Era 1: Section 1
1953-1967: The Formative Era

Introduction

Awards

Standards/Practices

Governance

Symposia

Divisions

Membership

Publications

Sections/Chapters

Finance

Education

Interactions

Administration

Courses

History

Introduction: Setting the Scene 

Why was a society dealing with vacuum formed in the first place? Clearly to address a need, but why was there a need? During World War II, there had been many developments of technology which depended on the application of reduced pressure, or vacuum. The Berkeley cyclotron required high vacuum and separation of the isotopes of uranium for the atomic bomb had required large numbers of vapor diffusion pumps at Oak Ridge, and large volumes of new optical coatings were required for gun sights. The science involved in these developments could be discussed at meetings of the existing physical or chemical societies but the methods used to provide the required pressure environments for these processes were not considered. So there was clearly a need for a forum for the discussion of vacuum equipment, its performance and related topics.

A number of meetings on topics involving vacuum and thin films had been held prior to 1953. A “Conference on the Application of Metallic Fluoride Reflection Reducing Films to Optical Elements” was organized by the Optical Instrument Committee for the US Army; it was held in Brooklyn. N.Y. in October, 1943 with more than 130 attendees. As recorded in the report of the meeting, Colonel Welch of Frankford Arsenal stated “we have brought together people who build and use all known types of apparatus for producing the preferred type of film. We hope to bring out and lay on the table all the troubles and difficulties and to bring to their attention any system, as well as all the things that any of you have found”. He noted that the Army had the capacity to coat 600,000 sq. inches of surface per 8-hr day but that pump-down time was the rate limiting step in manufacturing.

In October 1947, a “High Vacuum Symposium” was held in Cambridge, MA, under the sponsorship of the Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, to discuss vacuum engineering and vacuum metallurgy. It was chaired by Robert Morse, the President of National Research Corporation, who became a strong supporter of the Society, and the Vice Chairman was John R Bowman, who would be a prominent figure in the early days of AVS, serving as President in 1955. In his introduction, Saul Dushman stated that this was “the first occasion in this country on which a group of scientists and engineers have gathered to discuss topics in this field”. There were about 35 attendees and reprints of the fifteen papers were issued by the National Research Corporation; two of the papers were from MIT and the rest from industry. The topics ranged from the “measurement of pumping speeds”, by B.B. Dayton, another prominent figure in the early AVS, to “ freeze drying of orange juice” . A “High Vacua Convention” was held in Gleneagles, Scotland in October, 1948. A Symposium on Vacuum Engineering was organized at French Lick, in May 1952, by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and abstracts of the seventeen papers were published in “Vacuum” Vol. 11, p147 (1952). Ben Dayton again gave a talk, on “Outgassing Properties of Materials Used in Vacuum Systems” by L.W.  Hull, another future AVS President, talked about “Selection of Vacuum Pumping Systems,” and the first Life (or Honorary) Member of the society, Kenneth Hickman, co-authored a paper on “Evaporation Habits of Liquids in Vacuum.” Several hundred people attended each session of the meeting.

So, there was clearly a need which was not satisfied by these occasional conferences.  Although the Société Francaise des Ingénieurs et Techniciens du Vide, which became the Société Francaise du Vide in 1973, had been formed in 1945, there was no equivalent forum in North America. 

Governance 

During the winter of 1952, Frederick A. McNally, who was working on spectroscopy with the Jarrell-Ash Company, found it difficult to obtain current information on the high-vacuum problems with which he had to deal and wondered if a separate group, devoted to the discussion of the problems and applications of high vacuum, should be formed. He apparently urged every company which sold vacuum equipment that they should do something to provide consolidated information to the users. In February 1953, he wrote a letter to others who might be interested in establishing an organization. McNally clearly perceived the need and thought it would take five years to become recognized as being on a level with other technical societies.  He also suggested that “even a journal could be published.” The AVS and the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology are concrete evidence of McNally’s foresight. 

McNally must have received a good response to his first letter because he wrote a second letter, dated 6 May 1953, listing problems that could be discussed at a meeting of an organization whose common interest was vacuum technology. The subjects he listed were: (l) vacuum sputtering and evaporation; (2) ionic polishing of surfaces; (3) electron microscopy, electron diffraction, and x-ray diffraction; (4) electronic tube manufacture; (5) gas analysis; (6) pumps and pumping technique; (7) molecular and ionic beam production; (8) vacuum furnace work; (9) vacuum spectroscopy; (10) discharge phenomena. A sufficient number of interested people responded to this second letter that a meeting was arranged by a small group which met in Boston. 

The luncheon meeting at which the decision was made to form the society was held at the Commodore Hotel, New York, on 18 June, 1953. The meeting notice stated that the purpose was “To set up a provisional organization which will present a symposium on vacuum techniques with the idea of forming a permanent group during the symposium”. Reservations, and a $5 payment in advance, were requested. Clearly, there had been considerable prior discussion about the objectives of the meeting; this apparently took place at one, or more, meetings of a small group in Boston, which included John Durant and A. John Gale, and presumably McNally. Arrangements for the meeting were made  by McNally, Harry Bliven and Gordon Kiddoo. 

Fifty-six people attended that meeting, but not everyone who wished to attend was able to do so. Dick Denton recalls that both he and Tom Scratchard could not be absent from work at the same time, and so only Tom attended although Dick was an original member. It was a distinguished group; four of those in the list, plus Dick Denton, were still members in 2003, six became Honorary Members, nine were Presidents and Albert Nerken and Medard Welch are commemorated by two of the major AVS Awards. 

McNally chaired the meeting; more than 85% of the attendees were from commercial operations; almost 60% were associated with vacuum equipment suppliers; 18% with vacuum tube manufacturers (radio tubes and lighting), and 9% with vacuum optical coating. Almost all the attendees were from east coast locations, where the industries were mainly located.  

