enthusiasm forresearch into the basic features of physics and of whatmight come out of such revolutionary ideas.

Before the War ended, the armament firm of Vickerswas looking for a future market for its huge steel outputand decided to join with the Metropolitan CarriageWagon and Finance Corporation to buy out the BritishWestinghouse from the American corporation, and, thus,the Metropolitan-Vickers Co. was born. In 1919, the firstbricks were laid of a laboratory which, in two decades,acquired a reputation pre-eminent among the otherresearch laboratories in Britain. Its work embraced elec-trical and mechanical engineering, physics, chemistry,

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mathematics and metallurgy, and to this was added aneducation department which recruited about 100 grad-uates a year as apprentices; they gained experience in 6or 8 engineering departments over a 2-year period, andmany of them elected to spend some of that time inresearch. Recruiting these graduates gave Fleming anentree into all our universities and he kept in very closetouch with academic developments; in this, he wasgreatly helped by an extremely able science liaison officer,nephew of the Chairman, a man who became personagrata with many professors such as Sir George Thomson,then at Aberdeen, Professor G.I. Taylor of the CavendishLaboratory, and Henry Tizard of the DSIR. Throughthese many contacts he was the better able to keepabreast with new developments in academia and todecide which of them might be worth following as long-term ventures. He was also able to place junior staff hereand there specially to learn these new ideas, such as J.D.Cockcroft to Cambridge, A.J. Bradley to Manchester,and many others, and, in so doing, he helped them intheir earliest researches.

3 Short-term versus long-term priorities

At all times, the prime duty of Fleming's department wasto serve the Company; a fraction of the budget was ear-marked annually for each major engineering activity, sothat any one of the chief engineers could ask for help, freeof charge, and ideas flowed freely to and from the engi-neers and the research staff, a flow greatly facilitated bysenior research staff sharing the so-called 'upper diningroom' with engineering departmental or sectional heads.But on top of this, Fleming asked for, and was given, asum of money which, as he said, he 'could spend on wine,women or song' and it was on this fraction of the budgetthat we were able to think and to act freely. I havedetailed many of these long-term activities in various bio-graphical writings [3-8]; some of them directly servedthe Company's near and medium requirements, such asthe work on creep, on hard metals, on the production ofhigh vacua, on noise in machines, on transformer sheetsteel, on flux penetration in slots, and on electrodepo-sition, while some merely added to the sum total ofknowledge of engineering phenomena which had, in themedium term, no direct application to the Company'swelfare. It was our general experience that time and timeagain we had to put aside our more academic work, andrightly so, to attend to some pressing need of the factory;we would not have had it otherwise.

It was this deflection of activities which made Flemingsay, around 1936/37 'we could do part of our work inBuxton'; he truly favoured separating some of the stafffrom the urgent demands of the factory and, although theapproaching clouds of war curtailed any such ideas, theyremained with him and blossomed afresh with thecoming of peace.

One more major development took place before the2nd World War, a new activity engendered by theDepression of 1930. This had hit us badly; the staff tooka 10% cut in salary in 1931, and the Department wasthreatened with fragmentation. In March that year,Fleming called all his section leaders together to discusswhich of our activities might be able to lead to new pro-ducts which the Company might sell. There was animmediate response; I cannot deal adequately with thisvast canvas, suffice it to say that my own group, theHigh-Voltage Laboratory staff, was able (with the help ofmany others, of course) to develop for sale a family of

X-ray tubes for deep X-ray therapy ranging from 250 kVto 500 and 1000 kV, impulse generators, high-voltagecathode-ray oscillographs, multiphase cathode-rayoscillographs for switchgear usage, lightning-arrestermaterial and arresters, and the first British electronmicroscope. A new department was later created (calledthe New Product Department) to handle the first few ofeach of the new units, until such time as one of the engin-eering departments could take the product under itswing. This new activity, however, helped to squeeze outlonger-term work and reinforced Fleming's desire for aseparate laboratory 'in Buxton'.

4 Two rival laboratories

It was in 1928/29 that the General Electric of Americawhich had owned the British Thomson-Houston (BTH)Company Ltd. of Rugby bought enough of the M-Vshares to take over the whole Company and amalgamateit with BTH. The shock, I was told by dozens of an oldergeneration, was terrible, to find themselves in bed, so tospeak, with their greatest rival, and this shock lasted untilall that generation had passed on. In BTH there wasnothing like the amount of research done as in M-V, norhad the head of the department Fleming's stature. Therewas no traffic between the two laboratories: I do notrecall ever seeing a BTH man in M-V before the war,with the exception of Dennis Gabor, nor was I everinvited to Rugby. My predecessor, Brian Goodlet, wroteto tell me how our AEI Chairman, Sir Felix Pole, hadasked him to go round the Rugby laboratory with him;Goodlet could feel the antipathy exuding from theresearch groups he encountered; they thought, said he,that he was spying out the land from under the wing ofthe Chairman.

War-time research took us in different directions; Imet the group from Rugby working on similar aspects ofradar but relations were never harmonious. I left at theend of 1943 to work on the atomic bomb project in theUSA and was there until Christmas 1945.

