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The Electronics Research Center (ERC) was a
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...
research facility located in
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...
, across the street from MIT at Kendall Square. The ERC opened in September 1964 as the successor to the North Eastern Operations Office which opened in July 1962. The Center took over the administration of contracts, grants, and other NASA business in
New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian province ...
from the North Eastern Operations Office, and was Shutdown in June 1970. Its former campus is now the site of the United States Department of Transportation's
John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center The John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center or simply Volpe in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a center of transportation and logistics expertise, operating under the United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT). The Volpe C ...
.


Mission

The ERC served to develop the space agency's in-house expertise in electronics during the
Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...
era. A second key function was to serve as a graduate and post-graduate training center within the framework of a regional government-industry-university alliance. The ERC was considered to be of equal importance as other
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...
field centers such as the
Langley Research Center The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia, United States of America, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. It directly borders Langley Air Force Base and the Back River on the Chesapeake Bay. LaRC has f ...
and the
Marshall Space Flight Center The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama ( Huntsville postal address), is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first ...
. By fiscal 1968, NASA planned for the ERC to be employing 1,600 professional and technical workers and 500 in administrative and support positions.


History

The Center was located in
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...
after Massachusetts politicians unsuccessfully lobbied for the
Manned Spacecraft Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late ...
. The center started its operations in Technology Square on Main Street while its campus was being built on Broadway. The location of the ERC allowed it to take advantage of the proximity to MIT, and to a lesser extent, it benefited from proximity to
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, the
MIT Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and d ...
, the
Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...
, and the electronics industry located along Massachusetts Route 128. At the time of the Center's founding, the technical, industrial, and commercial aspects of
microelectronics Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-s ...
were ascendant, especially in the
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...
-Cambridge Technopolis.


Nature of research

Research at the ERC was conducted in ten different laboratories: *space guidance systems * computers instrumentation research * space
optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultra ...
* power conditioning and distribution *
microwave radiation Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency rang ...
* electronics components, * qualifications and standards * control and information systems Researchers investigated such areas as microwave and laser communications; the miniaturization and radiation resistance of electronic components, guidance and control systems, photovoltaic energy conversion, information display devices,
instrumentation Instrumentation a collective term for measuring instruments that are used for indicating, measuring and recording physical quantities. The term has its origins in the art and science of scientific instrument-making. Instrumentation can refer to ...
, and computers and data processing. Although no publication has investigated the nature of the research or professional training conducted at the ERC, an internal NASA publication lists a few accomplishments identified with the center, such as: *a high-frequency (30 GHz) oscillator *a miniaturized tunnel-diode transducer *a
transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
more tolerant of space
radiation In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'', such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, vi ...
"''One particularly interesting development''," the source added, "''has been in the area of holography. At the Electronics Research Center, holography has been used for data storage, and has permitted a remarkable degree of data compression in the storing of star patterns''" (Preliminary History, 1:V-11, 1:V-34 & 1:V-35). A book on
holography Holography is a technique that enables a wavefront to be recorded and later re-constructed. Holography is best known as a method of generating real three-dimensional images, but it also has a wide range of other applications. In principle, i ...
written by one of the ERC's directors, Dr.
Winston Kock Winston Edward Kock (1909 – November 25, 1982) was an American electrical engineer and musician, who was the first Director of NASA Electronics Research Center (NASA ERC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from September 1, 1964 to October 1, 1966. The ...
, indicates some of the facility's contributions, such as
Lowell Rosen Lowell may refer to: Places United States * Lowell, Arkansas * Lowell, California * Lowell, Florida * Lowell, Idaho * Lowell, Indiana * Lowell, Bartholomew County, Indiana * Lowell, Maine * Lowell, Massachusetts ** Lowell National Historical ...
's improvement of so-called focused-image holography (Kock, 80-82).


