Era 1: Section 2
1953-1967: The
Formative Era
Publication of papers presented at the National Symposium was implemented for the very first Symposium. For the first ten years, papers were published in Transactions of the Symposium, which were hardbound volumes. After a hiatus of four years, the papers from the 15th Symposium in 1968 were published in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. A newsletter was also started to provide information to members, but was stopped with the start of the Journal, and then restarted in 1968 as it became apparent that the Journal could not provide timely information on events.
Transactions
The initial objective of the Transactions was to record papers presented at the Symposium and to make them available to a wider audience than the attendees, but it also contained summaries of Society activities during the year and decisions made at the Business Meeting.
The first two volumes of the Transactions were printed by the W.M. Welch Manufacturing Company; it already published scientific documents, such as periodic table charts. Both the publication and mailing costs were borne by the company, which was a huge contribution to the new organization. John Durant, the Publishing Committee Chair, and Rudy Koehler traveled to Chicago with the manuscripts and did the final editing at a table in the large room which housed the office operations of the company and was presided over by Dar Welch, who sat at a desk on a dais. The foreword to the first volume included the statement:
‘The past fifteen years have witnessed an amazing growth in the use of vacuum as a processing tool. Because vacuum technique itself is a tool of many different fields, it has always been impossible to define the ever growing group of vacuum “technologists” or “engineers” as chemists and physicists and hence to communicate with them through established professional societies. In fact, some of the workers who have contributed substantially to the field are not professional people and are not eligible for membership in certain professional societies. It is also impossible to identify vacuum technology with one specific industry. Electronics, nucleonics, metallurgy, chemistry, food, pharmaceuticals, plastics, are all users of the vacuum process. No single industrial organization can hope to cover the vacuum field.”
Not all the papers given at the Symposium were published in the Transactions but a paper had to be submitted to the Program Chair before it could be presented. This procedure was originally implemented to ensure that the papers were not just “sales pitches”. The Program Chair was also the editor of the Transactions; George Bancroft was the editor from 1961 to 1963. In his introduction to the 1962 Transactions, he noted that “an attempt to obtain some measure of uniformity of form and use of terms has been made. In the interests of rapid publication, some measure of editorial license has been used, combined with limited opportunity for Authors’ revisions.” However, the papers were not refereed; the technical members were concerned that their papers would be excluded by a refereeing process.
The Transactions of the 3rd through the 8th Symposia were published by Pergamon Press; MacMillan published the Transactions of the 9th and 10th. The publication cost was about $7,000 in 1957. John Durant recalled going to the New York office of Pergamon to discuss whether they could match the quality and cost of the previous volumes. There he met Robert Maxwell, who was called “Captain Bob” by the staff and later went on to become a publishing mogul; even then, he was a “larger than life figure”. Pergamon also had the rights to publish the proceedings of IVC-1 in 1958 and. Maxwell persuaded the Edwards company that Pergamon should publish Vacuum, instead of Edwards, so that Maxwell effectively controlled all vacuum publications. Maxwell actually attended the 1958 Symposium in San Francisco.
Only the abstracts of papers for the 11th Symposium were published in the second issue of the JVST in 1964 [JVST 1 pp 72-88 (1964)]; this meant that manuscripts were not submitted for approval by the program committee, as in the past. The abstracts for the. 12th Symposium were also in JVST [JVST 2, pp 261-292 (1965)]. For the 13th and 14th Symposia, Herbick & Held (Pittsburgh, PA) published "Vacuum Symposium Abstracts", which were given only to attendees; these were printed by photo offset and hardbound. The papers from the 11th-14th Symposia were not published by AVS in any form. Proceedings of the 15th Symposium were published in JVST in 1969. There was thus a four year gap in the publication of proceedings of the Symposium. During this period, the Board encouraged authors to publish in journals of their own choice.
This policy may have been the result of the problems with the publishers of the Transactions concerning the cost and long publication delays, both caused by the rapid growth in the Symposium program. While 102 pages were printed in 1955, 256 pages were required the following year and Pergamon wanted to increase the price from $10 to $15; $12.50 was finally agreed. In 1963, the price was $23 with a reduction to $19 for advance orders. In the very first issue of the Newsletter in 1960, back issues of Transactions were advertised at $10 for 1954 and 1955, $12.50 for 1956 and 1957 and $15 for 1958 and 1959. In early 1957, the Board noted that the Transactions would not be available before the summer but they hoped to “discourage” authors from publishing their papers earlier in a journal. It was announced in the Newsletter that the 1959 Transactions were to be available after April 1, 1960, six months after the Symposium; there was apparently a fire at Pergamon’s facility in London and it was relocated to Oxford. In 1962, the Transactions were not available until 189 days after the Symposium although the President’s address, in the 1962 Symposium program booklet, stated that MacMillan had promised that the Transactions would be available only sixty days after the Symposium!
There was thus renewed discussion of an AVS journal as a solution to these problems, an objective which was fully supported by the Program Committee in 1963.
Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology
The Board had discussed a journal for some time but publication did not seem possible financially until, in 1963, AVS became an Affiliate of the American Institute of Physics, which had a large and well established publishing operation. Luther Preuss, the Publications Chair, and Bill Lange were actually visiting AIP to discuss the publication of the journal on the day President Kennedy was shot. Lange had become a Director after expressing his concern to Preuss, and the Board, that high quality papers should be thoroughly refereed and archival. The journal was initially published, bimonthly, by the American Institute of Physics for the AVS.