5 The concept of a long-term laboratory for theAEI

I had no intention of returning to Trafford Park after theWar, having received several very attractive offers in aca-demic and in other circles, but, on the day I reappearedin the works, Fleming told me that the Managing Direc-tor of AEI, Sir George Bailey, wanted to see me inLondon. He was supported by the managing directors ofthe M-V and the BTH Companies, and I was thereinformed that the AEI Board had decided that, to stoprivalry between the two laboratories in post-War expan-sion, they would not be allowed to expand separately,that there was no room, physically, to expand in eitherworks, and that, therefore, the longer-term work must beconcentrated into one place on behalf of AEI as a whole.I was asked if I would accept the post of director of sucha laboratory to be located — as I was told — in thesouth, near Oxford or Cambridge or London, in a place Iwas to find; and that I was to be responsible to theChairman, Oliver Lyttleton, who had taken over from SirFelix earlier that year. When Mr Lyttleton becameChairman he found that his friends did not know thename AEI; M-V and BTH were household names and hewas determined to raise the name of AEI and to quell therivalry. I do recall that one question I failed to ask was'Shall I have the co-operation of the other two labor-

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atories?' I think I assumed I should, although I realisedclearly that they would be disappointed that their post-War plans would be curtailed by this decision. I dis-cussed the matter with Fleming who now saw his dreampossibly coming true, so I accepted the offer and spentthe first half of 1946 looking for a suitable site in theSouth, while delivering the IEE Faraday Lecture some 17times to 60 000 souls, and visiting almost every universityasking for likely postgraduates.

The Company had bought Aldermaston Court inBerkshire, in 1939, to be an evacuation centre for theLondon Office staff based in the Aldwych; by 1940, thestaff had returned to London and the Court was let tothe ATS, then to the American 8th Army Airforce Group(the flying fortresses), and, by 1946; it was almost vacated.Of the various properties I inspected it was the best, ithad many rooms in the mansion and there were woodenand brick/concrete buildings in the grounds put up bythe War Office; at a time when building licences werealmost unobtainable these would be invaluable. Mr Lytt-leton and Sir George took the final decision there in July,and I purchased the place, in 67 acres of land, at thevalue it was written down in the AEI books, £1. Onematter was made very explicit to me; I must not engageon work which directly served the factories, the workproperly handled by the two other laboratories. I nego-tiated with the War Office and bought most of the out-buildings at £20 to £40 each.

6 The creation of the AEI Research Laboratory

During the remainder of 1946, I had many discussionswith BTH and M-V concerning the kind of long-termwork which we all considered might be beneficial to theCompany, while not encroaching in any way on theirshorter-term activities. Without question, one subjectstood out clearly, although it was impossible to put anytime scale on its industrial development. Atomic Energyof Canada had been working for 2 years and I had beento see the whole plant at Chalk River; Cockcroft wasstarting to build up Harwell, and, in America, reactorswere under design for submarines; 3 huge reactors hadbeen operated by GE of America for two years and therewas one in Oakridge by Westinghouse, so the electricalcompanies were in at the start in America; would thesame pattern be followed in Britain? (A Socialist Govern-ment was in power at the time.) I discussed the matterwith Sir James Chadwick, Cockcroft and his deputySkinner, who had been with me in Berkeley, and withProfessor Oliphant, also from Berkeley. There was com-plete agreement that a modest start should be made onalmost any nuclear project to train physicists and engi-neers in nuclear measurement techniques. In M-V we hadhelped to build cyclotrons and linear accelerators andbetatrons, and, at hand, at no cost, there was the smallelectrostatic generator which I had made for Fleming'sFaraday Lecture before the war. So I decided to make astart with that and move on to the design of the veryhigh-voltage electrostatic generators in pressure vesselsfor which sales might be obtained in due course. TheNew Products Department was in agreement. To thiswould be coupled a radioactive tracer laboratory with itsattendant health hazard; folk were quite content to leavethis unpleasant appendage to me.

The second subject for consideration was electronmicroscopy. The EMI built in the HV Laboratory in the1930s was superseded by a new design, the EM2 and thechief scientist engaged on this wanted to spend more time

on a thorough understanding of electrostatic lenses, elec-tron optics and ultra-high-vacua production. M-V verygenerously let him leave the development to others andhe was one of the first members of staff at Aldermaston.*I must mention one scientist from BTH who wanted tocome, Dennis Gabor, because of the part which his workplayed in Aldermaston in due course; he had been think-ing hard about ways to circumvent spherical abberationin electron-optical lenses, all through the war, and thelight was dawning in the next few months. I attracted abrilliant mathematician to this group, we shall encounterhis resistance network analysers in due course.

I had known Philip Bowden from college days andkept in touch with his work of wear and friction; herecommended one of his pupils, and as there was no suchwork in the other laboratories, and as the Companydepended so much on bearings and gears and knew solittle basic knowledge of lubrication, friction and wear, Ihad full support from my colleagues; the radioactivetracer laboratory would be invaluable in studying partsof this subject.

One of my metallurgical colleagues from M-V wantedto come south; he had been concerned with the study ofhard metals and put forward suggestions for work espe-cially on the refractory metals like tungsten, molyb-denum, titanium, zirconium, rhenium etc; he had ideasabout how to melt and alloy these troublesome metals.Both companies made hard metals, although they neverspoke to each other about their work, and we had totread warily, but I got agreement.

7 Pioneer work on semiconductors

Semiconductors were not at all understood, although theCompany made selenium rectifiers and the lightningarrester material, metrosil, had its problems. There was agood group in BTH and I could only make progress if Iundertook to avoid any manufacture of devices.However, there was a trap, because in studying, say, ger-manium you had to grow crystals, and the growing ofcrystals was a highly secretive process, and so, when, allin good time, AEI staff went to Rugby to ask quitesimple, quite natural questions they were up against abrick wall. But I was encouraged by BTH to include thisgeneral subject in the list and this was the last I felt Icould include within the orbit of my endeavours.

