“Something Rotten in Denmark” … in Boston
Lloyd Espenschied · Technology and Culture · 1970
Communications: The Campbell-Pupin Loading-Coil Controversy "SOMETHING ROTTEN IN DENMARK” . . . IN BOSTON LLOYD ESPENSCHIED Permit me to congratulate Dr. James E. Brittain for his revealing study of the invention of the loading coil.1 The relative claims of the two inventors, Campbell and Pupin, are discussed more thoroughly than they have been in print before, and this serves a useful purpose. I am particularly interested because when I joined the Engineering Department of the A.T. & T. in 1910 as a young radio engineer, I was told the company had no radio work at the time, and was assigned to work on loading coil design under one Thomas Shaw—until the com pany was awakened to the vacuum tube in 1912. I soon came to know Campbell, and was instrumental in getting renewed attention given to patenting his wave filter invention, that had been “muffed” by the Boston patent attorneys of the company. Upon seeing evidence from the company files of the creative days of the Boston laboratory, prior to the upheaval of 1907, including Camp bell’s early work on the loaded line, and upon observing the lack of recognition of those accomplishments on the part of those then at headquarters at 15 Dey Street, New York, I began to wonder. That there had been a gap of understanding within the Bell system between New York and Boston, was all too evident. One of the promising young professors of M.I.T. whom Campbell had persuaded to join A.T. & T. in 1904, was Dr. Frank B. Jewett. Jewett later became Campbell’s boss, as well as mine, and in later years, as he was retiring in 1944, I well remember his commenting upon the Campbell-Pupin contest, to this effect: “There was something ‘rotten in Denmark’ ... in Boston.” And I heard it echoed around, for instance, through Thomas Shaw, that not only was the Boston patent department at fault in handling CampDr . Espenschied, of Kew Gardens, N.Y., was a research and development engineer for the Bell Telephone System, and did developmental work on the loading coil. 1 James E. Brittain, “The Introduction of the Loading Coil: George A. Campbell and Michael I. Pupin,” Technology and Culture 11, no. 1 (January 1970): 36—57. 596 “Something Rotten in Denmark'’’ 597 bell’s patent application, but that knowledge of Campbell’s work in 1899 had seeped through the Long Lines Department of A.T. & T. to New York City, where, possibly through one Hutchinson . . . ! Once the underlying theory of wave progagation had been joined by the growing urgency of long distance telephony, there entered that twilight stage of invention in which Campbell and Pupin found them selves in 1899-1900. Both men were, fortunately, well equipped in sci ence training to take hold of the underlying theory as left by Heaviside; Campbell proceeded in orderly fashion and seemed not too discouraged by the slowness of his supervisors; Pupin jumped in and pushed faster, as soon as he had the glimmer of a possible fortune ahead. The inven tion that emerged was the spacing of the coils in respect to the shorter of the waves to be accommodated, and it took time to identify this. The Patent Office was impressed by Pupin’s early network work, con fusing it with the invention, and made the award to him. The company was so anxious to control the invention that it bought Pupin at a hand some price and let Campbell “go by the board” for fear of rendering the issue unpatentable; as perhaps it should have been in the first place! Truly, there was “something rotten in Denmark” all around. I came to know Campbell well in his final years, and I know he died convinced he was the first inventor of the loading coil, if invention it really was. And right here is a nice question: when does a design—the spacing of the coils with respect to the wavelength—become invention when ar rived at by applying the published theory? This reminds one of the high-vacuum tube case in the Arnold-Lang muir contest, with Arnold having proceeded on the basis of applying known theory re the high vacuum triode, and finally succeeding...