spg mitteilungen communications de la ssp - Schweizerische ...

SPG Mitteilungen Nr. 40
An Industrial Lab Grows in Switzerland
As the Zurich Lab recognizes its 50 th year in the leafy Zurich
suburb of Rüschlikon, a closer look inspects the details of
how this lab became the home of four Nobel Prize laureates
and countless innovations spanning material sciences,
communications, analytics and Big Data.
There are several reasons why IBM was considering a research
lab outside of the United States in the 1950s. At this
time IBM was in its heyday. The company was financially
strong, and the success of the recently opened San Jose
lab made the management realize the benefits of having research
conducted with the support of headquarters in New
York, but without the local stress and peer pressure.
Physics Anecdotes (17)
IBM Research – Zurich, a Success Story
Chris Sciacca and Christophe Rossel
Switzerland wasn’t IBM’s first option for a European research
lab; London and Amsterdam were also on the short
list, and in 1955 an IBM electrical engineer named Arthur
Samuel was tasked with scouting the three cities.
Fig. 1. The building of IBM Research in Adliswil in 1956. Inset: Ambros
Speiser, first lab director, in discussion with Thomas Watson
Jr., CEO of IBM
While officials in England were receptive to the idea, the
proposed location was in the suburbs of London that he described
as, "the most dismal places that I have ever seen."
And shortly after, Samuel passed on England and travelled
to Switzerland, to a completely different experience - he
never made it on to Amsterdam.
Simultaneously, as Samuel was visiting Switzerland, Ambros
Speiser, a young Swiss electrical engineer from ETH
Zurich, had applied for positions at Remington Rand and
IBM. He never got a response from Rand, but by that summer
Speiser became an IBMer.
How to Build a Research Lab
Now that Speiser was on board he was tasked with building
a new laboratory, and the challenges he faced were
immense.
As he tells it in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
[1], "There was no established pattern to follow - an industrial
laboratory, separate from production facilities, did not
exist in Switzerland."
But Speiser knew he needed to be close to Zurich, its universities
and within reach of public transport. After viewing
a number of locations, he decided to rent the wing of a
Swiss stationary company in Adliswil, which was at the end
of a tram line and only a few kilometers from the city.
Having the building for the new lab, Speiser needed brilliant
scientists and engineers. Leveraging his acquaintances,
professional societies and contacts at ETH, he began a
recruiting campaign and quickly amassed a team from all
parts of Europe.
The goal set by IBM management was to build new and
better computer hardware. At the time everyone knew that
vacuum tubes would be replaced by solid-state circuits,
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so it was obvious that IBM should begin developing transistors
and magnetic devices, but this was never formalized.
This lack of direction weighed heavily on Speiser’s mind because
he knew that similar research was being conducted
inside and outside of IBM and that they would never achieve
the global recognition he so desired by doing the same
science as everyone else.
After building a stronger rapport with Research’s new management
team in 1958, Speiser was given new direction
for the Zurich Lab to change from electronics to physics,
with a focus on solid-state as the basis for electronic devices
of the future.
Once again Speiser went on recruiting missions across Europe
to find young, creative physicists. Little did he know
at the time that he was also laying the groundwork for what
would become a renowned team for decades to come.
Fig. 2. Hans Peter Louis one of the earlier research staff members
in the 50’s, in front of a prototype technology called the phototron,
which was never finished.