To this list I added an electronics group, that group ofwizards who make the scientific world tick and they wereworth their weight in gold, contributing instrument afterinstrument to satisfy the needs of any of the members ofthe five scientific sections.

8 Recruitment and development of staff

My first recruits worked either in their old universities orin the overflow laboratory in Manchester, but, by Easter1947, a dozen or more gathered to celebrate a christeningin Aldermaston, and, by the end of the year, we num-bered 150 of whom 35 were graduates in science of thehighest quality I could then find. I employed Fleming's'apprenticeship' scheme of circulating new recruitsaround the different sections for a few weeks, so that theymight choose their own metier, and all new staff weresent to Rugby or Manchester to see for themselves our

* I have decided not to give the names of scientists; there were so manyand all pulled together so well; it would greatly lengthen this account ifI tried to do justice to all, as I would wish.

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fine industrial laboratories and the huge works theyserved — to know one end of a turbine from the other.They were well received and friendships grew across the'oceans which divide (them) and the wake of seas'. I alsoinvited the college apprentices of the works to come andsee us for a few days or weeks, for I recognised thedanger of physical isolation of the staff from the com-panies 'from whence they derived their nurture'. I went toeach laboratory about ten times each year to try to assessthe changing patterns of science. We encouraged ourlaboratory assistants to take the HNC in various subjectsand we initiated the HNC in Applied Physics; thisproved to be so popular that we accepted technical stafffrom Harwell to train at the Reading Technical College.Reading University allowed us to register selected grad-uates for the M.Sc./Ph.D. degree, while working almostfull time in Aldermaston, but I arranged that their workshould be supervised by a professor or member of staff ofthe university to ensure a high standard of work.

We began science colloquia that autumn and theycontinued at fortnightly intervals for the next 15 yearsfrom September to May. They were extremely wellattended, members of the Rugby and Manchester staffswere frequently present as lecturers or audience. Severaltimes a year we organised large symposia lasting a day orso, and these attracted huge gatherings from all over thecountry, our yearly total of visitors quickly rose to over1000 and the staff paid hundreds of visits each year toone or other of the works laboratories, and vice versa.

At a very early stage I was asked to accept some con-tract research; Sir George Thomson wanted to try outsome ideas of his relating to thermonuclear researchinvolving the discharge of some 300 000 A in deuteriumto see if helium was produced; this he could not do inImperial College. I discussed with the managing directorof AEI, then Dr H.W.H. Warren, the idea of acceptingcontract research and he suggested that I should keep itbelow 20% of my total budget; in the event Cockcroftdecided that the idea should not be pursued, at least forthe time being; I was glad of this for we were only afledgeling.

The AEI Board paid its first visit in March 1948. Theyseemed well satisfied with what they saw; there had beenno extravagance, indeed we had worked on a typicalCavendish shoestring and we had asked for no newbuildings; those army buildings stood us in good stead.This visit was the first of many and we invited thevarious Chief Engineers' Committees from time to time;they would hold their meeting one day, invite sectionheads to dine and then tour the laboratories next day;they saw far more of Aldermaston than they ever saw ofthe other laboratories.

The very first sign of friction appeared at the end of1947. It had been our habit in Trafford Park to preparean Annual Report at the end of the year; I suggested thatmaybe one report for the whole of AEI might be appro-priate, but BTH would not accept this and for the next15 years we went our own way. My budget for 1948 waspassed by the AEI Board; the other laboratories werehandled by the local committee of the boards, althoughthe overall figures had to be set by the AEI Board. I feltit was most unfortunate that for 1948 each of the otherlaboratories had to reduce expenditure to make room forAldermaston costs; the decision was clearly logical, butunfortunate nevertheless. The other laboratories, wellestablished, could make up deficiencies by increased con-tract research; until 1949, I had not accepted contractsalthough I was pressed many times to do so.

In 1947, Dennis Gabor invented holography, theinvention which earned him the Nobel Prize 24 yearslater. By 1948 he had produced a very respectable holo-gram by the process of reconstructed wavefronts and sug-gested that we should now try to take electronmicroscope pictures by his holographic method. Heasked to be allowed to work in Aldermaston, maybe on a50 : 50 basis, but BTH would not allow this, so he left theCompany in disgust at the end of the year. We followedhis ideas closely, but I decided to apply to DSIR forfinancial support; I argued that if the work was suc-cessful, if individual atoms could be resolved by holog-raphy, all the sciences, the exact and the life sciences,would benefit, but the M-V Company might not sell anymore electron microscopes because of this. The argumentwas accepted and for some years we had a grant, the firstgrant ever given by DSIR to a private company.

I must mention just one more example of the effect ofinter-Company rivalry on Aldermaston's developmentbefore I pass on to a review of our researches. Sir ArthurFleming decided to retire from Manchester; he had beena very frequent visitor and had followed the blossomingof his own idea with great interest. In 1952 the AEIBoard asked me to take over the M-V Co. directorship ofresearch; when I asked 'what about Aldermaston?' theChairman, now Sir George Bailey, as Mr Lyttleton hadjoined the UK Government, replied that he could not letme hold the two positions out of deference to BTH, andthe managing director of the M-V Co., my old friend andformer colleague in Trafford Park days, Cecil Dannattsaid 'it would not be tolerated by BTH that M-V shouldcontrol Aldermaston.' It was a hard decision to take,Aldermaston was so young and I felt bound by loyalty tostay, at least a few more years, and so I declined andrecommended Willy Jackson. If the decision had gone theother way, I think the collaboration between long-termand the shorter term work would have been even closer.