Although the AIP representative, H.A. Barton,  suggested that informal meetings should be held until the need for a society was verified, those attending were clearly very aware of the need for an organization to discuss both practical and scientific aspects of vacuum technology and for the interchange of information among commercial users of vacuum equipment. There was a strong feeling that the organization should represent vacuum equipment manufacturers but that meetings should not be trade shows. W. Overacker stressed the immediate need to establish a standards committee since many of the participants had an interest in comparing pump performance. So, right at the beginnings of AVS, the strong interaction between suppliers and users of vacuum equipment and their interdependence was established.

After discussion of possible activities, the meeting nominated and elected six committee chairmen:

  • Permanent Organization -- Joseph B. Merrill

  • Symposium and Permanent Financing --  Harry Bliven

  • Symposium Arrangements -- Everett M. Brown

  • Symposium Program -- Rudolph A. Koehler

  • Symposium Publicity and Publication -- John H. Durant

  • Standards -- Benjamin B. Dayton 

It was agreed that a General Chairman should be elected by these chairmen and that he could be either from within or without the group. It was unanimously agreed that, for the immediate future, the name “Committee on Vacuum Techniques” would be the official name of the group; a simple logo was developed, later in 1953, from the initials CVT. This first organizational meeting of the embryo society adjourned after deciding that a smaller group would meet a week later in Boston. At that meeting, held in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 24 June, 1953, the Society was formally organized under the name “Committee on Vacuum Techniques” and Joseph Merrill was named the General Chairman; he was involved in sales and was thus able to meet all the chairs in the course of his visits to companies. The choice of the name was a result of following the example of a professor at MIT in forming a “Committeee on Combustion.” At a subsequent meeting in New York in August, 1953, Fred McNally was named Chairman of the Education Committee, increasing the Executive Committee to seven members, which was a requirement for incorporation. 

Incorporation of the Committee on Vacuum Techniques, Inc. followed on 19 October 1953 in accordance with Era 180 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This was only eight months after McNally’s first letter, which would be remarkably short today, even with e-mail! The charter signed by the secretary of Massachusetts stated the purpose of the organization as “To endeavor to develop, promote and foster the research and education of the art of vacuum technology scientifically, and for the purpose of dissemination of this knowledge to the members of the corporation and in this connection to receive and distribute funds for these purposes. It is not the intention of the corporation to apply for a license to sell alcoholic beverages.” There had been an objection to this last clause in the proposed by-laws at the August, 1953 meeting of the executive committee, but it was pointed out that the incorporation of a scientific society and a social club in Massachusetts were covered by the same rules!

Financial aid for the newly formed organization was supplied by twelve “Founding Member” companies who supported the Society with payments of $200 each. These companies, which were involved mainly in vacuum processing or in the manufacture of vacuum equipment, were: 

  • Central Sales and Manufacturing Co.

  • Consolidated Vacuum Corp.

  • General Electric Co.

  • High Vacuum Equipment Corp.

  • High Voltage Engineering Corp.

  • Kinney Manufacturing Corp.

  • Liberty Mirror Division of Libby-Owens-Ford

  • National Research Corp.

  • Optical Film Engineering Co.

  • Sylvania Electric Products

  • Vacuum Electronics Engineering Co.

  • W.M. Welch Manufacturing Co.

The emphasis of the August, 1953 meeting was on organization of a symposium; some of these companies only became involved on the promise of a symposium. The Berkeley Carteret Hotel in Asbury Park, N.J. was selected because other sites were considered inadequate; the hotel cost was given as $16 per day and there was discussion as to whether 400 people might attend! It was decided that the papers at the symposium must not be “thinly disguised sales pitches,” as had apparently been the case at some earlier conferences. At the next meeting of the Executive Committee in December 1953, it was noted that the sponsoring companies wanted the committee to concentrate on the symposium rather than forming another society! The symposium was originally scheduled for the spring of 1954 but Everett Brown died suddenly in early 1954, causing a postponement. Lyle Backer took over as Chairman of the Symposium Committee.  

On the last day of that first symposium in 1954, the first annual Business Meeting of the CVT was called to order by the President, J.B. Merrill. Changes in the by-laws were discussed and passed; they provided more continuity on the Executive Committee, with half the committee chairs to be elected in alternate years. Harry Bliven, Ben Dayton and Rudy Koehler were re-elected for one year and Daniel Alpert (Permanent Organization), John Bowman (Publications and Publicity), Andrew Guthrie (Education) and George Murphy (Symposium Arrangements) were elected for two years. However, Alpert and Murphy resigned later that year and were replaced by William H. McCurdy and John Durant, respectively.  Rudy Koehler was elected the General Chair. It was also decided that there would be no additional “founder members.” A suggestion was made that A.S.D. Barrett be made a Life Member and this was done at the second Business Meeting at the 1955 symposium. 

At the second Annual Business Meeting on October 14, 1955, the Officers and committee chairs were elected; these formed the Executive Committee. The Officers consisted of the President (John R Bowman), the Vice President (Andrew Guthrie), who would become President for the following year, the Treasurer (John Gale) and the Clerk (Harry Bliven). The six committee were: Publications and Publicity (Axel Peterson), Symposium Program (Edmond Perry), Standards and Nomenclature (Ben Dayton), Nominations (Ken Hickman), Symposium Arrangements (Medard Welch), and Education (Hubert Schleuning). The basic structure of the current Board of Directors is evident; there are three Officers plus the Past-President and six Directors, although the Directors are no longer committee chairs. At the third Business Meeting on October 10, 1956, a change in the by-laws was made to define a regular member.