In March, 1964, the new Journal was announced in the Newsletter as the Journal of the American Vacuum Society but the title was changed to “Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology” (JVST) at the suggestion of Bill Lange. Bill visited Daniel Alpert, at the University of Illinois, in early 1964, to persuade him to accept the position of Editor; he had known Alpert when they were both at Westinghouse and felt that his stature and reputation in the vacuum community would lend credibility to the journal. Alpert agreed to become Editor for two years, on condition that Frank Propst, who was also at the University of Illinois, be appointed as Associate Editor to manage the day-to-day work. Thus, operationally, Frank was the first editor of JVST, and then had the formal title of Editor from 1967 till 1969. The first issue of the journal, which contained only 77 pages, was published on September 17, 1964. The second issue followed on November 17. The subscription price was $10 for members and $14 for non-members.
Apart from papers, JVST also contained “announcements” which included information on Society activities. For example, the first issue contained the programs for the 1964 National Symposium and the new Thin Film Division one-day symposium which was held on the day before the National Symposium. Since these announcements were now being published in JVST, publication of the Newsletter appeared unnecessary and it ceased at the end of 1964. However, it was restarted in 1968 to provide timely information on AVS events to the members. The first issue of JVST in 1968 stated that regular announcements to the scientific community should continue to be submitted to the Journal since the Newsletter was only sent to members, The “Announcements” section in JVST was discontinued in 1978 and this type of information was published only in the Newsletter. In fact, even before 1978, there was decreasing space devoted to announcements. However, the program for the Symposium continued to be published in JVST.
In 1966, extended abstracts of the papers given at the Symposium were printed in JVST with the introduction that this “represents a new approach to the problem of satisfying both the authors and the attendees. Authors prefer to either publish complete results in archival journals or write only an abstract for orally presented material, Attendees, on the other hand, would like to have more complete notes on the papers.” A new publication policy was announced in 1967; starting with the 1968 Symposium, the proceedings would be published as a supplement to JVST and only papers accepted for publication would be presented.
The JVST editors, their tenures and the highlights of their tenures are indicated here. The various eras in the history of the AVS closely overlap the tenures of the various editors. An account of this first era was given by Schleuning. The JVST has served as a major vehicle for accomplishing the Society’s strategic objectives in each era.
The JVST was very small (referred to as a “comic book” by some at the time) prior to the decision to publish the proceedings of the 1968 National Symposium in the 1969 volume; This tripled the total number of pages and increased from 17 to 648 the number of pages devoted to Symposium proceedings. The increase in published pages during the 1970s was largely due to the explosion of surface science during this decade, but many of these papers were captured as symposia proceedings rather than contributed papers. In the early 1980s the number of contributed papers rose markedly associated with the JVST becoming the home for papers on the scientific basis of the semiconductor electronics industry. At the same time the number of symposia proceedings in the microelectronics area exploded due to the concerted efforts of the newly founded Electronic Materials and Processing Division to sponsor conferences and symposia in this area. Vossen and Hammond have given an account of these events. Because of the expansion of the AVS into the process science and technology of microelectronics, by the mid 1980s the JVST was on a track of rapid growth that persisted into the late 1990s.
As befitting a technical journal sponsored by a scientific society, the scope of papers considered was greatly expanded over the Transactions. Papers initially were invited in three categories: contributed papers on original research; review papers, and short communications. Modeled on the Journal of the Optical Society of America, the JVST originally invited submissions on the topics of “fundamental and applied vacuum science”.
With the maturing of the AVS, the scope of papers published in the JVST expanded. Papers on thin films were solicited upon formation of the Thin Film Division in 1964. Nevertheless, from 1964 to 1968 JVST exhibited limited growth. In 1968, however, the first AVS National Symposium in the modern format (i.e., encompassing a technical program, Exhibit and short courses) was sponsored and its proceedings were published in the JVST, tripling the size of the journal in the year (1969) in which it was published. These proceedings, edited by Paul Redhead, caused the big increase in the size of the journal in 1969. This opened the door for the publication of other symposia proceedings, including those of the 1969 International Conference on Thin Films and the Second International Vacuum Metallurgy Conference in 1970. Publication of conference proceedings in the JVST was in great demand, because a publication in an archival journal was considered to be a different class of publication than a “mere” conference proceeding for the purposes of government grants and tenure considerations in academia. Therefore, the editors were able to increase significantly the archival requirements for these papers, and to demand that the refereeing be comparable to that of contributed papers. This produced two great benefits for the AVS: the quality of archival record of its annual and sponsored symposia sky-rocketed and the JVST was launched on its way to becoming a major scientific journal.
Another vital policy of the JVST formulated in this era was that of providing a subscription to all AVS members as a condition of membership. Much debated by numerous boards over the years, this policy had three enormously beneficial effects on the society. First, it immediately increased the circulation of the JVST by factors of two or three over the subscription base to libraries (“non-member” subscriptions). This did wonders for the attractiveness of the JVST as a place to publish and for the desire of these authors to insist that their library acquire a subscription to the journal. Second, it placed the JVST in the hands of numerous vacuum technologists and technicians, who otherwise would have had little inclination or access to the journal. This had the effect of diffusing the learning about vacuum technology much more rapidly than otherwise would have been the case, setting the stage for the rapid rise in AVS membership and programs during the late 1970s and 1980s. Finally, the resulting wide circulation made the JVST a desirable place for equipment manufacturers to advertise, thereby not only enhancing the financial stability of the journal but also rendering the AVS a more hospitable home for the vendors of vacuum equipment.