9 The work of the AEI Research Laboratory

The work could be reviewed on an annual basis as it is tobe found in the Annual Reports, but, instead, I will dealwith the development of each of the main subjectsseparately. The pattern of work changed, naturally, withtime and with change of staff. The AEI bought theSiemens Company which had a small flourishing researchlaboratory, and after that Company was amalgamatedwith the Ediswan Company they created a new researchlaboratory at Harlow, to which many Aldermaston scien-tists went in 1957/8. In spite of what had not beenallowed in 1952, I was made the research director whileretaining Aldermaston. But it had hardly got into itsstride when the AEI profits declined rapidly, shares fellfrom 100 s (shillings) to 30 s by 1962 and a takeover wasin the air. Many of the great Divisions were in diretrouble and all the research laboratories had to take firsta 10% cut and then a 20% cut in budgets, until, by 1962,the axe fell. Dr Blears account records the decline and fallof the Department Sir Arthur Fleming created, and thisaccount records the same fate of Aldermaston; Rugbyand Harlow collapsed and 'finis' can be written to all theresearch activities of a great company.

The staff were encouraged to be aware of patentablematerial arising out of investigations; provisional specifi-cations were taken out and then sent to the other labor-atories for early consideration, and they, in turn, passedthem on to the most appropriate engineering department.It was here that the decision had to be made as to

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whether to proceed to a final specification with its atten-dant costs for foreign filing; Aldermaston only came backinto the picture if the provisional was not taken up in theworks, but very few were then converted to finals; afterall, if the engineers did not want them, we had almost nochance of exploiting them ourselves. Hundreds of pro-visionals were filed and 70% of these were taken up bythe Company.

10 The nuclear sciences section

The small Van de Graaf electrostatic generator was anideal starting point, it had cost nothing and a lot of expe-rience was gained in making a discharge tube for 500 kV,an ion source and counting equipment to record disinte-grations and energy levels. Looking ahead, we found thatthere were some 'aerial navigation towers', 30 ftaluminium/steel buildings lying in their original packingcases, unopened; I bought three for £1500 and a 5 MeVgenerator was designed; the M-V Co. made the pressurevessel and, by 1950, it was working well with a 4 MeVproton beam emerging resolved to an accuracy of 0.1%.A proton linear accelerator was invented to accelerate theprotons from the machine up to 10 MeV energy, but,later, we had to abandon this for more urgent work. Thepulse-height analyser went into production in the Works,but staff were now able to attend the reactor school, notas novices but as experienced workers. The suggestionwas made to the semiconductor group that ions fromeither of the accelerators could be implanted into germa-nium to produce junctions; they were sceptical and unin-terested. The technique was patented, passed to Rugbyand there 'turned down', the first ion implantation in theworld.

AEI had joined with the boiler makers John Thomp-son to work on reactors as AEI-JT. We gave help inmaking reactor core calculations and discussed researchreactors. I had been in the Knolls research laboratory ofthe GE Co., at Schenectady, USA, in the autumn of 1954,a laboratory similar to Aldermaston in that it is manymiles from the main research laboratories, and there Ifound great interest in research reactors. Earlier thatyear, President Eisenhower, anticipating the forthcoming1955 Geneva conference on the peaceful uses of atomicenergy, had offered U235 to any country buying a reactorfrom the USA; on 9 January 1955 I was dining withCockcroft and Schonland in Harwell and was pressed todesign and sell research reactors. I asked Cockcroft if hewould ask the Government to emulate the US Presidentand give the uranium free to all who bought such reac-tors; he probably said 'yes', which of course meant 'no'[see Reference 3, p. 147, Dr Finniston gives anotherversion of 'yes' and 'no'], but I reported to Cecil Dannattnext day, and AEI-JT at once became interested. Thestaff of the Section were very excited; they had pressedme for a decision to ask for money to build such areactor, but, if AEI-JT were to embark on design andmanufacture, it would make sense to have the first inAldermaston.

We began considering designs for a swimming-poolreactor of around 5 MW output and found that theAWRE, our next door neighbour, was very interested inour design, and so there might be an order for one con-temporary with ours. I took the Chairman, LordChandos, around Harwell to acquaint him with reactorconcepts, in January, and, by May, the AEI-JT decidedthat they would embark on a sales policy for research

reactors. At Harwell, Chandos had again asked Cock-croft if the Government would provide U235 free forresearch reactors, and he received no better reply than Ihad done. I placed a quotation from AEI-JT to the AEIBoard, when I presented the case to them for a researchreactor, and by June the request was granted. SeveralAEI directors rang me up to express pleasure over thedecision.