A change of name from the Committee on Vacuum Techniques to the  American Vacuum Society, Inc. was first suggested by Charles Gould in October, 1957 and the change was approved by the Business Meeting on October 10, 1957. The official approval from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the change was dated January 30, 1958. The new Constitution was approved by a mail ballot in 1958; the vote was 198 for and 2 against.  

Until 1961, the Executive Committee was appointed and approved by the Business Meeting, which was held at the Symposium. In addition to the Officers and Board Members, others were sometimes appointed as members of the Executive Committee. For example, in 1958, the President appointed Lew Hull and John Bowman, who were respectively Local Arrangements and Education Chair; in 1959 John Bowman was again appointed as Education Committee Chair and Medard Welch as the IVOST representative. 

During these early years of the Society, as many as eight meetings of the Executive Committee or Board were held during the year. In addition, other meetings were held by smaller groups; for example, “the Boston group” held a meeting on July 11, 1957, between meetings of the Executive Committee  on May 23 and August 8. Many of the meetings were held in New York City at the offices of Sylvania or G.E. A complaint that the Board members were leaving the meetings before all the items were discussed is just as familiar today as when it was made first in 1960! Most of the committee members at these meetings were from industry; in 1961, the only member from academia, Robert Meissner, died before the Symposium; in 1961-62, Charles Bachman was the only Board member from a university. Perhaps due to the changing demands of industry, several members resigned positions to which they had been elected. J.H. Moore was elected Treasurer at the 1961 Business Meeting but resigned in January, 1962 and Raymond Bonenfant was appointed by the President to fill the vacancy. In December, 1965, Robert Jepsen resigned from the Board and E.E. Donaldson was appointed to replace him.

A revised Constitution and By-laws was adopted at the 1961 Business Meeting, establishing the procedure for a mail ballot for the election of Officers and Directors. During 1962, voting for the new Officers and Directors took place by mail ballot and the results were then announced at the Business Meeting. This procedure has been followed in all subsequent years.

However, members could still assign their vote on other issues to a proxy. In 1967, there were 84 members at the annual Business Meeting but there were 1072 proxy votes! However, the total was still less than the 1,685 votes required to approve a change to the Articles of Organization, which was required in order to obtain 501.(c), (3) tax status. However, since only 7 votes were cast in opposition to the change, it was decided to petition the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to accept the change, which it did. The attendance at the general meetings varied between 50 in 1961 and 120 in 1960, a much larger number than the current attendance at the annual Business Meeting, which is still held during the Symposium. 

Until the election of 1965, the slate of candidates for election presented only one nominee for each open position, but the incoming President, Hans Steinherz, argued that at least two candidates should be offered for each opening for Director. His suggestion was put into effect for the 1966 election but a motion to offer at least two candidates for each of the three Officers was defeated. Although the official slate continued to offer only a single candidate for each of the Officers, an additional candidate for President-Elect was nominated by petition in 1966 and Paul Redhead was elected. The message conveyed by this election eventually led to a change in policy; starting with the election of 1969, two candidates for President-Elect have been nominated every year. It is important to note that two viable candidates must be nominated, for the difference in votes between candidates can be very close indeed, being a margin of a single vote (0.1%) in 1981. However, with one exception, only one nomination has been offered in each election for the positions of Clerk and Treasurer.   Continuity is essential in these positions; for example, it requires about six months to transfer the office of Treasurer. For this reason, the holders have always been re-nominated for at least a second year.  

During this era, the familiar acronym AVS was already in use. There had been several discussions on a suitable logo for the society. Suggestions had included simple block letters “AVS” as already used in the Newsletter, McLeod gauges, and Magdeburg hemispheres, but all had been rejected. In 1962, the Newsletter announced a contest, with a $100 prize, to the member who designed an attractive symbol and letterhead. Two winners, J.D. Clark and J.E. Byrne each received $50 for their entries but no logo was selected for use. It is interesting that the logo based on the Magdeburg hemispheres was then introduced in 1978! 

Membership 

The initial members in CVT were those who attended the annual symposia and they voted at the Business Meeting to elect the Executive Committee for the succeeding year. So there were essentially 307 members in 1954, the number of attendees at the first symposium. The membership fee was $3 but this was increased to $5 at the 1958 General Meeting. Len Beavis recalls attending the 1958 symposium in San Francisco with Norm Wilson; their membership numbers, 202 and 203, were assigned when they registered, However, by 1960, the membership year was the calendar year. The annual fee was increased to $10 in 1964 but now included JVST which was mailed to all members; the subscription price for non-members was $14. Since then, essentially half the membership fee has been considered as payment for receiving the journal.  

By the end of 1958, the membership was still only 293 but it started to grow quite rapidly,  reaching 661 in 1960, over 2,000 by 1965, and 2700 in 1967. In 1966, 28% and 13% were members of the Thin Film and Vacuum Metallurgy Divisions respectively, and there were 15 student members. In an article in the very first issue of JVST in 1964, the President, C.H. Blachman attributed the rapid increase in membership since 1960 to the developments in thin films and in space environments. However, a trend which continues today was already noted; each year, almost 20% of members did not renew and the net growth resulted from the increase in the number of new members each year. The very first issue of the Newsletter in 1960 invited members to pay their dues on time and to encourage colleagues to become members. In 1962, a membership application form and a survey form were mailed out; the latter requested information from members which was transferred to punched cards in the office to help the administration. 

The Constitutional changes adopted in 1961 recognized three classes of membership:

Members, defined as any individual expressing an interest in vacuum science or engineering. 

Honorary Members, conferred by the AVS Board of Directors on members who have provided services of great significance to the AVS. The number of Honorary Members was limited to 0.5 % of the total membership of the Society. Honorary Members were exempted from payment of dues and are offered complimentary registration at the National Symposium and several other events in recognition of their contributions.

