The invisible businessman: Nuclear physics, patenting practices, and trading activities in the 1930s

Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 153-172

  Tuchetti, Simone ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Fascism; Industrial processes; Intellectual property; International business; Medical treatments; Nuclear physics; Radioactive elements

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846487217     PISSN: 08909997     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/hsps.2006.37.1.153     Document Type: Article

References (122)

1. Victor Weisskopf can speak for them all: "In Copenhagen, Cambridge and all the countries I went through, people from abroad were highly appreciated...there was a typically international atmosphere which attracted people like myself very much." V.F. Weisskopf, "Physics and physicists the way I knew them," in Charles Wiener, ed., History of twentieth century physics. Proceedings of the international school of physics "Enrico Fermi," Varenna 1972 (New York, 1977), 437.
2. Cf. Charles Wiener, "A new site for the seminar. The refugees and American physics in the thirties," in Donald Fleming, ed., The intellectual migration. Europe and America, 1930-1960 (London, 1969), 190-228, on 190.
3. Jeff Hughes, "Engineering the atom: Dogma, dissent and Dr. Tutin" (unpublished) shows the existence of competing atomic models in 1930s Britain and relates these to different industrial interests and practices; Brian Cathcart, in The fly in the cathedral. How a small group of Cambridge scientists won the race to split the atom (London, 2004), discusses the "race" between Cambridge scientists and their American rivals in "splitting the atom" by high-tension devices.
4. See J.L. Heilbron and Robert W. Seidel, Lawrence and his laboratory. A history of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Vol. I (Berkeley, 1989);
5. Thomas Lassman, "Industrial research transformed: Edward Condon at the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, 1935-1942," Technology and culture, 44:2 (2003), 306-339.
6. Geoffrey Bowker, "What's in a patent," in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping technology/building society. Studies in socio-technological change (Cambridge, 1992), 53-74;
7. H. Etzkowitz and A. Webster, "Science as intellectual property," in J. Peter, G. Markle, S. Jasanoff, and T. Pinch, eds., Handbook of science, technology, and society (Beverly Hills, 1994), 480-505.
8. Peter Galison, Einstein's clocks, Poincaré maps (London, 2003), and Image and logic (Chicago, 1997), 803-844.
9. Some aspects relating to patenting and trading are discussed in Emilio Segré, Enrico Fermi. Physicist (Chicago, 1970), 83-85
10. Edoardo Amaldi, "From the discovery of the neutron to the discovery of nuclear fission," Physics reports, 111 (1984), 5-331, on 154-160
11. Laura Fermi, Atoms in the family. My life with Enrico Fermi (Chicago, 1954).
12. Helge Kragh has observed "whether he liked it or not, Fermi was part of Italian politics and his research group in Rome, in reality, was protected by the fascist state." Helge Kragh, Quantum generations. A history of physics in the twentieth century (Princeton, 1999), 239. But I believe that it's more appropriate to understand the relationship between Fermi's group and the Facist regime in terms of convergence on a specific aspect of science policy.
13. Jeff Hughes, "Plasticine and valves: Industry, instrumentation and the emergence of nuclear physics," in J.P. Gaudillere and Ilona Lowy, eds., The invisible industrialist: Manufacturers and the construction of scientific knowledge (London, 1998), 58-101.
14. See Luigi Tomassini, "Le origini," and Raffaella Simili, "La Presidenza Marconi," in Raffaella Simili and Giovanni Paoloni, eds., Per una storia del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 5-127.
15. Between 1922 and 1929 Italy enjoyed a moderate industrial expansion largely fuelled by lack of state intervention. The 1929 world economic crisis enhanced state intervention. In 1935 the beginning of economic autarky made the state a central actor in national economy. Gianni Toniolo, L'economia dell'Italia Fascista (Bari, 1980)
16. William G. Welk, Fascist economic policy (Cambridge, 1938), 159.
17. Lucia Orlando, "Physics in the 1930s: Jewish physicists' contribution to the realization of the 'new tasks' of physics in Italy," HSPS, 29:1 (1998), 141-181.
18. Segré: "Marconi was interested in patent applications, not scientific papers, and for this reason he was rather secretive about his procedures, a habit that has presented additional difficulties for anyone trying to reconstruct his way of methodology." Emilio Segrè, "Preface," in Giancarlo Masini, Marconi (New York, 1995 [1975]), 10.