We had had support for this reactor in the AEIResearch Committee, when suddenly we heard that theUGC had received a proposal that a reactor should bebuilt for the northern universities and be located in M-V;Jackson had made this suggestion without telling theCommittee about it; it was too late, the AEI Board hadgiven permission to proceed. Publicity was given to thereactor and we were flooded with requests for 'time' oncethe reactor was in operation. Construction began in 1956,but, owing to some redesigning to meet AWRE's require-ments and to other reasons, the completion date keptslipping and it was 1959 before the Chairman could askHRH the Duke of Edinburgh to 'open' the reactor. Infairness, it should be noted that the AEI-JT received theorder for the first industrial power reactor on 10thDecember 1956, for Berkeley, and so they were heavilyengaged in something far more important than a researchreactor. All the precriticality experiments had been done,the Nuclear Inspectorate had gone over the design with afine toothcomb and we had staged a 'mock' accidentinvolving the village, the Berkshire Constabulary and theInspectorate all before the opening ceremony, so thatexperimnetal work could begin at once. Contracts flowedin, although there was less interest from the universitiesthan Cockcroft had implied when he tried to sell theconcept of research reactors, and during 1960/61 valuablework was done for the Company and on contract. Wehad been given 'Reactor Licence No. 1 G.B.' and the staffwere justifiably proud. The costs had risen, partly due tothe redesign work, and AEI-JT absorbed some of theseso that the Laboratory budget did not suffer seriously,but they arose just as the profits of the Company suffereda sharp decline and the AEI lay directors came to regardthe reactor as 'expensive'; and so it was, but in goodtimes this small sum of money would have beenunnoticed. University interest was smaller than Cockcrofthad suggested it would be, and 20 years later it can besaid that the research reactor has not been very popular.It had been a great venture; it had given enormous satis-faction to the staff who worked with great enthusiasm,and, when it closed down, the Company's reputation suf-fered greatly.

11 Thermonuclear developments

Sir George Thomson continued to work in ImperialCollege with his small team on his thermonuclear projectand there was somewhat similar work in progress inOxford, soon to be transferred to Harwell. By 1949, itappeared that this experimental work might produceneutrons, if so, then uranium could be irradiated and plu-tonium be produced. Secrecy was therefore imposed onall activities. Sir George could not see how the Collegelaboratories could be made safe and he did not want hiswork done in Harwell, so he turned to me for help andasked if his staff could be transferred to us. Cockcroftagreed and we made one of the concrete buildings securebefore accepting the Imperial College men. I was askedto discuss the research with Fuchs, the Harwell theo-retician, and by 1950 a start was made. I had to discuss

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tactics with the Chairman and Managing Director ofAEI: both said I could go ahead without Governmentsupport, but, because the Ministry said it must have100% control, it insisted on paying the whole costs of theresearch.

The apparatus was a glass or quartz toroidal vessel inwhich a hydrogen discharge circulated due to magneticflux changing as it threaded perpendicularly through theplane of the torus, this field being created by the rapiddischarge of a condenser. In a short time, we replacedthis with a metal torus made from short cylinders insu-lated from one another. The discharge was observedthrough ports; it was seen to contract quickly under thepinch-effect forces created by the magnetic field createdby the current, and, as the discharge pinched, its tem-perature rose in microseconds to the million degree rangefor the short time of the pinch. However, it was seen thatthe discharge was not stable; it moved from side to sideand also contracted locally into what became calledsausage instabilities, like a string of sausages. Stabilisingmagnetic fields were applied, guided by theory, but thennew instabilities were revealed, to be attacked by thetheoreticians again. In 1956 we were invited to Harwellto hear a lecture by Kurchatov, he told us of experienceswhich were exactly as we had encountered and hadshowed that, with the tube filled with deuterium, neu-trons had been detected coming from 'hot spots' in thepinched regions. Members of the nuclear science groupgave help to the small group working on our small toruscalled 'Sceptre', and with erudite diagnostic techniques,observing the spectra of impurity ions in the discharge,measured temperatures and instabilities. At this time,Harwell was fully engaged in building the huge 'Zeta'costing a million pounds sterling, it was said, whereas our'Sceptre' was almost insignificant in size and cost; SirGeorge was confident that, provided the instabilitiescould be contained, very high temperatures would bereached. Agreement was reached to share our knowledgewith the Americans; they came to Aldermaston in late

1956, and we went to see their work in Berkeley, LosAlamos and Princeton early in 1957.

Now that the thermonuclear work was commonknowledge to the Russians, there was no need for theMinistry to pay for our work, and, in July 1957, somefinancial support was withdrawn, but the AEI Chairmanat once gave me an augmented budget to continue thework at a level I considered was viable. Work had beengoing on in the AWRE duplicating some of the otherwork, and so general contraction took place. In August1957, neutrons were observed coming from Zeta; we wereat that time fitting a new copper liner to Sceptre, butduring the winter the toroid was filled with deuteriuminstead of hydrogen and neutrons were detected also. InHarwell great care had been taken to establish that thegas was uniformly hot, not just hot in places, or so it wasthought. We also thought our discharge was stable and,in January, Cockcroft announced that a thermonuclearreaction had been observed in both Zeta and Sceptre; theAmericans too had observed neutrons in a still smallertoroid. Alas, later checks showed that there were still hotspots and that these were the source of the reaction. Itwas a hollow victory but we had had a lot of fun and thestaff worked all hours of the day and night.

Finance in Harwell was now under scrutiny and for1959 we had to contract our efforts. Sceptre 4 was beingmade and Harwell gave 100% support for parts of thework they specially wanted, but by 1961 support failed asrumours of the failure of AEI spread and confidence was

evaporating; we had no support in 1962. So ended a mar-vellous period in the life of many of the staff and manyleft, as jobs were so plentiful for the best people.

We see now that the thermonuclear task is a verygreat one; the Jet is about to start work 24 years after wehad attempted to produce a deuterium reaction and I donot think we can blame ourselves for being optimists; wewere at least in very good company, Russians and Amer-icans of the finest quality.

12 The electron physics group

This was the name adopted by the scientists working ona range of electron optical problems. I have alreadyreferred to the DSIR support for Gabor's holographicideas. For two years, efforts were made to produce goodelectron holograms and a very good optics specialist con-centrated on the optical reconstruction from the holo-gram, but resolutions little better than obtainable byordinary methods were achieved. Long exposures causedgrowth of the object by carbon deposition from the oilvapour, and vibrations of the building and from theboiling of the oil in the diffusion pump were too great ifresolutions of a few Angstrom units (1 A = 10~10 m)were to be reached, and at last the concept was aban-doned; it was not until 1980 that Gabor's ideas were vin-dicated in the microscope. But great improvements inelectrostatic lenses had been made, and it was thenexpected that the future EM3 ought to resolve 6 Ainstead of the 50 A of the EM2. A large resistancenetwork had been built for solving Laplace equations,and lens designs for 500 kV and 1000 kV microscopeswere calculated. A 500 kV microscope design wasevolved. The network was applied to many other prob-lems, heat flow in turbines, stress analysis at the shoulderof a turbine blade, and neutron flux distributions inreactor cores; this was years before the computer cameon the scene. The Admiralty CVD was interested in theattempts to reach higher vacua and supported the devel-opment of the omegatron and the ion pump so that pres-sures of 10"10 mm became common. The voltage of 60kV applied to the microscope was stabilised to 0.2 V andvibrations were cut to 10" 7 cm.

In preparing specimens for examination under theelectron microscope one of the laboratory assistantsdevised what became known as the carbon replica tech-nique; it was far in advance of any other and spread allover the world. Later it was enhanced by the platinumshadowing technique, which likewise became universal.

Improvements in electron focusing led to improve-ments in the writing speed of the cathode-ray oscillo-graph, and it became easy to record 1012 Hz, and X-raymicroanalysis could be effected with an electron beam ofonly 10 ~4 cm diameter, the X-rays being analysed by acrystal spectrometer. These potential instruments werepassed on to the New Products Department, some flour-ished, others fell by the wayside.

A microwave group developed a good oscillator of7 mm, and, later, 4 mm wavelength and wave propaga-tion was being studied when the need for our help waswithdrawn.

A range of optical instruments flowed from the special-ist; first a long-working-distance microscope to enablethe metallurgist to examine metals in the vacuumfurnace, then came an interferometer microscope, thenoptical devices to aid alignment such as the bearings ofthe very large turbines and the many motors and rollers

IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 134, Pt. A, No. 7, JULY 1987 615

of the huge steel-plate rolling mill in South Wales. Thesewere all passed to the optical works for marketing.

In this same group, the few scientists who followed myoriginal work on spark analysis worked; a small 600 kVgenerator was erected and special cameras developed,and the group took a world lead in the subject. Onlyafter another 20 years has it become possible to calculatesparkover voltages, and so the Aldermaston work wastruly long-term; it was very well done and brought greatcredit to the investigators.

13 The surface physics section

Friction, wear and lubrication are matters concerning thesurfaces of solids, hence the name chosen by this section.At first, very simple machines were made to study metaltransfer from nonlubricated surfaces in different atmo-spheres and under a variety of conditions, and, for this,the use of trace elements was ideal. The importance of theprotective layer, usually an oxide, was assessed and differ-ent ways of forming protective layers were investigated.The research work had not advanced very far before itgave an immediate solution to an urgent problem of haz-ardous proportions: the first Comet flying to SouthAfrica arrived with the brush gear on the commutatoralmost worn down to zero. Aid was sought by BTH. Oneof the laboratory machines developed for studying wearwas placed under a bell jar from which air was thenextracted; at low pressure the jar was quickly coated withfine graphite particles stripped off the carbon brush in adramatic fashion. Presumably the oxide layer coating thecopper commutator could not be replaced rapidlyenough in the rarefied atmosphere. A simple solution wasoffered and the Comet came home safely.

Instead of collecting large currents on slip rings, amercury contact was developed located on the axis ofrotation of the shaft; enormous 3-phase currents in atriple concentric device were successfully collected fromthe biggest machines.

Fretting corrosion was carefully followed by electronmicroscopy, but, over a long period of time, no final solu-tion was found to eliminate this phenomenon; it was,however, established that it was a mechanical wear notdue to chemical attack, as had been thought previously,and could be minimised by the correct choice of metal foreach particular situation.

Rubbing friction in high-temperature carbon-dioxidegas was studied to help designers of the nuclear reactorsand surfaces of extreme hardness and wear resistance inthe gas were evolved. Roller bearings to carry the fullweight of the steel pressure vessel were designed for theBerkeley reactors. Spark-hardening was studied, oneaspect of great commercial value in the washing-machinefactory of the Company concerned the broaching toolused in making the slot in the main shaft; it was wearingat uneconomic rates and, by a proper hardening processdeveloped in the Laboratory, wear was reduced by ordersof magnitude.

The effectiveness of lubrication depends to some extenton surface finish, and the optical devices developed inAldermaston were used to measure gear profiles and toline up the hobbing machine to a very high degree ofaccuracy. The work on elastohydrodynamic lubricationinvolved the accurate measurement of the thickness ofthe lubricant between rollers or between spheres, and thiswas done by capacitance measurements; from this, therequired accuracy of matching surfaces could be deduced.Erudite machines (essentially simple) were made to study

616

the problems of lubrication where speeds were low andpressures high. A lot of work was done on a range ofsteels treated in different ways, to establish the bestmaterial for any particular purpose.

In all this work, the closest collaboration was estab-lished with those engineers specialising in designing bear-ings of big machines.

14 The physical metallurgy section

The refractory metals have usually been made by asintering process, using metal powders prepared from thethermite or from other chemical processes. The sinteringprocess has been followed with the long-working-distancemicroscope and the electron microscope. A novel vacuumfurnace (the first to be made in the UK) enabled the ref-ractory metals to be made without crucibles and theirattendant contamination. Large ingots of metals, such asMo, Re, Ti, W and Zr, have been melted and alloys ofthese from which constitutional diagrams have also beendetermined. From large ingots, test pieces have beenmade for creep and tensile testing. Zone-refining of thesefollowed; remarkably ductile ingots of Mo and W weremade, and when Ti is very pure it could be pressure-welded. The world's first large single crystal of Ti wasformed by the strain-anneal process. The very intractiblemetal rhenium was ductile after zone refining and couldbe drawn into wire; probably of value to the lampindustry and the information was passed to the works.After first learning how to produce boron in very pureform, borides and silicides of the pure refractory metalswere made and information passed to the Company tofind if there were potential uses; it was not possible tostudy all the materials so easily made in the threevacuum furnaces made in the workshop.

Requests for such furnaces poured in, but our ownfacilities were insufficient to meet such demand, so theywere passed to the New Products Department for con-sideration.

Uranium study was required by AEI-JT and the Min-istry of Supply gave contracts to help with this new andurgent work. Deformation of the cladding materials ofuranium rods, interaction of uranium with a dozen differ-ent metals, study of mass transfer from uranium in liquidbismuch (looking to the possible future of the liquidmetal reactor) were the main problems, but there werehosts of other requests coming from AEI-JT. One of thespecialists went to Harwell to help with the urgent studyof radiation damage in steel, especially as this affectscreep properties. Compatibility studies showed thatberyllium is useless in association with either metallicuranium or with the oxide.

In later years, the superconducting alloys were madein the vacuum furnaces, and alloys such as the niobium-zirconium and niobium-titanium pairs and the morecomplicated ternary alloys containing the addition of zir-conium were melted, forged and drawn to fine wires; abig future was foreseen in these just as the Company wascollapsing. At that time, dilute uranium alloys, alloyswith aluminium or with aluminium and iron additiveswere showing interesting properties, provided the impu-rities of oxygen, or nitrogen, or carbon, were preventedfrom entering the furnace.

New work never completed concerned the creation ofsmall cavities at grain boundaries of metals over certaintemperature ranges; molybdenum had shown this andthe new work was showing that a number of steels also

IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 134, Pt. A, No. 7, JULY 1987

exhibit the phenomenon; it might be of importance andwas supported by contract from the Ministry of Aviation.

15 The semiconductor section

Work first began on studying the properties of seleniumas affected by impurities, but almost immediately mosteffort was directed to germanium. One of its inherentimpurities, arsenic, was removed by careful crystalgrowing from the melt; this was followed up by the zone-refining techniques being practised in the metallurgysection, and long cylinders of germanium were scannedby the HF coil producing very fine and often very longsingle crystals. The same technique was applied to thegrowth of cadmium sulphide and telluride crystals.Unfortunately, as already explained, a barrier was putaround the BTH work so that all our work was donewith no knowledge of progress already made in Rugby, afoolish situation, as we welcomed colleagues from Rugbyto see what we were doing. A Bell Telephone Conferencehad been held to which Rugby men went, but they werenot allowed to tell us of American progress. Fortunately,the work on zone-refining went so well that visitingAmerican scientists told us that they had seen no siliconcrystals as good and as free from twinning in America,and even our colleagues were impressed; thereafter co-operation improved. Residual strains in single crystalsdrawn from the melt or grown by zone-refining wereassessed by microprobe X-ray analysis and by the use ofradioactive tracers, which were used specially to measurethe separation of impurities as the crystal grew; they werealso used to measure the rates of diffusion of elementsdeliberately introduced into germanium or silicon crys-tals. This tracer work was unique in the UK and wasenthusiastically supported by the scientists of the CVDorganisation. Many forms of junction rectifiers weremade and from the best silicon which operated at over200°C.

The influence of trace impurities in both the mainsemiconductors took years to unravel; the Laboratoryhad a large range of techniques at hand, in addition tothose already mentioned, infra-red spectroscopy, Hallcoefficient measurement, conductivity and electron spin-resonance measurement, and radiochemical analysis andtests were done using these for our colleagues in the otherlaboratories of the Company, none of which had ourrange. The elimination of traces of oxygen and of carbonwas still being sought when the work was terminated.

Epitaxial growth of thin films of silicon from thevapour phase also looked very promising, and the workwould have been continued under ultra-high-vacuumconditions, conditions so well understood by the electronphysics section specialists. The bombardment of siliconby protons and other elements had appeared to be soexciting, but time ran out.

It was expected that all the staff working on thissubject would go to Rugby; in the event, almost nonewent, and the whole was lost, but as Rugby was lost thefollowing year it was far better that the break was a cleanone.