Controversy and funding

The Electronics Research Center was at the heart of political controversy from the start. President John F. Kennedy and NASA administrator
James Webb James, Jim or Jimmy Webb may refer to: Arts *Jim Webb (born 1946), American author, also politician (see below) *James Webb (historian) (1946–1980), Scottish historian *James Webb (painter) (1825–1895), British painter * James Webb (South Afr ...
kept the project out of the budget process until after
Ted Kennedy Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic ...
's first election to the Senate. After the President belatedly put the ERC project in the budget process,
Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
rebelled. In addition to Republican members, Representatives from the
Midwest The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. ...
and other regions felt that they had been swindled out of the NASA budget. The issue split the Congress along both party and regional lines.Murphy, Thomas. ''Science, Geopolitics, and Federal Spending.'' Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1971. As a result, the ERC had the most deliberated and defended existence and siting of any NASA Center. Although the only Center ever closed, the ERC actually grew while NASA eliminated major programs and cut staff. Between 1967 and 1970, NASA cut permanent civil service workers at all Centers with one exception, the ERC, whose personnel grew annually. Hardest hit by the cuts had been the
Marshall Space Flight Center The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama ( Huntsville postal address), is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first ...
, whose future was then the subject of agency debate (Levine, 134-135). NASA Administrator James Webb, more than any other individual, shaped the ERC. Webb saw it as fulfilling a broader mission as part of the nation's Cold War struggle on the economic and intellectual battleground of the
Space Race The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the ...
. The ERC was an archetype for Webb's regional "university-industry-government complex" analogous to the military-industrial complex, organized because Webb believed that no single institution had the requisite resources to fight this war. The ERC's training of critically needed engineers and scientists served the same Cold War aim The ERC has received hardly any attention as a subject of scholarly or lay studies. No single work, neither book nor article, has been devoted to the ERC itself. The few works that consider the ERC other than in passing focus on the turbulent political circumstances surrounding its creation (Murphy, 225-264; Hechler, 219-231). A thesis written for the
MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, a ...
is the only work that deals solely with the facility's closing (Rollins).Rollins, Robert H., II. "''Closing of the NASA Electronics Research Center: A Study of the Reallocation of Space Program Talent.''" M.S. Thesis, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, MIT, May 1970, 106-187, in Boyd C. Myers, II. ''A Report on the Closing of the NASA Electronics Research Center'', Cambridge, Massachusetts. Washington: NASA, October 1, 1970. online at http://klabs.org/history/erc/erc_close.pdf


References

*"''Effort Embraces Spectrum from SST to Private Planes.''" Aerospace Technology, November 20, 1967, 21:11, 56-7. * Hechler, Ken. ''Toward the Endless Frontier: History of the Committee on Scienceand Technology'', 1959-1979. Washington, DC: GPO, 1980. * * * * . *"''Preliminary History of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the Administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson: Final Edition.''" Manuscript. 2 vols. Washington: NASA, 1969. *Rhea, John. "''ERC is Focal Point of Future Efforts.''" Aerospace Technology, November 20, 1967, 21:11, 53-6. *Rollins, Robert H., II. "''Closing of the NASA Electronics Research Center: A Study of the Reallocation of Space Program Talent.''" M.S. Thesis, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, MIT, May 1970, 106-187, in Boyd C. Myers, II. ''A Report on the Closing of the NASA Electronics Research Center'', Cambridge, Massachusetts. Washington: NASA, October 1, 1970. *Tomayko, James E. ''Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience.'' New York: M. Dekker, 1987. Also published as ''Computers in Space: Journeys with NASA.'' Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 1994.


Proceedings of ERC symposia

From the Washington: Scientific and Technical Information Division, NASA *''Evaluation of Motion-Degraded Images.'' NASASP-193. 1969. *''Future Fields of Control Application.'' NASA SP-211. 1969. *''NASA Inter-Center Control Systems Conference.'' 1978. *''Proceedings of the Computer-aided System Design Seminar.'' 1969. MIT, April 9, 1969. *''Recent Advances in Display Media.'' NASA SP-159. 1968. *''Spaceborne Multiprocessing Seminar.'' Cambridge: ERC, 1966. *Kennedy, Robert S., and Sherman Karp, ed. ''Optical Space Communication.'' NASA SP 217. 1969. *Mannella, Gene G., ed. ''Aerospace Measurement Techniques.'' NASA SP-132. 1967. *Thompson, William I., III. ''The Color of the Ocean.'' 1969.


External links


NASA history of the Center
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20050501051919/http://klabs.org/history/erc/ NASA Office of Logic Designbr>Works related to ERC research areas
PDF. NASA. {{Coord, 42, 21, 50.67, N, 71, 5, 8.16, W, display=title NASA groups, organizations, and centers Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts Research institutes established in 1964 1964 establishments in Massachusetts 1970 disestablishments in Massachusetts