Dudley Allen Buck
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(Dr.) Dudley Allen Buck (1927–1959) was an electrical engineer and inventor of components for high-speed computing devices in the 1950s. He is best known for the invention of the
cryotron The cryotron is a switch that operates using superconductivity. The cryotron works on the principle that magnetic fields destroy superconductivity. This simple device consists of two superconducting wires (e.g. tantalum and niobium) with differe ...
, a superconductive computer component that is operated in
liquid helium Liquid helium is a physical state of helium at very low temperatures at standard atmospheric pressures. Liquid helium may show superfluidity. At standard pressure, the chemical element helium exists in a liquid form only at the extremely low temp ...
at a temperature near
absolute zero Absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature, a state at which a system's internal energy, and in ideal cases entropy, reach their minimum values. The absolute zero is defined as 0 K on the Kelvin scale, equivalent to −273.15 ° ...
. Other inventions were ferroelectric memory,
content-addressable memory Content-addressable memory (CAM) is a special type of computer memory used in certain very-high-speed searching applications. It is also known as associative memory or associative storage and compares input search data against a table of stored ...
, non-destructive sensing of magnetic fields, and writing printed circuits with a beam of electrons.


Early life

Dudley A. Buck was born in
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
, California on April 25, 1927. Dudley and his siblings moved to
Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara (, meaning ) is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States excepting A ...
, in 1940. In 1943, Dudley Buck earned his
amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency radio spectrum, spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emer ...
license W6WCK and a First Class Radiotelephone Operator license for commercial work. He worked part-time at Santa Barbara radio station
KTMS KTMS (990 AM, "Fox Sports 990/97.9") is a commercial radio station in Santa Barbara, California. It is owned by Rincon Broadcasting and airs a sports radio format. The studios are on East Cota Street in Santa Barbara. By day, KTMS is power ...
until he left to attend college at the
University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...
under the U.S. Navy V-12 program. After graduating from the University of Washington in 1947, Buck served in the
U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...
for two years at Nebraska Avenue in
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
where he began doing work and scientific advising for the agency that would later become the
National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
. He entered the reserves in 1950 and then began his career at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