19. Anna Guagnini, "Patent agents, legal advisers and Guglielmo Marconi's breakthrough in wireless telegraphy," History of technology, 24 (2002), 171-201.
20. The Italian mechanical engineer Antonio Meucci invented the first telephone (the "teletrofono"); the patent was assigned to Alexander Graham Bell. See Basilio Catania, "The U.S. government versus Alexander Graham Bell: An important acknowledgement for Antonio Meucci," Bulletin of science, technology and society, 22 (2002). 426-442.
21. Renato Giannetti, Tecnologia e sviluppo economico italiano,1870-1990 (Bologna, 1998), 47-51.
22. During the late 19th century only 39 percent of Italian patents were filed by Italian inventors. L'Italie économique en 1867 (Florence, 1867), 63.
23. Marconi wrote in 1932: "The fascist government has taken a notable step forward in the training and encouragement of promising inventors. The new legislation on intellectual ownership constitutes considerable progress in this direction, but above all it is with the standardization of examination for patents, now realized through the initiative of the CNR, that the problem has been reduced to practical terms," Il Popolo d'Italia, 28 Oct 1932 (quoted in Masini, ref. 13, 327).
24. Anton Stefano Benni, "The industrial growth of fascist Italy," in Tommaso Silani, ed., What is fascism and why? (London, 1931), 281-289. Coal, coke, mineral oil, and derivatives could represent up to 20.6% of the total imports of Italy.
25. Rolf Petri, "Technical change in the Italian chemical industry: Markets, firms and state intervention," in A.S. Trevis et al., eds., Determinants in the evolution of the European chemical industry, 1900-1939 (Dordrecht, 1998), 280, 286.
26. "The state, the corporazioni national organizations bringing together companies, industrialists, technocrats and workers' representatives, and the economy as a whole, in the face of the inherent uncertainty of economic development, had to behave like an individual entrepreneur gambling on the long-term benefits of [technological innovation]." Petri (ref. 19), 285-286.
27. See also Vera Zamagni, The economic history of Italy (Oxford, 1993), 242-317.
28. Renato Giannetti, "Il CNR e le politiche per la ricerca e l'innovazione industriale," in Simili and Paoloni (ref. 10), 224-239.
29. Luigi Casale's patents on a catalytic process to produce methanol underwrote a new plant in the city of Terni thanks to the Società Italiana Ricerche Industriali (SIRI), a leading agency specialized in chemical R&D. In 1928, Giulio Natta, a chemical engineer at Turin University, supervised the production of methanol in new plants built by Montecatini. In 1931, a new chemistry committee of the CNR stressed the priority of research on alcohols as fuels. Luigi Cerruti, "La chimica," in Simili and Paoloni (ref. 10), 406-447.
30. Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, "Hydro-electric development in Italy," in Silani (ref. 19), 290-298.
31. O.M. Corbino, "Transformation of polyphase current into practically constant current," U.S. 1390504, issued 13 Oct 1921
32. and O.M. Corbino [with Giulio Cesare Trabacchi], "Improvements in or relating to apparatus for obtaining high-tension one direction current from three-phase currents," GB 129,092, issued 30 June 1919.
33. Franco Rasetti, interview with John Kennedy, 1966, Fermi documentary film collection, Harvard Project Physics, box 1, Background research materials and interviews, NBL
34. Eduardo Amaldi, "Personal notes on neutron work in Rome," in Wiener (ref. 2), 317.
35. Francesco Cordella, Alberto De Gregorio, and Fabio Sebastiani, Enrico Fermi. Gli anni italiani, (Rome, 2001), chapts. 3-5.
36. Pontecorvo joined the group only in 1933. Miriam Mafai, Il lungo freddo. Storia di Bruno Pontecorvo, lo scienziato che scelse l'URSS (Milan, 1992), 43
37. Emilio Segrè, A mind always in motion (Berkeley, 1993), 9.
38. Giovanni Battimeli and Michelangelo De Maria, "La fisica," in Simili and Paoloni (ref. 10), 285.
39. Sergio Romano, Giuseppe Volpi. Industria e finanza tra Giolitti e Mussolini (Rome, 1997), 214.
40. Giulio Provenzal, "La prima mostra nazionale delle invenzioni," LRS, 6:2 (1935), 91-106.
41. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (London, 1993), 196-203.
