Electronics Research Center
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The Electronics Research Center (ERC) was a
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
research facility located in
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, established in 1964 to serve the agency's need for internal expertise in electronics. It also administered contracts, grants, and other
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
business in
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until it closed in 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 (colloquially, the Volpe Center) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a center of transportation and logistics in the Research and Innovative Technology Administration of the United States Depa ...
.


Mission

During the
Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...
era, the ERC helped foster NASA's electronics expertise, and also served as a hub for graduate and postgraduate training within a regional alliance of government, industry, and university organizations. Its significance was comparable to NASA's
Langley Research Center The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay front of Langley Air Force Base, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research but has also ...
and
Marshall Space Flight Center Marshall Space Flight Center (officially the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center; MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville postal address), is the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government's ...
. It aimed to employ 1,600 professionals and technical experts, plus 500 people in administrative and support roles by 1968.


History

The Electronics Research Center was the subject of political controversy from the start. The center was located in
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after to Massachusetts politicians' unsuccessful lobbying for the
Manned Spacecraft Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in ...
. President
John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...
and NASA administrator James Webb 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 from Massachusetts who served as a member of the United States Senate from 1962 to his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic Party and ...
's first election to the Senate. After the President belatedly put the ERC project in the budget process,
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rebelled. In addition to Republican members, Representatives from the
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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. 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 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
business in
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previously housed at the North Eastern Operations Office. The center began operations in
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on Main Street while its campus was under construction on Broadway, across the street from
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at
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. Its location allowed it to take advantage of its proximity to MIT, and to a lesser extent
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, the
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, the
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, and the electronics industry located along Massachusetts
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.


Nature of research

Research at the ERC was conducted in ten laboratories: *Space
guidance systems A guidance system is a virtual or physical device, or a group of devices implementing a controlling the movement of a ship, aircraft, missile, rocket, satellite, or any other moving object. Guidance is the process of calculating the changes in pos ...
. *
Computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
s 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 optical instruments, instruments that use or Photodetector, detect it. Optics usually describes t ...
. * Power conditioning and distribution. *
Microwave radiation Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than other radio waves but longer than infrared waves. Its wavelength ranges from about one meter to one millimeter, corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz an ...
. *
Electronics component An electronic component is any basic discrete electronic device or physical entity part of an electronic system used to affect electrons or their associated fields. Electronic components are mostly industrial products, available in a singular fo ...
qualification 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 is a collective term for measuring instruments, used for indicating, measuring, and recording physical quantities. It is also a field of study about the art and science about making measurement instruments, involving the related ...
, 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 The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or Cycle per second, cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in ter ...
)
oscillator Oscillation is the repetitive or periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states. Familiar examples of oscillation include a swinging pendulum ...
. *A miniaturized tunnel-diode transducer. *A
transistor A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...
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 a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'' consisting of photons, such as radio waves, microwaves, infr ...
. "''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 allows a wavefront to be recorded and later reconstructed. It is best known as a method of generating three-dimensional images, and has a wide range of other uses, including data storage, microscopy, and interfe ...
written by one of the ERC's directors, Dr.
Winston Kock Winston Edward Kock (December 5, 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 Octobe ...
, indicates some of the facility's contributions, such as Lowell Rosen's improvement of focused-image holography (Kock, 80-82). NASA administrator James Webb helped shape the ERC. Webb saw it as fulfilling a broader mission as part of the nation's
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
struggle on the economic and intellectual battleground of the
Space Race The Space Race (, ) was a 20th-century competition between the 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 t ...
. 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 aim as the Cold War. The ERC 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. The largest cuts had been the
Marshall Space Flight Center Marshall Space Flight Center (officially the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center; MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville postal address), is the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government's ...
, whose future was then the subject of agency debate. The ERC was closed in June 1970. 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. A thesis written for the
MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (branded as MIT 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 progra ...
is the only known work that deals solely with the facility's closing.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 Science and 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 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