Finally, the JVST became a vehicle for promulgating vacuum standards through its publication of standards formulated by the AVS Standards Committee. These standards encompassed a wide range of topics, e.g., nomenclature, flanges, gauges, pumps valves, gas analyzers, traps, etc., essential for the growth of the vacuum equipment industry. This further enhanced the value of AVS to this industry and to technicians in the field.
Thus, in the formative era the foundation was laid for the JVST to become financially and technically successful, an important vehicle for AVS outreach to new audiences (e.g., the thin film, vacuum metallurgy and surface science communities), and a major source of the diffusion of knowledge about vacuum science and technology, including standards, to the practicing vacuum scientists and technicians in the field. Nevertheless, much was yet to be done to establish the JVST as a prominent technical journal.
Newsletter
Starting in 1960, a Newsletter was published to inform the members of future meetings and activities. The first issue, which was undated, reported on the 1959 Symposium in Philadelphia; it noted that the attendance increased by almost 50% over 1958. It also included a call for papers for the 1960 Symposium, listing the preferred topics, and advertised the Transactions for previous Symposia. This first issue of the Newsletter had been planned for 1959 but was not issued until the date for the 1960 Symposium was confirmed.
From 1961, it carried the banner on a blue background at the top of the first page: AVS NEWSLETTER, Published by: THE AMERICAN VACUUM SOCIETY: Box 1282, Boston 9, Massachusetts. It usually consisted of one, double-sided, page and some issues included a photograph of the Symposium banquet speaker or the President-Elect. It provided information on the Symposium, membership, Section and Chapter meetings, etc. However, the December, 1963 issue had four pages, because it contained the announcement of the new journal with the first issue to be published in June, 1964. An “Information for Contributors” sheet was also enclosed to encourage members to submit papers to the new journal. Since the Editor had not yet been appointed, manuscripts were to be submitted to the Publications Committee chair, Luther Preuss. The invitation to members and symposium speakers to submit papers was repeated in April, 1964 when Daniel Alpert was featured as the Editor of JVST; his photograph was included. In the June, 1964 Newsletter, publication of the first issue of JVST was announced as September, 1964 and the new Editorial Board was listed.
The May, 1961 issue introduced the 1961 Symposium plenary speaker, and reported that 200 abstracts had been submitted and about 180 papers would be given, in topical areas of vacuum systems, vacuum measurements, thin films, surface phenomena, UHV and space simulation. It contained a report on the activities of the Standards Committee and details of the guidebook for the “technical exhibits” at the 1961 Symposium and IVC-2. The first page of the July issue was an obituary for C. Robert Meissner, the inventor of the Meissner trap, who had been due to take office as President at the 1961 Business Meeting but died on June 16; AVS made a donation to a memorial fund at Georgia Institute of Technology. The AVS budget for the period January 1, 1960 to July 31, 1961 was also printed in that issue. The December, 1961 issue contained a complete listing of the 1961 Standing and Special Committees.
The April, 1962 issue had a “lost and found” item; the Treasurer was looking for membership dues which had not been paid and the Secretary for seven members whose mail had been returned!
Some issues of the Newsletter also carried a report to the members from the President. Luther Preuss outlined progress in various areas in the September 1962 issue; one item was the formation of the Northwest Section.
The December, 1963 Newsletter contained reviews of four new vacuum related books; “Handbook of High Vacuum Engineering” by H.A. Steinherz, “Vacuum Technology” by Andrew Guthrie, Ultrahigh Vacuum and Its Applications” by Richard W. Roberts and Thomas A. Vanderslice, and “High Vacuum Engineering” by A.E. Barrington. All the authors except Barrington were AVS members and both Steinherz and Guthrie had had important roles in AVS.
The November, 1964 issue, which was the last of the first series of the Newsletter, included a call for papers for the Third International Vacuum Congress in Stuttgart in 1965 and included a questionnaire to determine the demand for a group flight for members who planned to attend. It noted that notices pertaining to the membership would now be published in the Announcements Section of the JVST. However, occasional publication was possible to communicate with the members on an urgent basis. It appears that there was no such urgent need until 1967 when two, undated, issues provided information to members about a charter flight to England for the 4th International Vacuum Congress in Manchester. However, the Newsletter was restarted as a regular publication in April, 1968.
In this issue, the Newsletter’s mission was stated as “In order to provide a flexible informal media for the use of the societies membership [sic], the AVS Newsletter is again being published. Our plans are to publish… on a bimonthly basis as before. Publication will be made on even months of the year as membership requirements dictate. Regular announcements to the scientific community should be submitted to the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology; however, duplication of these announcements in the AVS Newsletter is appropriate if the contributor so desires.”
The format was the same as the earlier publications but now contained four pages instead of two, although the April, 1968 issue had only three printed pages. The banner was the same as the earlier publication except that the official address was now 335 East 45th Street, New York, New York 10017. In later issues that year, “Edited by N.G. Wilson” was added. Norm was also the Chair of the Publicity Committee; the Chair had been responsible for the publication of the earlier Newsletters. The December, 1968 issue contained a photograph of the AVS Officers and guests at the 15th Annual Symposium.
The first issue after the revival of the Newsletter, in April, 1968, highlighted the increase in membership from 2,000 in 1964 to 2,700 in 1967 and the increase from five to eight Sections, as well as the potential new Surface Science Division. It also contained reports and announcements of Section and Division meetings. The formation of the Central States Chapter was announced in the December, 1968 issue, along with the announcement and the rules for the newly approved Senior Membership category.
From 1968, a calendar of conferences, Section and Chapter meetings was included in the Newsletter. The December issue carried a request from the Editor that all officers advise him of all pertinent meetings. This plea has been repeated many times throughout the Newsletter history!