Sustaining members, limited to Institutions and Companies, to provide supplemental income to support the objectives of the Society. However, this category was not used until 2003.

Prior to this new classification in 1961, four “Life Members” had been elected and they are included in the list of Honorary Members. At the business meeting during the 1958 symposium, a Life Membership was presented  to Medard Welch by the first Life Member, A.S.D. Barrett. Ken Hickman and Rudy Koehler were awarded Life Memberships in 1959; John Gale recounted how he asked Barrett to keep Hickman away from the Business Meeting so that he could propose him for the honor. The first actual Honorary Member was Ben Dayton, in 1963; Medard Welch made the presentation at the 1963 Symposium and the announcement in the December, 1963 issue of the Newsletter included a short biography. Wilfrid Matheson was elected an Honorary Member in 1965.  

At the 1968 business meeting at the Symposium, a change in the Constitution was approved to divide the member grade into four categories, setting specific requirements for each:

Senior Member, requiring evidence of professional maturity, and endorsement by three Honorary or Senior Members.

Member, requiring evidence of professional competence, and the signatures of two Honorary, Senior, or regular members.

Associate Member, open to anyone interested in the field of vacuum science and technology, and  requiring one signature  from an  Honorary,  Senior, or regular member.

Student Member, open to any full-time college student.

At least part of the motivation for the change was to be more consistent with those of AIP member societies because, after having been an Affiliate Member of AIP since 1963, AVS was considering  application for full membership. Student membership had been initiated in 1964, when the annual dues were $5 compared to $10 for full membership. 

Senior Member was to be the highest membership grade for which application may be made, and requires experience and attainment reflecting professional maturity. For admission or transfer to  the grade of Senior Member, a candidate shall meet all requirements for Member grade and, in addition, shall have been in active practice of his profession for at least 10 years and shall have attained distinction in his profession by one or more of the following:

  1. Publication of original engineering or scientific papers, books or inventions;

  2. Technical direction with evidence of accomplishment of important scientific or engineering work;

  3. Creative contributions to the advancement of the scientific or engineering profession;

  4. Establishment or furtherance of important scientific or engineering courses.

In the December, 1968 Newsletter, the Membership Committee invited all Members of the Society, who met the above qualifications, to  submit their applications. Since it was realized that it would be difficult for applicants to obtain the three endorsing signatures during the first year, the Membership Committee undertook to procure them but it was emphasized that applicants could submit the forms without signatures only until a sufficient number of candidates had been elected to Senior Membership. A number of Members were transferred to the Senior Member category in the next few years and a list of 85 Senior members was published in the June, 1969 Newsletter. However, the Membership Committee soon experienced difficulty in fairly  administering admission and  eventually suggested that it should be eliminated.  In 1976, a  referendum proposing this change was approved by a 76.7% vote and the constitutional change was confirmed  in 1978.

Announcements of interest to members, including the names of the Board members, were initially included in the Transactions of the National Symposium but this appeared only once each year. The Board decided that printing the attendee list at the Symposium would be discontinued after the 1962 Transactions but a membership list would be mailed annually to each member. The first Membership Roster to be published was included in the September/October, 1967 issue of the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. 

Starting in 1960, a Newsletter was published up to four times per year to inform the members of future events but this was discontinued at the end of 1964 when the information was included in the new Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. In the first few years of publication, JVST was used to record many newsworthy AVS events, including announcements of meetings and awards, and the Membership Roster.

Finance 

From the beginning, the Symposium appears to have been the main source of revenue for the Society. The budget for the period January 1 to July 31, 1960, printed in the 1961 issue of the Newsletter, shows that the cash on hand had increased from $26,477.22 to $32,675.25 in that period, mainly due to the revenue from the 1960 Symposium. An abbreviated summary of the Treasurer’s report for the first six months of 1962, published in the Newsletter, showed that the net revenue was approximately $35,000. 

By 1963, the annual budget had increased to over $30,000 but the cash balance was more than twice this amount and, to conform to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules, AVS established a reserve fund. By 1966, the balance had increased to about $200,000, and an application for tax exempt status was filed with the IRS. The increase in assets from 1965 to 1966 was a startling 38% and an Investment Committee was formed to invest in a trust fund any amount in excess of three times the annual expense. 

Although a registration with the IRS had been filed in 1962, the IRS was apparently unable in 1963 to locate the filing! The AVS was first granted tax-exempt status by the IRS as a non-profit organization under clause (501). [c]. (3) on December 5, 1967. This has a significant financial advantage and great care and effort has been taken to ensure that all AVS operations conform to the requirements of this clause. This extends to all the Divisions, Technical Groups and Chapters since they are all an integral part of the overall AVS, and all are governed by the overall charter of the Society. Thus, the AVS Board is responsible for every action carried out at every level of the society, 

In 1967, it was decided that the financial year should coincide with the calendar year, instead of running from one Symposium to the next. A new funding method for Sections and Divisions was also instituted, initially on a trial basis; they were not to accumulate funds which exceeded three times their average annual expenses. 

Administration 

In the early days, most of the administrative effort was provided by the volunteers and, no doubt, their secretaries. John Durant recalled that he spent about 50% of his time for two years on AVS business while an employee of the National Research Corporation, with the full approval of Richard Morse, the company president; Morse was unsure whether the organization would succeed but, if it did, he wanted to have an involvement. Durant recounted how Harry Bliven, in the course of his sales visits, would pick up mail from the rented mail box and bring it to his office where they would both read it and then make phone calls to follow up on arrangements. The official address was Box 1282, Boston 9. The Society did contract to have certain office functions performed by Business Aids in Boston; for example, they printed and mailed the Newsletter and the notices for the Annual Business Meeting. Mailing was a substantial operation; in 1958, information on the Symposium was sent to 14,000 addresses, which combined the AVS list of 2,000 with the Welch Manufacturing Company list of 10,000 and the Consolidated Vacuum Corp. list.  

By the mid-sixties, the administrative load was considerable. In his first message in the 1964 Newsletter, the President, Charles Bachman, noted that the load on the Clerk was extreme because he had to deal with over 2,000 members and, at the same time, was heading a committee to study alternatives, which only added to his load! 

The Board had previously discussed the need for an executive office but had deferred any decision until the American Institute of Physics (AIP) made a decision on the AVS application for affiliation, since it was expected that AVS would then be able to use secretarial services at AIP. The AVS had been invited by AIP, in 1958, to apply but an application was not made until an Affiliation Committee had been established and investigated possible collaborations with other organizations. An application was made in 1962 and AVS became an AIP Affiliate in April 1963. However, AIP would provide secretarial services only for Members or Associate Members, not for an Affiliate! Although the AIP Executive Committee recommended that AVS be upgraded from Affiliate to Associate, this was not approved by the AIP Governing Board. 

A Business Office Committee was then formed in 1964 to determine how to handle the administrative load. It determined that $5000 would be required for staff assistance. In 1964, the Board agreed to a proposal by Wilfrid Matheson to have a married couple, whom he knew, provide this assistance. From 1964 until the move to New York City in 1968, H.B. Sloan and his wife, operated, under the name Business Aids, the society “office” in Boston; in 1965, their monthly fee was increased from $100 to $125. However, their  “basement operation” seems to have been poorly organized. Jack Singleton recalls that, when Paul Redhead was nominated by petition in 1966, there was considerable difficulty in determining that signatures on the petition were those of bona fide members and it was clear that the signed membership cards were not organized in any way,  even though a key-sort card index system had been purchased in 1962 for tracking of the increasing numbers of new and renewing members. By selectively punching a card for each member, the whole membership could be sorted into different groupings using a long needle to select the appropriate “keyholes.”  However, the system was still quite laborious.  

In 1966, it was proposed that AVS hire a professional manager and, at the same time, the American Society for Metals (ASM) offered to accommodate an AVS Headquarters in their office at Metals Park, Ohio. A committee, chaired by Dan Bills, was formed to determine a course of action and it recommended that AVS rent services from AIP and also hire an Executive Secretary; the annual estimated cost was about $18,000. The AIP took over responsibility for collecting the membership dues for 1967 and some additional business was handled by AIP from January 1, 1967; the AIP Secretary, Wallace Waterfall, appointed Mrs. Goodfriend as the designated person to handle the AVS business but Mrs. Emily Wolfe took over this function for the early part of 1968 until the appointment of Nancy Hammond in May. Mailing continued to be handled by Business Aids in Boston until the AVS office was set up in the AIP building in New York City in January 1968 and 335 East 45th Street became the new address. This move facilitated access to a wide range of services and an association with many other nonprofit groups having a strong background in the discipline of physics. The AIP still manages the pension and health services for AVS employees  Jim Lafferty, who took over as Clerk from Wilfrid Matheson, drove to Boston to pick up two filing cabinets from Matheson and then delivered them to the AIP building in New York. The move of office activities from Boston had been strongly opposed by Matheson, who even appeared, unannounced, at a Board meeting at the Flying Carpet Motel in Chicago to argue against it. However, the Board decided to move because the records of activities and financial transactions which had been provided was unacceptable. 

In May 1968, Nancy L. Hammond  became the full-time Executive Secretary, attending her first Board meeting on May 17. She had been the secretary for the Acoustic Materials Association which merged with another organization in Chicago and the AIP Secretary re-assigned Nancy to AVS. She went to Boston in a truck to retrieve the remaining AVS records from the second bedroom of Matheson’s house; there were two filing cabinets and a few boxes under the bed! Nancy recalled that nobody in AIP knew much about the operations of AVS and she really learned from Jack Singleton when she attended her first National Symposium in Pittsburgh in October, 1968. So started a productive association with the Society that lasted for 21 years until her retirement. Her dedicated service to AVS was recognized when she was made an Honorary Member in 1989.

 In 1961, as Past-President, Matheson had produced a “Standard Policy Manual” for conducting the society affairs and such a manual has been maintained since then to provide all members with guidelines on how to conduct business at the Society, Division and Chapter level. The Policy and Procedures Manual is now available on the web site. 

Awards 

Early in 1962, an Awards Committee was formed to determine a possible awards structure but no further action was taken at the time. However, in early 1967, six members were appointed to a Scholarships Committee to administer AVS Scholarships and two graduate students were later selected to receive scholarships of $4,000; these first awardees were L.A. Bedell from the University of Minnesota and G.E. Riach from Brown University. For 1968, a competition for three such Scholarships was announced but the committee chose to renew the two Scholarships for a second year.  

In 1965, the Sloan Instrument Company offered to fund prizes of $500 and $300 for the best papers presented in the Thin Film sessions; the proposed name was the “Bob Meissner Prize” but the offer was declined. 

Symposia 

One of the principal objectives of those forming the society was to organize a symposium for the free exchange of information about vacuum technology and related processes. In fact, some of the sponsors and potential members considered that this was the only function required! 