42. Arturo Russo, "Science and industry in Italy between the two world wars," HSPS, 16:2 (1986), 281-320, on 293.
43. Welk (ref. 11), 246-247.
44. Rasetti obtained a strong source of radium D from radium salts abandoned 14 years earlier. Franco Rasetti, "Sopra un forte preparato di Radio D ottenuto nell'Istituto Fisico di Roma," LRS, 5 (1934), 3-5.
45. See B. Kröger, "On the history of the neutron," Physis, 22 (1980), 175-190.
46. Fermi, "Radioactivity induced by neutron bombardment," Nature, 133 (1934), 757.
47. Fermi, Amaldi, D'Agostino, Rasetti, and Segrè, "Artificial radioactivity produced by neutron bombardment," PRS, 146 (1934), 483-500; Segrè (ref. 7), 77.
48. Gerald Holton, "The miracle of the two tables. Enrico Fermi, a piece of parraffin and the way towards nuclear fission," Times literary supplement (11 Jan 2002), 12-13, on 12.
49. Laura Fermi (ref. 7), 101
50. Amaldi (ref. 7), 317
51. Mario George Salvadori, "The Italian navigator," unpub. msc., 1986, p. 33, NBL. Fermi's wife, Laura, claimed years later that: "One morning....Corbino came into the laboratory....They were preparing to write a more extensive report on their experiments..., Corbino became incensed. "What? Do you want to publish more than you have already?....Are you crazy? Can't you see that your discovery may have industrial applications? You should take a patent before you give out more details on how to make an artificial radioactive substances!"
52. Laboccetta to Fermi, 26 Oct 1934, BN. Labboccetta was an engineer expert in measurement standards.
53. The Italian Ministry of Industry's inventory of Italian patents shows that the taxes for the Italian privativa n. 324.458 filed by Labboccetta on Fermi's behalf were paid for the period 1934-1938. Carte del Ministero dell'Industria, ACS.
54. Amaldi, D'Agostino, Fermi, Pontecorvo, Rasetti, and Segrè, "Method for increasing the efficiency of nuclear reactions and products thereof," GB 465,045, Convention date (Italy), 26 Oct 1934; Application date, 25 Oct 1935; issued, 26 Apr 1937. The patent did not list radioisotopes produced or chemical reactions involved, although claim n. 7 claims on any radioisotope produced through the method.
55. The radioisotopes produced by neutron bombardment were "chemically different" from those used as sources. For example iron allows producing a radioisotope of manganese, while chlorine allows the synthesis of radioactive phosphorus. E. Fermi, "Trasmutazione degli elementi," Sapere, 31 Jan 1935.
56. Amaldi, D'Agostino, Fermi, Pontecorvo, Rasetti, Segrè, "Artificial radioactivity produced by neutron bombardment. II," PRS, 149 (1935), 522-558.
57. It is significant that most of the researchers abroad interested in reproducing the phenomena during this period had to rely on Fermi, Amaldi, Pontecorvo, Rasetti, and Segrè, "Azione di sostanze idrogenate sulla radioattività provocata da neutroni," LRS, 5 (1934), 282-283.
58. This was the case for a group of physicists working at St. Bartholomew Hospital (A. Brasch et al., "Liberation of neutrons from beryllium by x-rays: Radioactivity induced by means of electron tubes," Nature, 134 (1934), 494)
59. and for James Chadwick and Maurice Goldhaber (Chadwick and Goldhaber, "Disintegration of slow neutrons," Nature, 134 (1934), 495).
60. G. Prezzolini, "Il Brevetto delle scoperte atomiche italiane comprato dagli SU per trecentomila dollari," 1 Aug 1950, Il Corriere della sera,copy in "Giannini," Scatola 2, Fascicolo 2, CNA.
61. Fermi, Amaldi, Pontecorvo, Rasetti, and Segrè, "Process for the production of radioactive substances," U.S. patent n. 2,206,634, 2 Jul 1940, p. 1.