From the beginning, education was a major concern of the Society. During the founding meeting in 1953, Harold Schleuning noted that he would like to have a vacuum course, which was given at Westinghouse, made available at his institution, Brooklyn Polytechnic. The Education Committee soon conducted a survey to determine to what extent courses in vacuum technology, both theoretical and practical, were being given in the various institutions throughout the country. The survey showed that such courses were rarely given, which was not surprising since vacuum techniques were mainly used in commercial operations, such as in the manufacture of incandescent lamps and electronic tubes. The expansion of this tube business followed a war-time boom in the use of electronic devices and the tube manufacturers were interested in obtaining low pressure and cleaner conditions in their tubes. Vacuum techniques were actually being taught internally by experienced personnel connected with those companies.
The evolution of the AVS Short Course program is discussed below in a separate section. Although a formal program of courses was not started until early in Era 2, the Education Committee also explored various options for expanding the teaching of vacuum technology, not only in the USA but overseas. Five scholarships, each worth $100, were provided to San Jose City College in 1966 for vacuum technology and a brochure was prepared to interest high schools and junior colleges in teaching vacuum courses. In 1967, the Committee made a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for shared funding of a two week summer school for junior college teachers but NSF would not support such a short summer school. In 1966, a grant of $1,000 was provided to Rafael Pasternak for the purchase of equipment for a vacuum technology course at Sarder Vallabhai University in India.
To reach as wide an audience as possible, the Education Committee, with considerable financial support from the vacuum industry, produced in 1962 a 20-minute 16mm color film, entitled “Introduction to High Vacuum” which was shown for the first time at the 1961 Symposium. The film could be purchased for $73.50 from Audio Productions Inc. The April 1962 Newsletter noted that the film had aroused so much interest that three copies had been purchased by AVS to be lent out for training purposes. The Atomic Energy Commission also had copies for loan at ten locations in the USA (New York, Washington, Savannah River, Oak Ridge, Chicago, Idaho, Washington State, Grand Junction, Albuquerque and San Francisco), as well as in London, Brussels, Tokyo and Buenos Aires. In 1962, the film was featured at the annual meeting of the American Society for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Philadelphia.
The demand for rental or purchase of the film encouraged Charles Gould, the Education Committee Chairman, to suggest that three more films be made on leak detection, thin-film techniques and vacuum metallurgy. Industrial support was sought for a second film, “Principles and Techniques of Leak Detection”, and by April, 1963, $12,000 had been pledged. Gould undertook to direct and produce the film which was completed by Calvin Films in 1965 at a cost of $10,000, and was shown for the first time at the 1965 symposium; it ran for 18 minutes.
Both films were transferred to video tape in 1989 but the film on leak detection was recently replaced by a new version.
The AVS also had for loan a 16mm black and white film, made by Bell Telephone Labs, on implosion studies of glass bulbs.
About the time the Society was being founded in 1953, engineers in the Berkeley Radiation Lab at the University of California recognized a need for a vacuum manual, an informal notebook for transferring information gained from Physics/Engineering texts and practical experience. Hugh Smith, an engineer who would later found the Temescal Corporation, set about creating such a vacuum notebook which would be the seed from which the AVS course on Vacuum Technology would grow. In 1960 Bill Brunner and Howard Patton expanded on the notebook and formal courses on Vacuum Technology were given at the Livermore Radiation Laboratory (later renamed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). By 1963, the course was also being given at local vacuum meetings and was an accredited course in the Hayward Community College system. A “Vacuum Technology” course was also given at the San Jose City College in 1965.
In 1965, the Southwestern Vacuum Group sponsored a local symposium with a two-day “Vacuum Technology” course. Bill Brunner and Howard Patton were the instructors for about forty attendees split into two sessions; each attendee received a ten page notebook. Visual aids for the course were provided using a blackboard! At the same time, unaware of the California activities, the Education Committee was collecting material for a “Vacuum Technology” course.
At the same time, the New Mexico Section was already offering courses. During its first meeting in the spring of 1964, a number of topics from vacuum technology were taught in 1-hour segments; Len Beavis, who was already teaching courses at Sandia National Labs, taught the partial pressure analysis segment and, about 1966, he began to teach “Vacuum Technology” at Section meetings in Albuquerque and Los Alamos.
Paul Bryant and Charles Gosselin, at the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City, gave a series of educational seminars at NASA installations during 1966 and a five-day mass spectrometry course at UCLA in 1966 was announced in JVST. In 1967, the Education Committee had outlines for vacuum courses from San Jose City College and the University of Alberta; the latter course was taught by Vivienne Harwood, who would play a large part in the AVS course program in the next era.
The first courses offered by the AVS were organized in conjunction with the Instrument Society of America. The following summary of this initial course activity appeared in the December, 1968 issue of the Newsletter.
“At the time of the Fifteenth National Vacuum Symposium in Pittsburgh in late October, the American Vacuum Society and the Instrument Society of America sponsored a short course on Vacuum Instrumentation and Technology. The course was a two-day symposium to convey some of the fundamental aspects of vacuum work to technicians working in the field.