Career

Buck began as a research assistant while a graduate student at MIT in 1950. His first assignment was on the I/O systems of the
Whirlwind A whirlwind is a phenomenon in which a vortex of wind (a vertically oriented rotating column of air) forms due to instabilities and turbulence created by heating and flow ( current) gradients. Whirlwinds can vary in size and last from a cou ...
computer. He was assigned to work with another graduate student, William N. Papian, who in the Fall of 1949 Jay Forrester had "selected.. to work testing individual cores by the dozen .. and to pick out cores exhibiting exceptionally good properties.". Subsequently they worked with various manufacturers developing the ferrite materials to be used in coincident-current
magnetic core memory In computing, magnetic-core memory is a form of random-access memory. It predominated for roughly 20 years between 1955 and 1975, and is often just called core memory, or, informally, core. Core memory uses toroids (rings) of a hard magneti ...
. In late 1951, Dudley Buck proposed computer circuits that used neither vacuum tubes, nor the recently invented transistor. It is possible to make all computer logic circuits, including shift registers, counters, and accumulators using only magnetic cores, wire and diodes. Magnetic logic was used in the
KW-26 The TSEC/KW-26, code named ROMULUS, was an encryption system used by the U.S. Government and, later, by NATO countries. It was developed in the 1950s by the National Security Agency (NSA) to secure fixed teleprinter circuits that operated 24 ho ...
cryptographic communications system, and in the BOGART computer. FeRAM was first built by Buck as part of his thesis work in 1952. In addition to its use as computer memory, ferroelectric materials can be used to build
shift register A shift register is a type of digital circuit using a cascade of flip-flop (electronics), flip-flops where the output of one flip-flop is connected to the input of the next. They share a single clock signal, which causes the data stored in the syst ...
s,
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
, and
amplifier An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It is a two-port electronic circuit that uses electric power from a power su ...
s. Buck showed that a ferroelectric switch could be useful to perform memory addressing. Buck completed his S.M degree in 1952. His thesis for the degree was Ferroelectrics for Digital Information Storage and Switching. The thesis was supervised by
Arthur R. von Hippel Arthur Robert von Hippel (November 19, 1898 – December 31, 2003) was a German American materials scientist and physicist. Von Hippel was a pioneer in the study of dielectrics, ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials, and semiconductors a ...
. In this work he demonstrated the principles of storing data in ferroelectric materials; the earliest demonstration of Ferroelectric memory, or FeRAM. This work also demonstrated that ferroelectric materials could be used as voltage controlled switches to address memory, whereas close friend and fellow student
Ken Olsen Kenneth Harry Olsen (February 20, 1926 – February 6, 2011) was an American engineer who co-founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957 with colleague Harlan Anderson and his brother Stan Olsen. Background Kenneth Harry Olsen was bor ...
's saturable switch used ferrites and was a current operated switch. The basic idea for the
cryotron The cryotron is a switch that operates using superconductivity. The cryotron works on the principle that magnetic fields destroy superconductivity. This simple device consists of two superconducting wires (e.g. tantalum and niobium) with differe ...
was entered into his MIT notebook on December 15, 1953. By 1955, Buck was building practical cryotron devices with niobium and tantalum. The cryotron was a great breakthrough in the size of electronic computer elements. In the next decade, cryotron research at other laboratories resulted in the invention of the Crowe Cell at
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
, the
Josephson Junction In physics, the Josephson effect is a phenomenon that occurs when two superconductors are placed in proximity, with some barrier or restriction between them. The effect is named after the British physicist Brian Josephson, who predicted in 1962 ...
, and the
SQUID A squid (: squid) is a mollusc with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight cephalopod limb, arms, and two tentacles in the orders Myopsida, Oegopsida, and Bathyteuthida (though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also ...
. Those inventions have today made possible the mapping of brain activity by
magnetoencephalography Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a functional neuroimaging technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electric current, electrical currents occurring naturally in the human brain, brain, using very sensitive magn ...
. Despite the need for liquid helium, cryotrons were expected to make computers so small, that in 1956, Life Magazine displayed a full-page photograph of Dudley Buck with a cryotron in one hand and a vacuum tube in the other. Dr. Buck earned a Doctor of Science from M.I.T. in 1958, and would go on to become a professor. By 1957, Buck began to place more emphasis on miniaturization of cryotron systems. The speed that cryotron devices could attain is greater as size of the device is reduced. Dr. Buck, his students, and researcher Kenneth R. Shoulders made great progress manufacturing thin-film cryotron integrated circuits in the laboratory at MIT. Developments included the creation of oxide layers as insulation and for mechanical strength by electron beam reduction of chemicals. This work, co-authored with Kenneth Shoulders, was published as "An Approach to Microminiature Printed Systems". It was presented in December, 1958, at the Eastern Joint Computer Conference in Philadelphia. Per a request by chairman Dr. Louis Ridenour, Solomon Kullback appointed Buck to the
National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
Scientific Advisory Board Panel on Electronics and Data Processing that same month. Another key invention by Dr. Buck was a method of non-destructive sensing of magnetic materials. In the process of reading data from a typical magnetic core memory, the contents of the memory are erased, making it necessary to take additional time to re-write the data back into the magnetic storage. By design of 'quadrature sensing' of magnetic fields, the state of magnetism of the core may be read without alteration, thus eliminating the extra time required to re-write memory data. Dudley Buck invented recognition unit memory. Also called
content-addressable memory Content-addressable memory (CAM) is a special type of computer memory used in certain very-high-speed searching applications. It is also known as associative memory or associative storage and compares input search data against a table of stored ...
, it is a technique of storing and retrieving data in which there is no need to know the location of that data. Not only is there no need to query an index for the location of data, the inquiry for data is broadcast to all memory elements simultaneously; thus data retrieval time is independent of the size of the database.


Awards

In 1957, the
Institute of Radio Engineers The Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) was a professional organization which existed from 1912 until December 31, 1962. On January 1, 1963, it merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) to form the Institute of Electrical ...
awarded Dudley Buck the Browder J. Thompson award for engineers under the age of 30.


Death and legacy

Buck died suddenly May 21, 1959, just weeks after his 32nd birthday. His close associate
Louis Ridenour Louis N. Ridenour (June 27, 1911 – May 21, 1959) was a physicist instrumental in the U.S. development of radar, Vice President of Lockheed, and an advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Biography and positions held During World War II, ...
died the same day. Their deaths have been the subject of some speculation, with some claiming that Buck and Ridenour's deaths were related. However, Buck's son, Douglas Buck, noted there is no evidence to support such claims, so speculation on Buck's death remains based on circumstantial evidence. His biography was published in October 2018, ''The Cryotron Files'' by Iain Dey and his son Douglas Buck.


Publications

* 1951, Binary Counting with Magnetic Cores * 1952, Ferroelectrics for Digital Information Storage and Switching * 1952, Magnetic and Dielectric Amplifiers * 1958, An Approach to Microminiature Printed Systems * 1962, Switching Circuits – chapter 13 in ''Computer Handbook'' by
Harry Huskey Harry Douglas Huskey (January 19, 1916 – April 9, 2017) was an American computer design pioneer. Early life and career Huskey was born in Whittier, in the Smoky Mountains region of North Carolina and grew up in Idaho. He received his bachel ...


US Patents

* 2,832,897 – Magnetically Controlled Gating Element * 2,933,618 – Saturable Switch * 2,936,435 – High-Speed Cryotron * 2,959,688 – Multiple Gate Cryotron Switch * 2,987,707 – Magnetic Data Conversion Apparatus * 3,001,178 – Electrical Memory Circuits * 3,011,711 – Cryogenic Computing Devices * 3,019,978 – Cryotron Translator


References


External links


Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buck, Dudley Allen Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty 1959 deaths American electrical engineers 1927 births 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors