The Mind of Whitney

Wallis Whitney, the pioneer of research and development laboratories, carried into his world of science the belief that all the old knowledge and even the definitions of invention were enemies of progress.  He saw his role as director of the lab at General Electric as following the opening of acceptable new ideas, watching the growth of thought in the minds and hands of investigators.  A research laboratory, Whitney said, "was not where assignments were fulfilled, but the art of profiting from unexpected occurrences."  Habit and procedures were an obstacle to the pursuit of the unknown in Whitney's mind.

In the area of current thought of his time, it was believed that streetcars would one day reach into every alley of every town in America, and that electric lighting was the final improvement in street lighting.  Whitney, however, saw a future with new modes of transportation that were far more efficient than the street car.  On electricity, he wondered if there might be some way of putting "phosphors" into the cement of the roadways and highways to collect and store cheap daylight and use it at night to make the streets safer and travel easier.  He believed it would make street lighting obsolete.

Whitney had that kind of mind, and became the apostle of the industrial research lab which would grow and flourish in the coming decades with giants of the industrial world.  Electricity was just the beginning.

Next time...Industrial R&D flourishes
_________________________________
Today in Pioneer History: "On May 21, 1881, Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters.  Barton, was known as the "angel of the battlefield" during the Civil War, and afterwards was commissioned to search for lost prisoners of war by President Lincoln. The American Red Cross received it first federal charter in 1900.  Barton headed the organization into her 80s and died in 1912.  Hats off to nurses everywhere!  

A Couple of Bright Stars

The patent for the original Edison lamp expired in 1894 along with other early patents that had expired or lost value because of later advances.  General Electric still controlled most of the incandescent lamp sales in the United States, but surprisingly, gaslighting and electricity continued to be competitive.  General Electric needed new ideas, new materials, and new products.

Wallis Whitney, the new President of GE said, "the panic and depression of 1893-96 had shaken down...the pioneer days had largely passed by 1890.  We had learned there was a field for the various applications of electricity...but the opinion generally held no radically new ideas could arise.  As far as we could see copper...carbon would always remain the best materials." 

Whitney first worked in Schenectady in a barn in back of Charles Steinmetz's house. where they organized a laboratory and added a great number of working scientists.  One of those scientists was William D. Coolidge, a poor farm boy from Massachusetts who also attended MIT as had Whitney, who also studied in Leipzig as had Whitney, and also returned to MIT to teach as had Whitney.  

Coolidge joined Whitney and Steinmetz at General Electric in 1908.  Within three years, Coolidge had invented a process for making tungsten filaments, making the electric lamp two and a half times more efficient.  Coolidge went on to develop the cathode tube for the X-ray and gave General Electric the lead in the new science of X-rays.

Another scientist with the original lab was Irving Langmuir, who worked on everything from light bulbs to vacuum tubes for radios, to a new theory on atomic energy.  No one intended these discoveries, like most research and development, they were the result of looking for a solution to an entirely different problem.  

According to Whitney, it was his research laboratory's responsibility to come up with new discoveries to grow General Electric - he called it "the properly engineered manufacturing system."  Out of Whitney's research lab in those early years came discoveries that made possible the electric stove, underwater submarine detection and improvements in a host of other products.  To Whitney, change was real and R & D made that happen.

Next time...Whitney's Philosophy

_____________________________

Today in Pioneer History: "On May 18, 1874,  Kiowa Chief Santana, a fearsome warrior and skilled orator and diplomat, who helped establish the reservation in present day Oklahoma, led a force of Indians to massacre a wagon train in northeastern Texas.  Santana resisted the government efforts to force the Kiowa into smaller areas and give up their nomadic ways and it culminated in tragedy.  He died by suicide in a Texas prison in 1878, still protesting the United States treatment of the Indian natives.  

Wallis R Whitney

"Electricity is a carrier of light and power, devourer of time and space, bearer of human speech over land and sea, greatest servant of man - yet itself unknown." --Charles W. Eliot as inscribed on the Union Depot in Washington, D.C.  The pioneer American industrial research laboratory founded by General Electric in 1900 chose as its mission to explore and discover this great unknown - electricity.   General Electric had grown out of the Edison Electric Light Company and needed a talented man to head their research laboratory.  They found him in Wallis R. Whitney.

Wallis R. Whitney was the son of a chair manufacturer and expected to follow in the trades like his father.  However, in high school Wallis became interested in science when he got his first look under a microscope.  His parents granted his wish for a microscope of his own and he went on to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he graduated in chemistry in 1890.  Whitney received his doctorate in Leipzig, Germany two year later.  After attending the Sorbonne, he returned to MIT where he was a professor of chemistry.  There he developed an electro-chemical theory of corrosion. 

Whitney was 32 years old when General Electric came to call.  His first response to their offer was, "I'd rather teach than be President!"  At that time scientific research was indeed centered in colleges and universities and the idea of a company R&D was unheard of.  But when Edison had decided to become a businessman and no longer an inventor, General Electric went in search of someone who could take the reins in research and development. 

Whitney had some help in the face of Charles P. Steinmetz, the company's consulting engineer.  Steinmetz had made advancements in electrical alternating currents, but he was a loner, and he didn't have the personality to be the head of a research and development laboratory.  Whitney did.

Next time...New ideas, new materials and new products
___________________________________
Today in Pioneer History: "On May 11, 1934, dust storms sweep from the Great Plains across Eastern States as millions of tons of topsoil form the Great Dust Bowl in the United States.  The prairie grass that once covered the Great Plains was gone, plowed over by the pioneer farmers who had settled there.   Drought in the area causes the wind began to carry the soil away and for two days some 350 million tons of silt made it all the way to the eastern seaboard.