XX
POST-RETIREMENT 1973-1980
Shortly before the time came for me to pick up my books and leave McMurry, I received a
telephone call from two men whom I knew quite well. One was a former graduate student at
CSU and both were employees of the James Knights-CTS Company of Sandwich, Illinois.
They were considering leaving CTS to take over the management of a Quartz Crystal (QCU)
factory in Phoenix, AZ which had been purchased by a company in Massachusetts named TYCO
(not the manufacturer of toy trains). They asked if, in the event they did decide to undertake the
management of the TYCO factory in Phoenix, I would be willing to help them with the technical
problems which they expected to encounter.
Daryl Kemper was an engineer with a number of years of experience in the design and
manufacturing of QCUs. He was equipped with unbounded enthusiasm and optimism. The
other man, Louis Dick, had been my student at CSU where he earned the Masters Degree in
Physics. Louie (as everyone knew him) was more reserved, slow to render an opinion and
almost always right in his technical judgments. Together they made a good team. I agreed to
work with Daryl and Louie on a part time basis which, over the next seven years, turned to be
almost exactly half time.
During the period 1973-80, Thelma and I lived double lives. For a while we would rent an
apartment in Phoenix for a period of two or three months at a time and then return to Abilene to
take care of matters there. This involved setting up and tearing down living quarters which
imposed a severe load on Thelma which she accepted without objection. Later the company
rented an apartment on a full time basis which was sometimes used by visitors when we were not
there. TYCO paid all of our travel and living expenses (except food) and consequently we were
able to save most of the salary which was generous compared with that paid at McMurry
College. The money that we earned and saved during the decade gave us a bit of security when
the time came for full retirement.
The manufacture of QCUs had changed a great deal since I had last been involved in the work.
Of course, none of the basic principles had changed; they never will. But the manufacturing
technologies had changed. Most of my experience had been with QCUs which operated at
frequencies below 10 MHz. Now units were being made which operated at frequencies ten
times this high. (Try to imagine a solid object vibrating 100,000,000 times per second!).
TYCO had taken over two other QCU factories, one in Kansas City and one in Florida. The
Kansas City facility was engaged in trying to manufacture units for military use and was in
severe trouble technically. Kemper and Dick were asked to take over the management of this
plant, also. For a time Daryl divided his time between the Phoenix and the Kansas City
facilities but the problems at Kansas City were so great that they required more attention than he
was able to give it so he asked me to go there and try to straighten out the facility. When I
arrived at the K.C. plant I was appalled at some of the practices which were being used there.
The product which they were turning out was absolutely unacceptable. After studying the
situation for a short time I concluded that the techniques which were being used could never
produce a product which would meet the specifications for military use. I began to think about
an alternative process. Specifically the problem concerned the metal films, called electrodes,
which are deposited on the quartz. The metal usually used was silver which was deposited on
the quartz by evaporation from a hot filament in a vacuum. This process had long been used in
making QCUs of lower frequency in which the quartz plates were not polished. However, the
units being made at the Kansas City plant employed polished quartz blanks and the silver failed
to adhere to the quartz under the conditions of use in which the attraction between the metal and
quartz must be able to withstand accelerations of a million times the normal acceleration of
gravity (i.e., 1,000,000 g's). Furthermore, silver is not chemically inert and continues to react
with other elements resulting in a phenomenon called "aging" in which the frequency of the
QCU changes with time. Aging of the QCUs being manufactured at the plant was completely
unacceptable.
One of the finest technical libraries in the world is the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City. It was
there that I went while searching for a solution to the problem. I began by investigating the
possibility of using aluminum as an electrode material. The use of aluminum was not an
original idea. Its use had been tried many times without success. The problem was that
aluminum is even more reactive than silver and aging of QCUs with aluminum plating was quite
unacceptable. In looking at some literature on aluminum I came upon a book on the subject of
anodic oxidation. Suddenly an idea came to me! Why not use anodic oxidation to fabricate
QCUs? This sudden inspiration led to the development of a process which has been widely
adopted by the QCU industry for use in fabricating QCUs to operate in the frequency ranges
above about 30 MHz and which must meet severe aging requirements.
The oxidation of aluminum was well known and understood. The process had been used for
many years in the manufacture of numerous articles including table and cook ware. Briefly,
when a new aluminum surface is exposed to air (or oxygen) a film of aluminum oxide begins to
form on the surface. In the air the film grows in thickness for a period of a few hours after
which the thickness remains constant. This is the reason that an aluminum utensil always
retains its metallic appearance. The oxide film can also be applied artificially by making the
article the anode in a cell containing an electrolyte which is rich in oxygen atoms; boric acid, for
example, the molecule of which contains two atoms of Hydrogen, four of Boron and seven of
Oxygen. The thickness of the oxide film created by anodic oxidation is precisely proportional
to the voltage used in producing it. When I learned this fact, I immediately saw the possibility
of using anodic oxidation in the manufacture of QCUs.
