Obituaries: Arnold O. Beckman
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O b i t u a r i e s An accomplished pianist, Beckman formed his own dance band in high school. He also accompanied the silent movies at the local theater. After being discharged from the Marines in 1919, he headed west for the summer as an itinerant movie-house pianist before entering college. Inventor and philanthropist Leon Trotsky’s Red Army by research entity in the world Arnold Orville Beckman, one place in line at the Brook- in its day. There Beckman PhD ’28, founder and presi- lyn Navy Yard. Thus he helped develop quality- dent of Beckman Instru- wound up eating Thanksgiv- assurance procedures for A RNOLD O . B ECKMAN ments, Inc., and chairman ing dinner at the Greenpoint the manufacture of Audion 1900 – 2004 emeritus of Caltech’s board YMCA, where 17-year-old vacuum tubes, which were of trustees, died in his sleep Mabel Meinzer helped serve used to amplify weak electri- on May 18 at Scripps Hospi- his table. It was love at first cal impulses for transconti- tal in La Jolla after a long sight (they would be married nental telephone calls, and illness. He was 104. nearly 64 years), but despite learned about circuit design. Born on April 10, 1900, a voluminous correspondence, “If I’d never gone to Bell in rural Illinois, Beckman’s they would not get engaged Labs, I might not have life paralleled and helped until April 1923. developed any interest catalyze the transformation Instead, Beckman entered in electronics,” he said. of the United States from an the University of Illinois, Arnold married Mabel on agrarian society to an indus- from which he earned a BS in June 10, 1925, and in 1926 trial one. Running water and chemical engineering in 1922 the newlyweds returned to residential electricity did not and an MS in physical chemis- Pasadena after a six-week arrive in his boyhood town of try in 1923. There he learned cross-country journey by Cullom until his early teens. about electrochemistry and Model T, which he had A mechanically inclined the new ionic theory that modified for better hill son of a blacksmith, at age was redefining acidity, and climbing. In the days before nine Beckman stumbled mastered the art of glassblow- fuel pumps, the gasoline across a chemistry textbook in ing for experimental appara- couldn’t make it uphill from the attic and began doing the tus. He was accepted to the the tank to the engine on experiments. For his tenth doctoral programs at the steep slopes. Most motorists birthday his father gave him University of Chicago, MIT, dealt with this by driving up Beckman in an undated photo, the use of a backyard shed and Caltech, opting for the such grades in reverse, but circa 1945. that promptly became his “fabled country of California, Beckman fitted his gas cap laboratory. His high-school land of milk and honey and with a bicycle-tire valve, dream career was to be a oranges.” But by now Mabel allowing him to pressurize freelance chemist—have was an executive secretary at the tank with a hand pump beakers, will travel. He the Equitable Life Assurance when needed. would later recall, “I visual- Company in New York, and Now reenrolled at Caltech, ized having a trunk with he left Caltech after a year to Beckman did his PhD work apparatus—test tubes and get a job near her. on ultraviolet photolysis, chemicals—that I could take This proved to be at applying the newfangled anywhere and analyze Western Electric’s Engineer- quantum theory to chemical anything.” ing Department, which was reactions; he was asked to stay In August 1918 Beckman in the process of transforming on as an instructor. The joined the Marines, missing itself into Bell Laboratories, following year he and his being shipped off to fight the premiere corporate thesis advisor, Roscoe ENGINEERING & SCIENCE NO . 2 35 A drawing (left) from the patent application for the pH meter. Beckman held 14 patents, including the shockproof potentiometer (right). handled more than three- which would give out an quarters of California’s citrus extremely tiny signal, to crop, had a problem of its be hooked to a rugged but own. Lemons that weren’t insensitive ammeter, and top grade were juiced to that the vacuum tubes he make pectin (for jellies), citric had worked with at Bell Labs acid, or other things, with the were just the ticket. He built juice’s acidity determining a gadget the size of a flour how it was processed. But canister that used a second the sulfur-dioxide preserva- vacuum tube to crank up the tive added to the juice output from the first one to bleached the litmus paper give a REALLY BIG signal, whose color change was just to be sure. It worked so usually used to measure well that Joseph never got to acidity, and poisoned the use it, as everyone else in the hydrogen electrodes