The first Symposium was held on 16-18 June, 1954 at the Hotel Berkeley-Carteret in Asbury Park in New Jersey. Asbury Park was then a popular resort on the coast and a good location for a symposium combining work and social interaction. John Gale recalled that the “girls” there were disappointed because they had heard that it was a meeting of vacuum cleaner salesmen, from whom they had expected good business!  The total registration fee, including accommodation and meals and a copy of the Transactions, was $65; the fee for attendees not resident in the hotel was $15. Rudy Koehler was the Program Chair and Lyle Backer the Chair of the Symposium Arrangements Committee after the sudden death of Everett Brown a few months earlier. Vannevar Bush, who had been known by several members while at MIT, declined to act as Honorary Chairman of the symposium but Kenneth Hickman, who had developed the oil diffusion pump, accepted the invitation. The three day Symposium consisted of 35 papers; half of the papers given were on equipment, and half on related topical subjects. The 307 registrants represented equipment manufacturers, industrial processors, sales organizations, and government and university research laboratories and came from Germany, England, and Canada, as well as from all parts of the USA; many from Europe came by ship and thus invested several weeks in the trip. Some industrial organizations did not view attendance at the Symposium as being useful and at least one of the attendees had to take vacation to participate! At a dinner on 16 June, A.S.D. Barrett gave a talk on “Vacuum Technology in Europe" and Hickman told a number of humorous and unusual vacuum stories.  

Visual aids for the first symposium presentations used lantern slides, which meant that the talk had to be planned well ahead of the presentation! The first annual Business Meeting was held immediately after the session ended, at mid-morning on Friday; Rudy Koehler and George Murphy were elected Program and Symposium Arrangements chairs for the 1955 symposium but the latter resigned later in 1954 and John Durant took over. At the Business Meeting, it was announced that a course on Vacuum Technique would be offered at Boston University in the fall. 

One of the complaints about the first Symposium program was that there was insufficient time for questions, although the speakers were congratulated on “making themselves available” in the late afternoon and early evening. As a result, only 20 papers were selected for the program at the second Symposium in Pittsburgh and more time allowed for discussion. The banquet speaker, Willy Ley, gave a talk on the "Physics and Engineering of a Satellite Shot.” At the business meeting on October 14, 1955, C.H. Bowman was elected President. While the first Symposium was held in summer, all subsequent Symposia have been held in late fall. 

The number of papers submitted for the 1956 Symposium in Chicago was 30% higher than expected! For a paper to be presented at the Symposium, the manuscript had to be approved by the Program Chair. This procedure had been instituted to ensure that the papers were not just sales pitches by equipment manufacturers but, as the number of submissions increased, it was used to select the best papers. Forty-one papers were selected for the program. There were 549 attendees at the Symposium!  Seating was classroom style, which was welcomed by the attendees because it assisted in taking notes; it was repeated in 1957. There was also a balcony for seating non-member “guests”, who were mainly students from Chicago universities and colleges. The session chairs held a breakfast meeting with the speakers, a function which was continued for several years. The banquet speaker was Nikolai Kurti, a renowned low temperature experimentalist from Oxford University.  

For the 1957 Symposium in Boston, the registration fee of $35 included, in addition to the membership, the sessions and the Transactions, two lunches, coffee for three mornings and the banquet. However, the Board were concerned about the high cost price of $19 per person for the food functions! The fee for the Ladies program was $15, including the banquet and a day’s tour with a visit to a museum. In addition to the presentations, there was a panel discussion on “Vacuum Technology: Today & Tomorrow”; the panel members were Rudy Koehler, of G.E,  Hubert Schwleuning from  the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, G.W. Oetjen of Leybold, Hans Steinhertz from NRC, F. Duncan of the Bekeley-Graham Manufacturing Co., and William Di Pietro,  of Vacuum Specialties Co. The banquet speaker was M. Stanley Livingstone of MIT who talked about the challenges in particle accelerators. Dorothy Hoffman gave her first talk, "Resistance–Temperature  Characteristics of Evaporated Cr films”, at a Symposium; she later became the first woman to be President of AVS, and indeed of any scientific society in North America, and left a very large bequest which has funded, since 1999, awards to students attending the International Symposium. 

Abstracts of talks at the 1958 Symposium in San Francisco were printed in the program booklet in an 8x5 inch format with a plain blue cover. Len Beavis recalls that the hot items being discussed at the 1958 Symposium were non-evaporable getters, ion pumps and CF flange all metal seals, and that Paul Redhead talked about ionization gages. So many papers were received that sessions were held in parallel for the first time; there were eight sessions over three days. There was an opening address by the President, Medard Welch, and then a plenary talk on “High Vacuum Technology and the Space Age” by Richard S. Morse, who was Chairman of the Army Scientific Advisory Panel. The banquet speaker was Luis W. Alvarez on “The Hydrogen Bubble Chamber." At the Business Meeting, a Life Membership was presented to Medard Welch by the first Life Member, A.S.D. Barrett. 

The same format of meeting continued in 1959 at Philadelphia but talks were limited to 25 minutes and there were parallel sessions either morning or afternoon on each of the three days. This was the first Symposium which was actually referred to as the National Symposium; the Board noted that it was to be called “the 6th National Symposium, held in 1959." There were 58 papers contributed by 137 authors with about 40 different affiliations; eight papers were from universities and ten from foreign countries. Erwin Muller gave a talk on the “Field Emission Microscope” at the banquet which was attended by 500 members and included wives.  Over a hundred members attended the Business  Meeting, at which Ken Hickman and Rudy Koehler were awarded Life Memberships. Closed circuit TV was available in the hotel for advertising the Symposium events; for an hour per day for the three days of the Symposium, the cost was about $150. 