62. Fermi, "Recenti risultati della radioattività artificiale," LRS, 6 (1935), 399-402. Two years later, Segrè, in collaboration with physiologists at the University of Palermo, was able to test the efficiency of radioactive phosphorus as tracer for studying metabolic disturbances. Emilio Segrè to CNR, 18 Jul 1937, Fondo CNR, Versamento I, Busta 155, ACS.
63. C.G. Tubbs to Luigi Raineri, early 1935. I am most grateful to Peter Morris, curator at the London Science Museum for providing me with this information, which is now the State Archive of Chile.
64. Leo Szilard, "Memoradum of possible industrial applications arising on a new branch of physics," 28 June 1934, in Spencer R. Weart and Gertrud W. Szilard, eds., Leo Szilard: His version of the facts. Selected recollections and correspondence (Cambridge, 1978), 39.
65. O.M. Corbino. "Prospettive e risultati della fisica moderna" LRS, 5 (1934), 615-620, on 618.
66. Ibid., 617.
67. Giannini to Fermi, 11 Nov 1935, BN.
68. Giannini to Fermi, 25 Nov 1935, BN.
69. Giannini to Fermi, 11 Oct 1935, BN; Lassman (ref. 4), 315-317.
70. Segrè (ref. 27), 66.
71. Philips to Segrè, 20 Sep 1935, and H. Hijmans, Chef des Services des brèvets d'invention des usines, Philips to Fermi, 20 Sep 1935, BN
72. Kees Boersma, "Tensions within an industrial research laboratory: The Philips laboratory's x-ray department between the wars," Enterprise and society, 4 (2003), 65-98, on 77.
73. A neutron-generating tube, designed by Frans Michael Penning, was assigned to Philips. Frans M. Penning, "Electronic device," U.S. patent n. 2,211,668, filed 7 Jan 1938, issued 13 Aug 1940.
74. Giannini to Hijmans, 18 Nov 1935, BN. Hijmans was a patent expert employed by Philips in 1921 in connection with the transfer of Dutch rights to General Electric's patents relating to the manufacture of icandescent lamps and glass, and the establishment of a new patent department in Eindhoven. A. Heerding, The history of N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabriken (2 vols., Cambridge, 1986), 2, 333.
75. Hijmans to Fermi, 16 Oct 1935, BN.
76. Hijmans to Fermi, 10 Oct 1935, BN.
77. Sannes to Fermi, Mar 1936, BN.
78. The patent was never issued in the U.S. Enrico Fermi, "Radio-active isotope production," is Canadian patent CA 407559, issued 22 Oct 1942.
79. "New heavy element created, "The times, 4 June 1934, Nature, 134 (1934), 863.
80. See also Fermi, Rasetti, D'Agostino, "Sulla possibilità di produrre elementi di numero atomico maggiore di 92," LRS, 5 (1934), 533.
81. In accordance with Fascist nationalistic rhetoric, element 93 was named "Esperio" and 94 "Ausonio the Esperii and Ausonii were two ancient Italian populations. The elemento were not transuranic. Battimelli, De Maria, and Paoloni, L'istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. Storia di una comunità di ricerca (Bari, 2001), 15.
82. E.O. Lawrence to H.A. Poillion, 24 Sep 1940, in Heilbron and Seidel (ref. 4), 204.
83. Heilbron and Seidel (ref. 4), chapt. 2; Cathcart (ref. 3), 193-196.
84. Ibid., 188.
85. Fermi doubted Lawrence's production in the range of the microcuries when he expected millicuries. To convince him, Lawrence sent a millicurie of radiosodium by post. Ibid., 187.
86. Heilbron and Seidel (ref. 4), 197.
87. William Lanouette, Genius in the shadow. A biography of Leo Szilard, the man behind the bomb (Chicago, 1992), 15; Leo Szilard, "Improvements in or relating to the transmutation of chemical elements," GB 630,726, filed 28 June 1934.
88. Heilbron and Seidel (ref. 4), 199-200.
89. Lanouette (ref. 70), 138.
90. Polany to Szilard, 11 Nov 1934, and 28 June 1935, and Weizmann to Polany, 5 Jul 1935, in Weart and Szilard (ref. 49), 41-43.
91. According to Amaldi, "All of them [Szilard's patents] refer to ideas or results of theoretical considerations without experimental well-founded grounds." Amaldi (ref. 3), 159.