The original plan was to have a group of about 40 technicians involved, but all estimates of interest in the program were greatly exceeded. Ultimately 140 people were enrolled, and the course had to be offered in two sections. Mr. John Kurtz of IBM was in charge, and special lectures were given by Paul R. Redhead and H.W. Schleuning. From all of the evidence now at hand, this experiment was highly successful and demonstrated the need for conveying this type of material to people working at the technician level. The participants came from fourteen different states and represented an interesting cross section of work assignment. Although the majority of the people were technicians, there were physicists, chemists, engineers, sales engineers, and glass blowers represented in the enrolment. Mr. Kurtz' notes for this course are now being prepared in outline form and shortly will be available by contacting the Vacuum Society office in New York City. Because of the great interest demonstrated at the Pittsburgh meeting, it is quite possible that similar courses will be offered at subsequent Vacuum Society meetings. Some of the Sections have expressed an interest in conducting such programs in their localities, and the Education Committee stands ready to assist them by providing information or limited financial support. It would seem that a short course of this type can only provide a basic introduction to some of the important concepts and techniques in vacuum science and technology, and follow-up programs should be developed so that the initial foundation can be built upon. It is hoped that those who might be interested in conducting such programs will devote considerable thought to possible mechanisms for developing a continuing educational process for the people who might participate in these short course programs. The Chairman of the Education Committee, Dean John A. Dillon, Jr., (University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky), will be happy to provide any information for Sections or other groups interested in this type of program.”
Similar training courses were held during 1968 in Dallas and Cleveland, and in the Delaware Valley, New England, and the Seattle areas; there was also interest within the Central States Chapter for courses for technician training and university level courses in the Kansas City area. A credit course on Vacuum Science and Technology was given at Portland State College in 1968; it was sponsored by AVS and the Portland Center for Continuing Education.
With this base of interest and activity, the course program was to grow substantially during Era 2.
Standards and Recommended Practices
One of the driving forces for the formation of the Society was the development of tentative standards for a wide variety of procedures and equipment. The work expended on these standards was exceedingly detailed, and it required considerable intestinal fortitude to bring them to the stage where they could be offered to an often contentious, and even nitpicking, Board of Directors for final approval. Ben Dayton, the first Standards Committee Chair, recalled the considerable delays in getting a draft of leak detection standards due to the number of revisions by a sub-committee, the Standards Committee and then the Board! The satisfaction derived by committee members in developing these standards came from the undeniable fact that many were urgently needed by industry and by the users of vacuum equipment, and thus the committee performed a vital service for the benefit of the entire vacuum technology community. Such standards are purely informal and carry no national or international authority; in the United States only the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) can establish such standards. Before 1969, the AVS “standards” were submitted to the United States of America Standards Institute (USASI) which was the US member of the International Standards Organization (ISO).
A Standards Committee Chair, Ben Dayton, was appointed at the formative meeting of the CVT in 1953. In a paper on standards for pump performance at the Cambridge Conference, he had mentioned the sad state of nomenclature and the first standard prepared by the Committee, “Standards and Nomenclature,” was printed by Pergamon Press in 1958 and sold to members for $2 per copy. The third draft of the standard was discussed at the 1st Symposium. In the very first issue of the Newsletter in 1960, it was advertised as the “Glossary of Vacuum Terms” at a reduced price of $1.00. Don Santeler suggested, in 1959, that the AVS become a member of the American Standards Association; the fee was about $200.
A report on the activities of the Standards Committee was included in the May, 1961 issue of the Newsletter. The Instrument Society of America (ISA) had established a measurement standards division and I.P. Fish was appointed to serve as liaison between AVS and ISA. Charles Bachman was investigating the feasibility of translating standards which had been adopted by the Vacuum Society of Japan. In 1962, AVS was asked to participate in the ASTM committee on Vacuum Standardization and a long association with ASTM resulted. The April, 1962 issue of the Newsletter announced that the NBS Monograph 35 “Bibliography and Index on Vacuum and Low Pressure Measurement” was available for $0.60; it contained over 1500 references to relevant articles, starting with a paper on the McLeod gauge [H. McLeod, Phil. Mag. 48, 110-112 (1874)].
A “Pumping Speed Curves” standard was issued in 1963; it was a 50 page collection of ten standards on the speed and pressure of mechanical and vapor pumps, and for leak detection calibration. One copy was free to members on request, with a $1.50 charge for additional copies. In 1965, standards for Graphic Symbols were released.
It was decided in 1965 that all future standards should be published in the JVST, including those which had previously been published elsewhere. “Method of Measuring the Warm up and Cool down Characteristics of Oil-Diffusion Pumps” and “Standard Helium Mass-spectrometer Leak-Detector Calibration” were printed in Volume 3 of JVST in 1966.
In 1966, concerns were raised about the legal liability of AVS with respect to providing standards. Although no action was taken at the time, the issue recurred twenty years later and resulted in the change from “standards” to “recommended practices” because AVS cannot set standards; only government institutions can do so.
From the beginning of AVS, the participants represented a range of interests; some were interested in better means of pumping and measuring low pressures while others were more interested in the applications of the vacuum technology, such as in optical coating, than in the means of achieving a vacuum. The formation of sub-groups, such as space simulation and vacuum metallurgy, was first considered in 1960. as was cooperation between AVS and other organizations, such as vacuum coaters. Although there was initially a desire to maintain a cohesive group with strong interaction between the providers of vacuum technology and the users of that technology in the whole range of applications, the increasing number of participants and their range of interests resulted in the establishment of Divisions. The governance of each Division mirrors that of the AVS Board, as mandated by the Constitution and the Bylaws of each Division.
