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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aR m y 23
their efforts on mating nuclear warheads manufactured in the AEC’s production
facilities to the launch and delivery vehicles assigned to the Army’s missile and
rocket force. Researchers in AAL’s Tactical Atomic Weapons Laboratory, for
example, developed, in collaboration with industrial contractors, the atomic
payload units for the Honest John ground-based mobile rocket and the Corporal
surface-to-surface guided missile. AAL also conducted routine tests of atomic
bomb-equipped rockets and missiles within a broad range of temperature,
humidity, vibration, shock, and other environmental conditions to ensure proper
operational performance of the fuse and detonation devices, electronic and
propulsion systems, and other critical components. 35
Wartime research and development in solid-state electronics and the
invention of the transistor at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1947 prompted
the military services to invest significant institutional resources in this rapidly
expanding field of study. 36 Prior to World War II, most research and development
in the arsenals had focused on physical, chemical, and metallurgical studies of
metals and alloys, the constituent materials of all types of ordnance. This work,
in which metallurgical investigations typically predominated, drew upon the
empirical, engineering-based origins of solid-state physics, a field of study that
was just beginning to assume professional identity as an independent academic
discipline after the war. “The single outstanding trend which has become
paramount during the past few years,” wrote the head of ONR’s metallurgy
branch in 1957, “is the tremendous impact exerted by solid-state physics upon
metallurgical research.” 37 Application-driven studies of metals, however, did
not necessarily preclude arsenal researchers from exploring more theoretical
topics within solid-state physics, though that brand of research was increasingly
contracted out to the universities through the Office of Ordnance Research.
Despite the institutional constraints imposed on it by the growth of R&D
outsourcing and the acute competition for resources within the federal research
35 M. W. Kresge, “Research and Development, Military Explosives and Propellants,” Journal of Applied
Physics 16 (December 1945): 792–97; “Rockets at Picatinny Arsenal,” Jet Propulsion 26 (February 1956):
114; P. P. Luellig Jr., “Arsenals,” Field Artillery Journal 42 (March–April 1974): 51–52; W. Beller, “Army
Research and Development in Missiles, Aviation, and Avionics,” Aero Digest 73 (October 1956): 22–23;
I. O. Drewry, “Army Ordnance Tackles Task of Marrying Atomics with Artillery,” Army Information Digest
13 (December 1958): 12–16; Drewry, “Atomic Applications Laboratory: Newest Addition to Picatinny
Arsenal,” Sperryscope 14, no. 5 (1957): 20, 22–23.
36 See, for example, Paul W. Henriksen, “Solid-State Physics Research at Purdue,” Osiris, 2nd ser., 2
(1986): 237–60; Lillian Hoddeson, “The Roots of Solid-State Research at Bell Labs,” Physics Today 30
(March 1977): 23–30; Hoddeson, “Research on Crystal Rectifiers during World War II and the Invention
of the Transistor,” History and Technology 11 (1994): 121–30; Hoddeson, “The Invention of the Point-
Contact Transistor,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 12 (1981): 41–76; George Wise, “Science at
General Electric,” Physics Today 37 (December 1984): 52–61; and Ross Knox Bassett, To the Digital Age:
Research Labs, Start-Up Companies, and the Rise of MOS Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2002). Also useful, but highly technical, is the exhaustive multivolume history of industrial research
in the Bell System written by the staff of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. See A History of Engineering and
Science in the Bell System, 7 vols. (Murray Hill, N.J.: Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1975–1985).
37 J. J. Harwood, “Some Aspects of Government-Sponsored Research in Metallurgy,” Journal of Metals
9 (May 1957): 669. On the disciplinary origins of solid-state physics, see Lillian Hoddeson et al., Out of
the Crystal Maze: Chapters in the History of Solid-State Physics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992),
esp. chap. 9.