Hughes Aircraft Company

Family background and early education; University of Oklahoma; graduate work and electrical engineering at California Institute of Technology. Bell Laboratories, 1936-1946; colloquium and other social structures; early solid state physics work; Fletcher’s group with Foster Nix and William Shockley; war years, work on radar bomb sights; postwar years. Move to Hughes Aircraft Company, 1946-1953; formation and accomplishments of Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge after 1953; current interests. Also prominently mentioned are: Joseph A. Becker, R. S. Bowen, Walter Houser Brattain, Oliver E. Buckley, Joseph Ashby Burton, Karl Kelchner Darrow, Clinton Joseph Davisson, Paul Sophus Epstein, Conyers Herring, C. N. Hickman, Howard Hughes, J. B. Johnson, Edward Karrouse, Mervin J. Kelly, G. A. Kelsall, J. W. McRae, Robert Andrews Millikan, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gerald Leondus Pearson, Don Quarles, Simon Ramo, Rhine, Duane Roller, Hellvar Skaade, William Ralph Smythe, Leopold Stokowski, Richard Chase Tolman, Charles Hard Townes, Howell J. Williams, Jewel Wurtzbaugh, Fritz Zwicky; American Physical Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States Air Force, and Western Electric Company.

Particular scientific style; start as an electrical engineer; work on beam frequency standards with H. Richard Johnson; narrowing of the beam, frequency stabilization; work on phase-locking microwave amplifiers; discusses his consulting work at Hughes; search for alternate solution; ideas for increasing gain bandwidth; paper published in Physical Review "Quantum Mechanical Amplifiers";difference from other papers (Bob Pound's and Mohler's) on same subject; colloquim at MIT on paramagnetic resonance; solution to noise problem; start of group; working from scratch to build own magnet; work with Pound.

Maser research at Hughes Research Laboratories. The laser; Maiman’s work; building a laser rangefinder; Q-switching; stimulated Raman scattering; other laser research. The impact of Sputnik and the Vietnam War on Hughes Aircraft Co. Procedures for selecting research projects.

This interview deals with Siegman's education, from 1949 to 1957, as an undergraduate at Harvard University, Hughes Aircraft Company work-study fellow at the University of California in Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University. Also prominently mentioned are: Hubert Heffner, Rudolf Kompfner, Frederick Emmons Terman, Ping K. Tien, Dean A. Watkins, Joseph Weber, and John R. Whinnery.

From 1969-1976, Halsted headed Hughes Aircraft Company's commercial gas laser unit within the firm's industrial electronics group. In this conversation Halsted describes some of the customers Hughes had for argon-ion and helium neon lasers. He talks about the composition of the work force, and about the kinds of development work that was required to commercialize the tubes. He also touches on the degree to which commercial products were "spin-offs" from military technology, and the slow rate at which the commercial laser market developed.

Harold Lyon's Atomic Physics group at Hughes in the mid-1950s; Theodore Maiman's researches in the group; electron cyclotron-resonance for the generation of millimeter waves; improved portable ruby masers. Maiman's knowledge of I. Weider's proposals for optically pumped solid-state masers; Maiman's view of the trustworthiness of Weider's quantum-efficiency measurements. The effect upon Maiman of the Schawanga Lodge conference. The budget for Maiman's laser experiments; details of the experimental work.

University training at University of California, Berkeley, under John Whinnery and Charles Birdsall. The adaptation of the argon ion laser to an airborne reconnaissance system. Other laser researches are touched upon, including the gas dynamic laser and laser isotope separation. Relations between basic research and systems research at Hughes Aircraft Company. (See also the interview of W.B. Bridges by Richard Cunningham on file in the Laser History Project Archives).

Research on nonlinear optics at the University of Michigan, 1961 to 1964, laser education at Berkeley, 1964-1966; color centers, laser damages, and dye lasers at Raytheon, 1966-1973, and medical applications at University of Southern California, after 1973. Experimental laser techniques and their evolution and the institutional context of research at each of these sites. Also prominently mentioned are: John A. Armstrong, Nicolaas Bloembergen, Colin Bowness, William B. Bridges, Tom Deutsch, Richard Dwyer, Peter Alden Franken, Joseph Anthony Giordmaine, Alan Hill, James Hobart, Frank Horrigan, Steve Jarrett, Kleinman, Clarence Luck, Theodore Maiman, Sam McCall, Steve Miller, Roy Paananeu, Al Paiadino, C. Wilbur Peters, Al Poladine, Sergio Porto, Lance Riley, Mike Saiden, Fritz Schafer, Mike Seiden, Peter P. Sorokin, Herman Statz, Carlisle Martin Stickley, Gaby Weinreich; Bell Telephone Laboratories, Conference on Laser and Electro-optical Systems, Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, Eastman Kodak Co., Exxon Corporation, Hughes Aircraft Company, Metrologic Co., Raytheon Corporation, Spectra-Physics Company, Trion Instruments Company, and University of California at San Diego.