For the 1960 Symposium in Cleveland, the “Call for Papers” was published in the very first issue of the Newsletter; papers were requested on “Production of Vacuum”, “Components of Vacuum Systems”, “Measurement and Maintenance of Vacuum”, “Applications of Vacuum”, and “Basic Science”. The deadline for receipt of the manuscript was four months before the Symposium, and there were complaints that this was much too early for the work presented at the Symposium to be new! The registration fee, which included a copy of the Transactions, had increased to $35; the fee for the Ladies Program was $15, including flowers! Because of the increasing number of papers, there were parallel sessions throughout the meeting,  except for Friday afternoon. However, this was obviously not well received because no parallel sessions were to be permitted at future Symposia, but 1961 was exempted because it was combined with the International Vacuum Congress. There was also a panel discussion, chaired by Don Santeler, on “Pressure Measurements -Their Apparatus & Techniques”, The five papers given by the panel members were published both in the Transactions and in a special supplement for members, which also contained a summary of the discussion. The banquet was preceded by a one hour reception; a photograph of the formal “President’s receiving line” was included in the Transactions. The banquet speaker was Ira H Abbott who spoke on  “NASA Ames Research Activities”. Apparently a highlight of the symposium was a film from Bell Telephone Labs showing an imploding glass chamber! 

New ground was broken in 1961 in Washington, D.C. when the Symposium was combined with the Second International Vacuum Congress and a Vacuum Equipment Exhibit was initiated. In March, 1960, the International Organization for Vacuum Science and Technology (IVOST), which became the International Union of Vacuum, Technique and Applications (IUVSTA) in 1962, accepted an AVS invitation to combine their triennial Congress with the 1961 Symposium. A measure of the changing times is that an invitation to host the Congress must now be submitted more than 6 years before the event! 

The combination of the Second International Vacuum Congress (IVC-2)  and the 8th National Symposium resulted in a meeting which was roughly double the size of the preceding symposia. The program booklet  was printed in a 6x9.5 inch format. About 1800 people from 20 nations registered for the joint meeting with another 200 registering only for the exhibit; there were also 100 ladies in the “Ladies Program”. A sum of $6000 was available to aid foreign scientists to attend; the program committee had obtained commitments of $2000 each from the Army, Navy and Air Force which was mostly in the form of free transport via Military Air Transport Services. To accommodate the large number of papers, two or three parallel sessions were scheduled during the week. The new film Introduction to High Vacuum was shown throughout the week and at the Wednesday evening banquet, at which the speaker was A. Kantrowitz of Avco-Everett Research Lab on “Engineering Implications of Plasma Dynamics”; about 800 people attended the banquet. 

The Vacuum Equipment Exhibit held in conjunction with the IVC-2 was intended to provide a showcase for the newest in vacuum technology, which it did very successfully, as well as providing additional revenue. Eighty companies occupied 90 booths. A guidebook to the technical exhibits contained booth locations, descriptions of the exhibitors’ equipment and advertising; advertising rates were $100 per page, $55 for a half-page and $30 for a quarter-page. At least 3000 copies of the 7-1/4x10 inch format book were printed. The net income from this book went to the IOVST (now IUVSTA).  

The success of the Exhibit led the Board to consider making it an annual event and the 1961 Business Meeting voted to poll the membership by mail. Of the 541 members who voted, which was about 50% of the membership, only 25 were against an exhibit, 83 favored an annual exhibit, 321 preferred alternate years and 104 wanted one only every third year. The Board decided in May, 1962 to take the course favored by the majority. 

One concern in 1961 was the rental cost of the projectors for the talks and the Purchased Equipment Committee was established to determine whether AVS should own this equipment. This discussion has been repeated every few years as these costs continue to climb, but the contract with most hotels and convention centers requires that the equipment be supplied by a local contractor.  

While the annual Symposia were designed to be essentially self-supporting, the triennial International Congress had to provide the major source of income for the  IOVST. The added number of papers at the combined Congress and Symposium substantially increased the cost of publishing the proceedings, especially as the IOVST required that the abstracts and manuscripts be accepted in any of the three official IOVST languages (English, French and German). As a result of the higher costs involved with this meeting, the Board continually emphasized that the Symposium had to be profitable, not just break even! Of course, the income came from the attendees’ registration fees, and, in later years, from the Exhibit. 

The registration fees for these early Symposia were listed in two ways; Plan 1 included admission to the banquet, and the reception which preceded it, and a copy of the Transactions; Plan 2 covered only the technical sessions and the reception. In the first announcement for the 1962 Symposium, Plan 1 cost $39 for members and $44 for non-members; Plan 2 was $15 for members and $20 for non-members. The Transactions could be purchased separately for $18, with a reduced price of $14.50 if they were paid for at the Symposium, about six months before they were actually available.  However, the Plan 1 fees were later increased by $2.50 because of the increased size and cost of the Transactions; the number of papers had increased to 93 from the original estimate of 70.  

There were about 1,300 registrants at the 1962 Symposium in Los Angeles. With the greatly increased number compared to 1960, it was necessary to reverse the earlier decision and papers were given in two parallel sessions. The program book was a 5x8 inch format with a yellow cover. This same format was maintained in following years with a different colored cover; blue in 1963 and green in 1964. The banquet speaker was Robert F. Bacher of the California Inst. of Technology on  “The Impact of Technology on Science” 

The 1963 Symposium in Boston corresponded with the tenth anniversary of the Society and the international appeal of the Symposium was already being demonstrated; of the 182 abstracts submitted, 26 were “foreign”, 86 were from “east coast”, 42 from “west coast” and 25 from the central USA. A summary of the talks given at the 10th National Symposium was given in an article in Physics Today [H.L. Caswell, W.J. Lange and L.E. Preuss, Physics Today p41, July 1964]. The article noted that more than 100 papers were presented in the technical sessions which were attended by 1590 “scientists, engineers, and related technical people” with an additional 800 attending only the exhibit. There were also 100 in the “Ladies program”. The papers were reported in sections on gauges, pumps and components, thin films, friction and cleavage studies at UHV, and high dosage radiation effects on vacuum systems and techniques. It is interesting to note that, while many of the authors came from companies which are still involved in AVS activities (e.g. IBM, Varian, Ultek, CVC, Leybold, Edwards, SAES ), a number represented companies which are no longer represented, or in some cases do not exist (e.g. RCA, Microwave Associates, Bendix, Westinghouse, Mallory, Erie Technological Products. Nuclide Corp). Vincent Schaefer, Director of Research of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at SUNY gave the banquet address on “Adventures in the Atmosphere”. 