92. Heilbron and Seidel (ref. 4), 199; Amaldi (ref. 73).
93. Ibid., 102.
94. Lassman (ref. 4), 314 and Cathcart (ref. 3), 196-200.
95. Heilbron and Seidel (ref. 4), 197.
96. T.E. Allibone, "Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company and the Cavendish Laboratory," in John Hendry, ed., Cambridge physics in the thirties (Bristol, 1984), 150-173, on 171.
97. Giannini to Szilard, 8 Mar 1936, BN. Szilard had used a high-voltage impulse generator different from both the cyclotron and the Van der Graaff accessible to him at High Tension Laboratory of the A.E.G. in Germany. Arno Brasch et al., "Liberation of neutrons from Beryllium by x-rays: Radioactivity induced by means of electron tubes." Nature, 134 (1934), 494.
98. Szilard, Clarendon Laboratory to Fermi, 13 Mar 1936, BN.
99. Amaldi claimed that patent n. U.S. 440023 included methods that "had been developed by other people," in Amaldi (ref. 3), 159
100. Cockcroft judged that in business matters Szilard was a "mildly dangerous character." Giannini to Fermi, 24 Mar 1936, BN.
101. Giannini to Fermi, 17 Mar 1936, BN.
102. Ibid.
103. Heilbron and Seidel (ref. 4), 205.
104. Segrè (ref. 7), 87.
105. Fermi told Hijmans that Trabacchi's institute would build a high-tension device for radioisotope production. The institute would allow Fermi access to the machine if Philips did not ask for royalties. Fermi to Hymans, 9 Jan 1937, BN.
106. Ivana Gambaro, "Acceleratori di particelle e laboratori per le alte energie: Roma e Parigi negli anni Trenta," Rivista di storia della scienza, 1 (1993), 105-154.
107. Giovanni Battimelli and Ivana Gambaro, "Da via Panisperna a Frascati: Gli acceleratori mai realizzati," Quaderni di storia della fisica, 1 (1997), 319-333.
108. Giannini wrote Hijmans that "some of them [the inventors] feel that the inventivity [sic] in the future is not likely to remain uniform, particularly if the group disintegrates between various laboratories and countries" and that selling their future findings to Philips "may preclose [sic] them the possibility of accepting, eventually, industrial research jobs, or professorships with US universities of a particular type." Giannini to Hijmans, 21 Feb 1936, BN.
109. Giannini to Segrè (copy to Fermi), 18 Apr 1939, "Segrè Emilio," box 11, folder 13, EFP.
110. Giannini to Fermi, 8 Apr 1939, BN.
111. Giannini to Segrè (ref 89), "Segrè (ref. 89).
112. The papers included Gilbert N. Lewis, M. Stanley Livingston, and E.O. Lawrence, "The emission of alpha-particles from various targets bombarded by deutons of high speed," Physical review, 44 (1933), 55-56;
113. E.O. Lawrence, M. Stanley Livingston, and G.N. Lewis, "The emission of protons from various targets bombarded by deutons of high speed," Physical review, 44 (1933), 56;
114. Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Irène Curie, "Artificial production of a new kind of radio-element," Nature, 133 (1934), 201-202.
115. One of Fermi's attorneys remarked: "It must be admitted that the production of heavy isotopes of hydrogen by reaction of a proton and a neutron was known. It was not known, however, that low energy neutrons should be used for this reaction. On the contrary it was specifically stated that the neutrons used had energies of several million volts." Newell to Fermi, Giannini, Rasetti and Hijmans, 13 Feb 1936, BN.
116. Karl K. Darrow, "Contemporary advances in physics, XXVII. The nucleus, second part," Bell System technical journal, 13 (1934), 102-157.
117. Newell to Giannini, 15 Dec 1936, BN.
118. Amaldi to Giannini, 15 Jan 1936, BN.
119. Giannini to Segrè, 18 Apr 1939, box 13, folder 4, EFP.
120. U.S. Patent Office, Board of Appeals, Appeal No. 32,841 (copy in box 19, folder 2, EFP).
121. Enrico Fermi, "Radio-active isotope production," CA patent n. 407559, issued on 22 Oct 1942.
122. Simone Turchetti, "For slow neutrons, slow pay" (forthcoming).