Physics and Astronomy Colloquium
                      Tuesday, April 2, 2002
          4:10 p.m., Room 118 Physics-Astronomy Building

        Refreshments served at 3:45 p.m. outside Room 224 PA

(An Informal Meeting for students to meet with Dr. Davis will be
held at 3:15-3:45 p.m. in Room 224 PA.  All students are welcome and
encouraged to attend.)

                        Physics and Industry

                            Craig Davis
                         Ford Motor Company 
                   and Michigan State University

The origins of the modern industrial research lab can be traced to the
chemical laboratories of nineteenth-century Germany followed by the
great electrical laboratories of General Electric and Westinghouse that
became prominent in the first half of the twentieth century.  These
laboratories were closely tied to the industries they supported.  After
WWII, industrial labs flourished in the golden era of science.  Just
before the war, E. U. Condon, a director of research at Westinghouse
Electric Co., espoused a philosophy of hiring good people, providing
them adequate facilities, giving them freedom to pursue their interests,
and expecting good things to happen. Jack Goldman, who later was
vice-president of research at Xerox and built the infamous PARC lab,
brought this philosophy to the Ford Scientific Research Laboratories
(where I spent the last thirty years). The most famous of the industrial
laboratories based on fundamental physics was Bell Labs -- admired for
decades by condensed matter physicists worldwide. By the 1990s, however,
the Condon philosophy was not generally in vogue.  Due to increased
competition and other social/economic factors, industrial labs had to
become more closely connected with their companies' businesses to
survive. In some sense, labs returned to the early twentieth-century
model. In this talk I will explore this transformation from a personal
standpoint and discuss the role of physics and physicists in today's
industries.