Biographical Memoirs Volume 46 (1975) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
7. Mervin Joe Kelly
7. Mervin Joe Kelly
Pages 190-219
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 191... ...
In trying to organize the material in a sensible way, I have put Kelly's character ant! work first; then his ideas concerning research and technology; and following these, a brief biographical sketch; a list of honors, awards, and memberships; and a bibliography.
|
From page 192... ...
^~~ As Frederick R Kappel, former board chairman of AT&T said after Kelly's death: "He was a great fellow for the Bell System.
|
From page 193... ...
Yet when I was directly exposed to it, I never experienced a serious shock, and I rejoiced to observe how the high potential overpowered inertia and loose thinking and prejudice. "I learned never to oppose him when he had the bit in his teeth.
|
From page 194... ...
Clearly, he was looking inward for inspiration and not outward for accept lance. On one occasion, an executive spoke somewhat contrary to a pronouncement Kelly made.
|
From page 195... ...
This eventually led to the establishment of laboratories for final development at manufacturing locations of Western Electric. This proved important in several ways.
|
From page 196... ...
As engineering education caught up with the postwar world, emphasis changed to oncampus training, including doctoral programs, and to specialized communication courses given within Bell Laboratories. While the Bell Laboratories' work in common carrier communication was closest to Kelly's heart, he recognized the country's need for advanced military systems.
|
From page 197... ...
Kelly also served on a number of committees advisory to the Department of Commerce and in this connection played an important part in frustrating the move to dismiss Allen Astin, the Director of the Bureau of Standards, for the honest and straightforward testing of a commercial battery additive that showed the product to be ineffective. As Detlev Bronk, then President of the National Academy of Sciences, tells the story: " [In 1953]
|
From page 198... ...
Moreover, Kelly's conduct so impressed Weeks that he appointed Kelly Chairman of the Department of Commerce's Statutory Visiting Committee, a post that he held for some nine years. According to Bronk and others, Kelly also played a leading role in the location of the new Engineering Society's building in New York, in providing a sensible procedure for deciding where it should be, and in campaigning to raise millions of dollars from industry to help build it.
|
From page 199... ...
He was the backbone and the strength that has made BTL what it is today." After Kelly retired from Bell Laboratories, he acted as a consultant to a number of companies, but chiefly to International Business Machines Incorporated. In this capacity, his energy and enthusiasm were no less than in his leadership of Bell Laboratories, but he wisely realized that his role was that of counsellor to the management, including Thomas Watson, {r., the chairman of the board, and not that of a boss.
|
From page 200... ...
Kelly was at the annual reHe sat there smoking endlessly and often seemed asleep, yet it was clear he was not from the incisive questions he would ask. He never, however, gave the audience a real view of his thinking.
|
From page 201... ...
When Christ Church in Millburn had great trouble with acoustics, he concerned himself deeply with the problem and brought in highly qualified people to help. After his retirement, when the Kellys' longtime housemaid planned to return with her husband to her native region in Germany, Kelly provided funds for the move.
|
From page 202... ...
. the academic community has been the principal home of basic research for more than a century...." However, he looked toward industry for substantial contributions to research: "The author believes that at least 10 per cent of most research and development budgets can be profitably employed in basic research.
|
From page 203... ...
The laboratories they founded have become two of the great industrial laboratories of our country." With respect to Bell Laboratories he proudly said: "There have been four presidents of Bell Telephone Laboratories, for example, since it was established in 1925. All were trained to the doctorate level in science and had won their spurs in research." In the London conference on technological education, Kelly said concerning the United States: "Now substantially all members of manufacturing engineering organizations are engineering graduates and the top few levels of management of manufacture are largely filled by engineering graduates." While Kelly recognized basic research as the source of all technological advances, he understood that a complicated technological process lies between discovery and use.
|
From page 204... ...
Its major responsibility is the determination of the new specific systems and facilities development projects—their operational and economic objectives and the broad technical plan to be followed. 'Systems engineering' controls and guides the use of the new knowledge obtained from the research and fundamental development programs in the creation of new telephone services and the improvement and lowering of cost of services already established.
|
From page 205... ...
Kelly's threefold organization of technological endeavor differed from other existing or possible organizations in a number of ways. Besides research, Kelly classed fundamental development as unscheduled work.
|
From page 206... ...
Its staff members must supply a proper blending of competence and background in each of the three areas that it contacts: research and fundamental development, specific systems and facilities development, and operations. It is therefore, largely made up of men drawn from these areas who have exhibited unusual talents in analysis and the objectivity so essential to their appraisal responsibility."
|
From page 207... ...
"Typical examples of recent systems engineering studies that have led to development and standardization are: television transmission over coaxial cables, a broadband microwave radio repeatered communication system, a mobile radio subscriber telephone system, and a new subscriber telephone set." Kelly illustrated an ideal relation between systems engineering, research and development by the case of the NIKE antiaircraft missile: "For example, the programming study on the NIKE missile system established that basic knowledge and art were available for the development of a system that would meet the service requirements except for a particular area of radar technology. This area was at once subjected to a research and exploratory development attack.
|
From page 208... ...
. Kelly's concept of "organized creative technology," embracing research, fundamental (or exploratory)
|
From page 209... ...
Some of Kelly's ideas concerning the organizational form most suitable for "organized creative technology" have hazards as well as power. The autonomy of research, the prerogatives of systems engineering, and the separation of the management of nontechnological functions from the technological management depend for their success on inspired leadership.
|
From page 210... ...
Kelly's words are wise and worthy of consideration, but they are less than the man and what he accomplished. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Mervin Kelly's great-great-gran(lfather came from Northern Ireland to Virginia.
|
From page 211... ...
MERVIN JOE KELLY 211 Mervin toe Kelly was born on February 14, 1894, at Princeton, Missouri. His father was then principal of the high school at the Mercer County seat.
|
From page 212... ...
He acted as a consultant to the International Business Machines Corporation, Bausch and Lomb, Ingersoll-Rand Company, and the Kennecott Copper Corporation. Mervin Joe Kelly died on March IS, 1971, at Port Saint Lucie, Florida, where he had a second home, at the age of 77.
|
From page 213... ...
Friis, Seventy-five Years in an Exciting World, San Francisco Press; and William Shockley, Bell Laboratories Record, Vol. 50, December 1972.
|
From page 214... ...
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (Fellow) Sigma Xi Eta Kappa Nu Tau Beta Pi Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences University Club of New York Baltusrol Golf Club of Springfield, N
|
From page 215... ...
Rec. _ Bell Laboratories Record Bell Syst.
|
From page 216... ...
1042 pp. 1950 Bell Telephone Laboratories an example of an institute of creative technology.
|
From page 217... ...
Bell Teleph. Mag., 32~2~:73-86; also Bell Syst.
|
From page 218... ...
Record of profitable research at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Proceedings of the National Industrial Research Conference, July, pp.
|
From page 219... ...
1959 Development of the nation's scientific and technical potential. (Presented at John Fritz Medal Award ceremony, American Institute of Electrical Engineers Winter General Meeting, February)
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.