The first Vacuum Exhibit at a National Symposium was held in 1963 in Boston. RobRoy Cyr was appointed Exhibit Chairman at the 1962 Annual Meeting and the Committee arranged for the Exhibit to be managed by the Professional Research Institute in Boston for a fee which was 25% of the gross revenue. The response to the announcement of the Exhibit was unexpected; 20 booths were already reserved by January and, by April, it was evident that there would be insufficient space since over 100 exhibitors  had made requests and some of these were for two or three booths. It was decided to draw lots for the available 76 booths, but this was not popular with companies which had exhibited in 1961! They were assured that they would be given preference for booths at the next Exhibit, scheduled for 1965 in New York. As part of the Exhibit, there were tours to two local companies in the Boston area, Kinney Manufacturing and High Voltage Engineering. 

In an article in the first issue of JVST, the President C.J. Blachman, noted that the Symposium was already so large that there were few cities with hotels which were large enough to house it! It was already realized after the 1959 Symposium that the increasing size of the symposium made it necessary to select the sites more than one or two years ahead! It was decided in 1964 that it was now necessary to plan symposia sites five years in advance and Seattle was immediately selected for 1969. However, some of the sites which had already been reserved could not provide adequate space for the Exhibit. Due to space and time limitations, only half of the 166 abstracts submitted for the 1964 Symposium could be accepted; a 50% rejection rate would now be considered unthinkable! The Symposium program was printed in JVST for the first time. A concerted publicity effort was mounted with a press kit sent to all radio and TV stations in New York, as well as the newspapers, and it was also sent to all the national science writers. The banquet speaker was John C. Lilly on “Research with the Bottlenose Dolphin”. Although the Board had decided that there would not be an Exhibit, some companies mounted a “non-authorized exhibit” during the symposium; this may have persuaded the Board that in future the Exhibit should be an annual event! 

Since 1965, the Exhibit has been an integral and important part of every Symposium. In early 1965, AIP’s offer to manage the Exhibit for a fee of 25% of the gross revenue was accepted and, starting with the 12th National Symposium in New York in 1965, every Exhibit has been managed by the American Institute of Physics. The AIP representative until 1995 was Ed Greeley, a fast talking New Yorker who never seemed to have a problem, even in the midst of fighting fires. Sixty-five companies rented 100 booths for the 1965 Exhibit; the revenue was $37,000. This success led the Board to decide to hold the exhibit each year, rather than in alternate years, provided that two-thirds of the exhibitors were in favor. 

For the 1965 Symposium, which was held at the Sheraton Hotel in New York, an epidiascope was provided for projection of diagrams; this was the fore-runner of the overhead projector and required less preparation than the usual lantern slides. Both were replaced by 35mm slides during this first Era; these were cheaper and easier to make but they still required preparation in advance of the meeting. With the introduction of overhead projectors in later years, it became much easier to prepare the visual “aids” just before the presentation and the standards generally declined. Closed circuit television was also available for the first time during this Symposium for listing the session topics! 

For the first time, there were parallel sessions throughout the 1966 Symposium in San Francisco. Up to three parallel sessions were necessary to accommodate the Thin Film Division program in parallel with the Symposium; it was originally planned to be held on the preceding day, as in 1965, but there was no space in the hotel. The Exhibit was held in the Masonic Temple which had marble floors; because the Exhibit traffic was hard on these, AVS received a bill for “refurbishing”. The Temple was at the top of the hill while the technical sessions were held in a hotel at the bottom of the hill; attendees got exercise as well as information. Extended abstracts of the talks, printed on letter size pages and hardbound, were issued to all the attendees but no proceedings were published.  

In 1967, there were a total of 12 sessions. The Exhibit hours were from 9am to 6pm on the first two days and from 9 a.m. till 3 p.m. on the third day. Although there were many small variations tried over the years, it is perhaps surprising that they are not very different from the current practice! 

There were a total of thirteen sessions in 1968, again indicating the growth of the Symposium. The 71 booths had to be squeezed into every available space at the Pittsburgh Hilton and this resulted in serious power outages to some sections of the Exhibit, causing substantial disruption. Ed Greeley’s experience was fully tested in blunting the impact of these space problems so that they did not fall upon the eight members of the Local Arrangements Committee! 

Until 1970 an evening banquet, attended by a respectable fraction of the attendees, was part of every Symposium. The Business Meeting was held during the banquet, ensuring a large attendance at the meeting! Almost 800 attended in 1963. The banquet provided a forum for the introduction of honored guests, Society notables, the new Board, and those responsible for the Symposium arrangements. There was usually a noted speaker, with talks on topics ranging from science to the ascent of Everest; Sir Edmund Hillary was the speaker at San Francisco in 1966. At the head table were the Officers and other luminaries, resplendent in formal dress, in honor of the occasion. A Board motion to allow business suits to be worn was defeated in 1964 but the requirement was relaxed in 1967 when only those seated at the head table were required to wear tuxedos. It was finally abandoned in 1968 when the President, Paul Redhead, made it optional and stated that he would wear a business suit!.   

The possibility of holding the Symposium outside the USA was first raised in 1967 by Paul Redhead. AVS suggested to IUVSTA that the joint AVS/IUVSTA conference be held in Montreal in 1974 but IUVSTA preferred Boston in 1971. The only National Symposium outside the USA was held in Toronto in 1990.

Continued