It had not been my intention to comment on the AEILaboratory as an industrial experiment, I preferredothers to draw their own conclusions, but I have beenpressed by friends who have read the account to sum-marise my views.

The function of the Laboratory was to serve theCompany; all the activities were directed to that end. Allthe chief scientists and most of the graduate staff were in

such close touch with our compeers in the three labor-atories attached to the Works, that we could not possiblydepart from the principle.

The isolation of the AEI Laboratory ensured anintense concentration on the work in progress, a concen-tration which I and others had not been able to sustainin our many years in the Works' laboratories; in thisrespect I believe, as Fleming had believed, an isolatedlaboratory was justified, provided the immediate needs ofthe Works are well cared for. Not one single experimentwas ever done in Aldermaston which had not a directrelevance to the Company's interests, but for 13 years wewere forbidden, and rightly so, from encroaching on thelocal domains; it was not until the Company's declinethat we were asked to devise products for sale, just as wehad been asked in the depression of 1931.

Whether as much research was essential is doubtful;our budget was only a small fraction of the total cost ofthe Company's research and we never exceeded theannual figure laid down by the AEI Board. If the labor-atory had never been created, I doubt whether as muchresearch as we did would have been done in the otherlaboratories; as Dr Blears has said, the ideas came outalmost too quickly to be assimilated, the self-chokingeffect would have been the more obvious if as much long-term work had been done alongside the other work inthose laboratories. I was opposed to any expansion inour size; our numbers remained almost constant formany years, and I should have opposed an increase, evenif the AEI had bought up the English Electric and theGeneral Electric Co. as they almost did.

But changes there would have been, just as Harwell isno longer needed to feed the nuclear power programme,and at the time, the quick demise of the laboratory hurtno-one except the Company's reputation, but that wasnot of any consequence as the Company died soon after.

16 The end of the experiment

As Harold Macmillan wrote, 'The past should be aspringboard, not a sofa'.

No one had nostalgia, (sentimental longings for pasttimes: OED). Within an extremely short time, 97% of thestaff had obtained other jobs, most of them better paidthan at the AEI. All were glad that they had left the shipbefore it finally sank, as Dr Blears has so well recountedin his lecture. Of the senior staff, many went eitherdirectly into university life, or arrived there a little later,contributing, I hope, an industrial approach to universityproblems. Over 30 of the staff became university pro-fessors, thus adding to the ten who from my TraffordPark staff had been awarded Chairs. I am proud of themall, and also to the two who have become FRS. I keep intouch with very many of the others; all speak of Alder-maston years as being the happiest periods of their lives;but we were all young then. What a pity the Companywas so badly managed, that the rivalry between its partslasted for 40 years and that Sir Arthur Fleming's workhas fallen to pieces; we were glad he was not alive to seethe ship go down.

17 References

1 WILLIAMSON, R. (Ed.): The making of physicists'. Meeting by theInstitute of Physics, Manchester, October 1985 (Adam Hilger, 1987)

2 BLEARS, J.: The history of the research department ofMetropolitan-Vickers Ltd.' Evening lecture, IEE Professional GroupS7, Savoy Place, London, 29th May 1985

3 HARTCUP, G., and ALLIBONE, T.E. (Eds): 'Cockcroft and theAtom' (Adam Hilger, 1984)

IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 134, Pt. A, No. 7, JULY 1987 617

4 SCHONLAND, B.F.J.: 'Biographical memoirs of a Fellow of theRoyal Society—Vol. 19' (The Royal Society, 1973)

5 SYKES, G: 'Biographical memoirs of a Fellow of the RoyalSociety—Vol. 29' (The Royal Society, 1983)

6 GABOR, D.: 'Biographical memoirs of a Fellow of the RoyalSociety—Vol. 26' (The Royal Society, 1980)

7 BURCH, C.R.: 'Biographical memoirs of a Fellow of the RoyalSociety—Vol. 30' (The Royal Society, 1984)

8 ALLIBONE, T.E.: 'Metropolitan-Vickers and the Cavendish Labor-atory', in HENDREY, J. (Ed.): 'Cambridge physics in the 30s' (AdamHilger, 1984), Chap. 36, pp. 150-173

Errata

DOBSON, I.: 'Representation and simulation of AC/DCconvertor systems using fixed and varying electrical axes,IEE Proc. A, 1987,134, (1), pp. 67-83.

On page 68, Section 2.2, in the definition of Om, the char-acter v should be deleted, i.e. the term should readCJ& /?)•

On page 69, on the second line after eqn. 2a, ma shouldbe bold-faced, i.e. nf.

On page 71, line 3 should read:resistance R may be specified relative to the C and Cand on line 11, L should be bold-faced, i.e. L.

On page 73, line 1 and page 78, last line, L/x should readC/l.

On page 77, on the fourth line after eqn. 13&, x axesshould read X axes.

On page 77, Section 6.5, in the first equation, ic and Ccx

should be bold-faced and in eqns. 14 and 14a ix should bebold-faced.

DOBSON, I.: 'Geometric description of bridge rectifieroperational modes using regular polygons', IEE Proc. A,1987,134, (1), pp. 85-88.

On page 85, penultimate line of the second column, au

a2, «3 should be bold-faced, i.e. at, a2, a3.

On page 87, all terms iu i2 and ic should be bold-faced,i.e. i\, i2 and ic.

On page 87, second paragraph, line 2, e2 should be bold-faced, i.e. e2.

5453A

618 IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 134, Pt. A, No. 7, JULY 1987