used lab kept borrowing it. in the favored high-precision The acidimeter, or pH Dickinson (PhD ’20), built an Meter, needed a nonclogging electrochemical method of meter, was the first instru- instrument to determine the ink. Beckman found a work- the day. An alternative, the ment to package the chemist energy of ultraviolet light by able formulation, but it was so-called glass electrode, was in the box. No more assem- shining it on a thermocouple, based on butyric acid—the immune to SO2 but was big, bling complex apparatus and which turns heat into active ingredient in stinky with thin, fragile walls. To then spending months trying electricity, connected to a feet—and no ink company make matters worse, it gave to figure out its idiosyncra- galvanometer. By the early would touch it. So he a very weak signal, meaning sies. Now you just opened ’30s Beckman, now an decided to make it himself, you needed an ultrasensitive a door, stuck in your sample, assistant professor, had in the back of a garage on galvanometer that was itself and read off the result. become the go-to guy when an alley behind Colorado vulnerable to the slightest In 1935, Beckman’s the department’s instrument Boulevard that he rented jarring. And with either rechristened National builder, Fred Henson, was from Henson. Hiring two electrode, the whole tempera- Technical Laboratories (NTL) overbooked. At least par- Techers, Robert Barton (PhD mental setup, including rheo- began selling the acidimeter tially in self-defense, he ’33) and Henry Fracker (BS stat, rectifier, and reference through scientific-supply began teaching a course in ’30), and incorporating as cell, sprawled across several catalogs for $195—roughly laboratory glassblowing. He National Inking Appliance square feet of benchtop. a month’s salary for a junior fielded off-campus requests as Company, the firm also test- So chemist Glen Joseph professor—in competition well, leading him to set up a marketed his invention to took a day trip from the with 10-cent vials of litmus side business (with the reink typewriter ribbons. lemon lab in Ontario, some paper. But the unassembled blessing of Robert Millikan, This was not a success, as 30 miles east of Pasadena, components for a build-it- Caltech’s president, who had “the last things that secretar- to pick the brains of his old yourself electrochemical directed most of the inquirers ies wanted to do was get their classmate from the University setup cost about $500, so to him in the first place) as a fingers dirty with ink to save of Illinois. Beckman realized the acidimeter was really “scientific consultant.” the boss a 75-cent ribbon.” that an amplifier would allow half the price and none of One client, National Postal Meanwhile, Sunkist, which a small, stout glass electrode, the headaches. 36 ENGINEERING & SCIENCE NO . 2 Like IBM’s prediction in Beckman clowns with the the early ’50s that the world commemorative plastic brain given market for mainframe to him at a construction-site computers would never ceremony for the Beckman exceed six, “the most opti- mistic estimate I got was . Behavioral Biology building on May . 600 over a 10-year period 8, 1972. He has an appreciative [would] saturate the market,” audience in Mabel Beckman, lower Beckman would say. But in right, and Caltech president Harold the first three months, NTL sold 87. A move to bigger Brown, center. The fence hides the quarters—a former dry- two-story-deep foundation cleaning shop three blocks excavation; Beckman Auditorium is away owned by chemistry professor Ernest Swift (MS in the background. ’20, PhD ’24) that actually fronted on Colorado Boule- vard—quickly followed. In 1939, Beckman left Caltech to run NTL full- time, and in 1940 the continuously measure the for the fine calibration of displaced.” Tens of millions company moved into a brand- amount of the substance Beckman’s pH meters were of these Helipots have been new 12,000-square-foot plant absorbing it. More than a factor of 10 better than sold since, with no end in in South Pasadena. 21,000 Model DU spectro- anything else available. sight. That same year, work began photometers would be sold A potentiometer is a variable Beckman wound up on an ultraviolet/visible from April 1942 until the resistor—as you turn the providing a second secret spectrophotometer inspired machine was discontinued knob, an electrical contact device for the Navy as well— by a Coleman Instruments in 1964, and a few of them slides along a C-shaped oxygen monitors for use on (now PerkinElmer) model are still in use today. resistive element, and the submarines, built to a design that itself used a slightly During World War II, DUs farther along the C it travels, by chemistry professor Linus modified version of NTL’s and infrared spectrophotom- the higher the resistance.