In 1960, R.F. Bunshah wrote a letter to a number of companies to propose that a group which had organized annual Vacuum Metallurgy Conferences since 1957 form a vacuum metallurgy organization. Ben Dayton saw a copy of the letter and suggested to the Board that the group become a Section within the AVS instead. The Society for Vacuum Coaters had already been formed and Dayton wanted to avoid another split in the vacuum community. He visited Bunshah at New York University and persuaded him that this was the best arrangement. The 1960 Vacuum Metallurgy Conference, which was held 2-3 June, 1960 on the University Heights Campus of New York University, was advertised in the first issue of the Newsletter. The Board was persuaded that the inclusion of this group was in the best interests of both AVS and the metallurgy group, but the AVS Constitution had to be changed to include a division; until this change was approved at the 1961 Business Meeting, the Vacuum Metallurgy section was considered a special committee of the society. With approval of the changes, the Vacuum Metallurgy Division (VMD) became the first division within the AVS.
By May, 1962, only 12 of the 1,121 AVS members were VMD members but this had increased to 48 by August. The new division continued the Vacuum Metallurgy Conference as its annual symposium, since there was limited overlap in the interests of the attendees at this meeting and the AVS Annual Symposium. The 1961 conference was again held in New York; details of other VMD activities are included in the Division history; topics included both melting and the deposition of bulk coatings. In subsequent eras, the latter topic came to dominate interests of the Division members, resulting eventually in a change of the the Division’s name to Advanced Surface Engineering in Era 4.
The Thin Film Division (TFD) was formed at the AVS Symposium in Boston on October 16, 1963 after a petition championed by Klaus Behrndt, who was appointed by the Board as Chairman for a two-year term. The formation was announced in the December, 1963 issue of the Newsletter, which stated the mission as “to provide a continuing forum, accessible to its members as well as other persons active or interested in the field of Thin Films, to foster an improved understanding of films, their properties and mechanisms of growth, and to promote the dissemination of that understanding”. Klaus Behrndt had played a key role in conceiving of, and organizing, the new division despite considerable resistance from some members who felt that this might lead to a transformation of AVS from a technical into a "Scientific” society.
Maurice Francombe, who was the first TFD Secretary-Treasurer, recalls that Behrndt was a born organizer with tremendous energy and imagination, but unfortunately was also rather abrasive. In addition to the formation of the TFD and other contributions to AVS, he was responsible for initiating the Gordon Conference Thin Film Series in 1966, and was one of the four organizers of the first of the series “International Conference on Thin Films (ICTF)” which was held in Boston in 1969; the others were R.W. Hoffman, C.A. Neugebauer and M. H. Francombe, It was through Behrndt’s efforts that IUPAP sponsorship for the ICTF series was obtained, beginning with the ICTF-2 in Venice in 1972.
The newly formed TFD immediately had 173 members, of whom 67 joined AVS as a result of the formation of the Division, and accounted for about 10% of the total AVS membership. The first TFD Newsletter was actually mailed in November, 1963! On the day preceding the 1964 National Symposium, the TFD organized a special session of seven invited papers; 400 people attended the session and it was estimated that up to 600 of the symposium attendees were mainly interested in thin film topics. From 1964 until 1968, except for 1966, the TFD ran a separate one-day symposium, devoted to thin-film topics, on the day preceding the Symposium; in 1966, the TFD symposium was held in parallel with the national Symposium because there was no available space on the preceding day. Abstracts of the invited talks at the TFD symposia were published in JVST. In March 1965, the Division held a joint symposium with the American Physical Society during their Solid State Physics meeting in Kansas City.
In 1965, the AVS Board approved the formation of Chapters of the Divisions. The Greater New York Chapter and the Southern California Chapter of the TFD was both formed in 1966.
The CVT was originally formed in the eastern United States, but local interest in the Society was such that regional groups were formed to organize meetings and conferences on topics which were of interest to members in that area. These were called Sections through 1970; the name was changed to Chapters in 1971. Until then, Chapters meant either a regional group of a Division or a geographic sub-section of a Section.
The Pacific Northwest (PNW) Section was the first approved by the AVS Board, in 1962; Roland LaPelle was appointed as Chair. A one-day seminar, with 120 attendees, was held in Seattle on May 4, 1962; there were talks by Norman Milleron and Don Santeler. A dinner meeting was held in Seattle in September; V Hughes gave a talk on “The State-of-the-Art of Thin Film Technology.” In the February, 1963 issue of the Newsletter, the Secretary-Treasurer, Martin Lerner, reported that there were 62 attendees at the Section’s second meeting, which was was held in Portland on November 30, 1962 and that another meeting was to be held in Albany on January 25, 1963. In 1971, the PNW Section became the PNW Chapter; details of its history are given in the PNW History.
In the September, 1963 issue of the Newsletter, there were short reports on the activities in five regions; although only the PNW Section had been officially constituted, there were four budding Sections. Both the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic Sections were approved by the Board on October 15, 1963 and the Northern California Section was approved in 1964; the fourth area was the Southwest which was not in fact formed until 1968.
An organizational meeting for the Midwest Section was held in Kansas City on June 27, 1963; there were 100 attendees and six papers were presented. The proposed Section would serve a large region from the Mississippi Valley in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west and a number of representatives from the “extremities”of the section, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Alabama and Texas attended the meeting and were in the initial Organization Committee, whose members were Paul Bryant and Charles Gosselin from Kansas City, John C Harvey from Iowa, Kelvin S. Horr from Boulder, Jackson C. Horton from Huntsville, Alabama, Eliot Kerlin from Fort Worth, Texas, J.H. Kimzey from Houston, David Lichtman from Minnesota and Jim McDowell from Sandia, Albuquerque. The Midwest Section was approved in 1963, with Paul Bryant as chair.
It was recognized that the sections were too large geographically for frequent interactions between groups in different locations. The Midwest Section was particularly large and soon spawned a number of Sections and Chapters, some of which still exist. The President, Charles Bachman, visited Boulder, Minneapolis and Albuquerque, all within the very large area covered by the Midwest Section, and reported that groups in Boulder and Minneapolis had decided to hold organizational meetings, and that, in Albuquerque, he had attended a dinner meeting at which a group had decided to form a New Mexico Section. The New Mexico Section was formed in 1964, reducing the area covered by the Midwest Section. In 1967, a Los Alamos Chapter of the New Mexico Section was approved. In 1971, these formed the New Mexico Chapter.
The Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Midwest Section was approved in 1967. At the 6th annual meeting of the Midwest Section in 1968, the Great Lakes Chapter was formed. It was sponsored by Argonne National Lab and intended to stage weekly lectures at Argonne. Monthly meetings of the Midwest Section were to be held at different locations, and the Central States Chapter held its first meeting on 24 October, 1968 at Kansas State University. A Southern States technical group led by R Craig Jenner held a meeting in Oklahoma City on Dec 12, 1968; 14 attendees heard a talk by Karl Johnson of Los Alamos on “The Metallurgy of the Actinide Elements and Associated Vacuum Problems”. A second meeting was held on March 26, 1969 at which Bob Park gave a talk on LEED.
A series of informal meetings had been held during 1962 in the Virgina-D.C.-Maryland area and draft By-laws for the proposed Mid-Atlantic States Section had been circulated in 1963 in preparation for a dinner meeting on September 19, 1963. The Newsletter reminded members to cast their ballot to ratify the By-laws and establish the section. The Section was approved in 1963 with K. Wear as the Chair. In 1971, the Mid-Atlantic States Section became the Mid-Atlantic States Chapter.
The group which formed the Northern California Section had about 200 members and held its first general meeting on February 14, 1963; after a discussion of aims and objectives of forming a Section, C.M. Van Atta gave a talk on “Vacuum Technology in Controlled Fusion Research.” Following a letter ballot in April, about 100 members attended the second general meeting, in Silicon Valley, on May 20, 1963; the officers were installed, with J.M. Khan as the Chair, and Paul Redhead gave a talk on “Problems in the Measurement of Low Pressures.” The third meeting was on June 24; Norm Milleron spoke on “The Clean Vacuum System” and a committee under the direction of Bill Brunner from LLNL was formed to promote a short course program. The Northern California Section began official operation in 1964. It became the Northern California Chapter (NCCAVS) in 1971 and went on to become the largest AVS Chapter.
The Southwest Vacuum Group had begun operating in April 1963 when about 150 people attended a dinner meeting, at which Don Santeler gave a talk; Raymond Chuan and Norm Milleron were the speakers at meetings in May and June. Elmer Carvey was one of the main driving forces in the formation of this Group. Elmer had become involved in the vacuum industry in 1961, when three scientists from Hughes Research chased a milk truck to find a company that could make large stainless steel vessels. They ended up talking to Elmer who was the chief engineer at the C.E. Howard Co., where he worked for 35 years, starting in 1947. He built them a 5 ft. diameter, 10 ft. long chamber for Hughes’ Ion Engine Project; a later project included a 65 ft. diameter, 135 ft. long Space Chamber for NASA. The Southern California Chapter’s student award is named for Elmer Carvey. At a business meeting in July, 1963, a 10-member executive committee was formed with Raymond Chuan as Chair and several members were to attend the AVS symposium in Boston to discuss formation of a section, but, after a visit to the Group in 1964, the President concluded that there was no interest in forming an AVS Section. However, by 1965, about 100 members of the Group voted to join AVS and, in January, 1966, the Southwest Section was approved, with Robert Hoffman as Chair. The Southwest Section held its 1st Annual Symposium at the Grand Hotel in Anaheim in May, 1968. In 1971, it became the Southern California Chapter.
The Delaware Valley Section was approved in 1964 with Dick Denton as the Chair. On May 16, 1968, the Section and the Thin Film Division's New York Chapter held a joint Symposium at the RCA Laboratories in Princeton with the theme, "The Practical Aspects of Vacuum and Thin-Film Technology”.
In 1966, the President visited all the Sections, except for the Pacific Northwest, to attend their meetings and he reported that all showed good activity.
The establishment of a Southeast Section was first proposed in 1967 by J.D. Anderson, who was based in Florida. At a meeting attended by 61 people on January 16, 1968, a decision was taken to form a New England Chapter (and Section) and this was approved in February, with R M Oman as the first chair. The Board was informed at the same time of activities to form new sections or chapters in Upstate New York, with Mathew Keehan as the driving force, in the Southern States with R. Craig Jenner and in Texas with Frank A. Knox.
The Sections initially levied dues against their members, but this mode of operation was changed in 1968 and the Sections were then funded from the AVS revenue, using a formula based upon the number of members and the number and type of meetings held each year.
The operation of the Society has required interactions with other organizations, including federal and state governments, other scientific and engineering societies, and international organizations. Several of these have been extremely important to AVS.
Government Interactions
In this Era, there were few interactions with government apart from obtaining incorporation from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, first as the CVT and then as AVS. However, A. John Gale, who was then still a British citizen, did chastise the immigration service for not providing visas for two Russians who were scheduled to give papers at the 1958 Symposium in San Francisco; he managed to persuade them and the Russians arrived, only one day late.
In 1964, The InterSociety Group on Space Simulation asked for AVS cooperation in determining requirements for vacuum testing and Don Santeler undertook this task. In 1966, the Department of Commerce asked for assistance in identifying papers for the “International Conference on High Vacuum in Electronics” which was to be held in April, 1967 at the US Embassy in London in support of an exhibit of vacuum equipment, which was intended to stimulate trade. A technical program committee was established but the conference apparently never took place. In 1967, NASA approached AVS for display space at the Annual Symposium; although exhibit space was at a premium, the display was accommodated in the registration area.
Interactions with Societies
There were some important interactions with scientific organizations, particularly with the American Institute of Physics (AIP), which was represented at the founding meeting of the CVT. The agreements with AIP to provide administrative services, to manage the symposium exhibit, and for publication of the JVST, have already been discussed.
The AVS had been invited in 1958 by the AIP to become an affiliate 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. Thus began a continuous association with AIP which has generally been very useful to AVS but has also encountered some obstacles along the way! Within this arrangement the AIP was the publisher of the new Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology in 1964 and has remained so AIP managed the equipment exhibit at the National Symposium in 1965 and has continued to do so. In 1966, AIP suggested that the Affiliate status could be upgraded to Associate if a sufficient fraction of members were physicists; apparently, this was not the case and AIP membership was obtained only in Era 2.
The Affiliation Committee also recommended an affiliation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and AVS participated in several AAAS meetings. The film “Introduction to High Vacuum” was featured at their 1962 annual meeting in Philadelphia. At the AAAS Council meeting on December 30, 1962, AVS was elected an affiliate in the Physics and Engineering Sections. In 1966, a greater involvement with AAAS was advocated with a three-hour AVS session, including a film, being considered for the AAAS meeting. However, involvement with AAAS waned since the benefit to AVS was unclear.
Lew Hull attended the meeting of the Society of Vacuum Coaters in Cleveland in 1957, which had forty attendees. He reported to the Board that the SVC complained that they were not given enough consideration by the CVT. One of their members, Mr. Labounty, asked that he be allowed to present a paper at the Symposium; the Board elected to wait for the paper to determine whether it was suitable. In 1961, the Board wished to minimize any fragmentation of the vacuum community and J, Moore was appointed to approach Mr. Lanow of the Society of Vacuum Coaters to investigate potential cooperation but it is not clear whether there ever was such a discussion.
International Interactions
The prime international interaction in this Era was with IOVST and its successor, IUVSTA. The joint AVS National Symposium/International Vacuum Congress, IVC-2, has already been discussed.
In 1958, the International Organization for Vacuum Science and Technology (IOVST) was founded following the First International Congress on Vacuum Technology (IVC-1) which was held in Namur, Belgium in association with the World's Fair that year in Brussels; the Congress was supported financially by the Belgian government as part of the cultural activities of the World's Fair. Medard (“Dar”) W. Welch, a founding member of AVS and President of AVS at the time, proposed at a dinner that a permanent organization be set up. and he was appointed Vice-President of the resulting IOVST. IOVST had both individual and corporate members; the latter included both scientific organizations and industrial corporations; in 1959 there were a total of 450 members from 24 countries. Although some concern was expressed that the involvement of manufacturers in the AVS was incompatible with the European emphasis on “scientific elite,” the AVS Board supported participation.
In 1962, IOVST was dissolved and the International Union of Vacuum Science, Technique and Applications (IUVSTA) was founded as an international umbrella organization for national vacuum societies or committees. There were no longer individual or corporate members; all the members were national organizations and the AVS represented the USA. The IUVSTA Statutes were approved by AVS in 1962. Medard W. Welch was elected President of the IUVSTA for the 1962-65 triennium. Three other AVS members have since served as President of IUVSTA; Luther E. Preuss (1971-74), James M. Lafferty (1980-83), and Theodore E. Madey (1992-95). Many other AVS members have also served the organization in various capacities and have participated in IUVSTA congresses and conferences.
In 1965, M.W. Welch made a proposal to the AVS Board of Directors for the establishment of a $5,000 international scholarship to be used for postgraduate study in vacuum science and technology. Under the terms of the proposal, the AVS would be custodian of the funds, provided by the Welch Foundation, advancing $5000 each year to the IUVSTA, which would select the scholar. A protocol for the selection was approved in 1966 and the first scholar was chosen in 1968. A scholar has been selected each year since then and the Welch family has continued to advance money annually to support the scholarship. This IUVSTA Medard W. Welch Scholarship should not be confused with the AVS Medard W. Welch Award, which was established by AVS in 1969 to commemorate the pioneering efforts of Medard Welch in the founding and initial support of the Society.
In 1967, AVS arranged for charter flights to the 4th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-4) which was held in Manchester, April 17-20, 1968. The response was much greater than expected and two planes, seating 340 in total, had to be chartered; the fare was $155.
Since the society had only existed for fifteen years by the end of this Era, there had been little activity in recording its history! However, early in 1963, the Board discussed whether the 10th anniversary should be celebrated. In the end, an article on “A Decade of Progress in Vacuum Technology” was published for Physics Today. [H.L. Caswell, W.J. Lange and L.E. Preuss, “a decade of progress in Vacuum Technology” Physics Today, July 1964, p41]. It reviewed progress in gauges, pumps and components, thin films, friction and cleavage studies in UHV, high-dosage radiation effects on vacuum systems, and techniques.
Some of the events leading to the formation of the AVS was introduced at the beginning of this history to provide some background. AVS members have also contributed to the early history of vacuum technology. A brief summary of developments from 1640 was given by Robert K. Waits [Vacuum & Thin Film, Jan 1990, p32] Some of the early work on thin film coating has been described by Collin Alexander [JVST A12, 1653 (1994)] and Don Mattox [Vacuum Technology & Coating, Jan/Feb 2000, p16].