The precise frequency of each QCU must be adjusted by depositing more mass on the surface or
by removing some. When silver is used the original surface, which was deposited in vacuum,
must be disturbed resulting in aging and instability. My idea was to use the oxide on the
aluminum to adjust the frequency. Some experimentation was required to determine the best
electrolytes to use and to relate the thickness of the oxide films to changes of frequency. Within
a few months all of these problems were solved and we were ready to try the process in limited
production. It worked exactly as predicted. The process involved plating the blanks with
aluminum in vacuum to a frequency somewhat higher than the final (or nominal) frequency.
The operator would measure the frequency and by use of a simple computer program determine
what voltage would be required to produce an aluminum oxide film of sufficient mass to reduce
the frequency to the desired value. She then set the power supply to that voltage and immersed
the QCU in the electrolyte for a few seconds. Removed from the solution, washed and dried,
the QCU was ready to be encapsulated. The process was named the ANOX process and
patented.
Using the ANOX process one operator could adjust the frequencies of QCUs at a rate five to ten
times that of an operator using conventional methods. In a short time Dr. Dick Ang, who was
one of my McMurry students and who had earned the Ph.D. Degree at Rice University,
developed a computer-controlled machine which carried out all of the necessary operations on
twelve units at a time; the only thing required of the operator being to load and unload the
fixture. But the most important result of the development of the ANOX process is that units
made by the process are substantially free of the worst cause of aging which is chemical and
physical changes in the metal of the electrodes. Few materials are more nearly chemically inert
than aluminum oxide (which is better known as sapphire). Although not so hard as diamond,
sapphire is harder than quartz. Deposited directly on the aluminum it is chemically part of the
surface and therefore is not subject to physical changes which cause aging in QCUs plated with
silver; and the film, already thicker than the film which nature deposits, does not change with
time. Thus the worst source of aging in QCUs is eliminated.
The development of the ANOX process came at a time when the Cellular Telephone was coming
into existence. The development of the new cellular telephone was being impeded because the
industry could not provide QCUs which met the aging requirements of the new technology.
Units made by the new ANOX process satisfied these severe requirements and thus the process
played a role in bringing this new technology on line.
During this period I continued a program which I had begun some years earlier. Mr. Jack Kay
of Kansas City had long been a supplier of holders and test equipment to the manufacturers of
QCUs. Jack saw that the technical competence of the people working in the industry left much
to be desired. Graduates of Engineering Schools were coming to work in the industry with only
the most rudimentary knowledge of the QCU. Jack conceived the idea of providing seminars
which engineers and technical personnel of QCU companies might attend to improve their
knowledge of the device with which they were involved. These seminars were given at no
expense to the attendees except for their own personal living expenses. Jack offered to pay all
other expenses including the stipend which he gave to me. I have heard Jack Kay say, "The
crystal business has been good to me and I want to return something to it." In supporting these
seminars Mr. Kay did give back much.
Some years before I had given a similar "in-house" training seminar at CTS Knights and we
patterned our program on it. The seminar lasted for four days; six or more hours per day.
During this time I covered the field of Piezoelectricity; theoretical and applied. These seminars
were given annually and sometimes more frequently, at locations which would be convenient to
the participants such as Yankton, SD, Carlisle, PA, Chicago, IL. Kansas City, MO, Las Vegas,
NV, and several others. Attendance was from fifty to one hundred. One man, Harry Moir,
came from South Africa to attend one of the seminars. It is safe to say that most of the people in
the country who were engaged in the design, manufacture, or use of QCUs attended one or more
of the seminars.
The last seminar was given in 1977. By this time I was finding it very tiring to be on my feet
teaching, six or more hours per day for a week and asked to be relieved. Jack suggested that the
seminars take a new form and the outcome was the first Piezoelectric Devices Conferences &
Exhibition which has been held in Kansas City each September since 1978. This Conference
supplements the Frequency Control Symposium which is held annually in May and which has
come to include fields of Atomic Standards and other topics. In a real sense the Kansas City
Conference is an outgrowth of the seminars which were provided by Jack Kay and me for over
ten years.
We enjoyed our time in Phoenix where we were able to renew our acquaintances with friends we
had left when we moved to Abilene in 1958. We also enjoyed attending Central Methodist
Church which was much closer than Aldersgate UMC. Unfortunately, the city of Phoenix had
changed during the time we had been away. It had become more crowded as "snowbirds"
discovered the pleasures of the desert life. The smog had become almost as bad as that in Los
Angeles as more and more automobiles competed for space on the crowded streets. It was no
longer possible to be out on the desert in five or ten minutes; now it required a drive of an hour
to reach a spot to have a quiet lunch in the shade of a Palo Verde tree. So in 1980 we made our
last trip to Phoenix to work in the field of QCU development and manufacture.
Thelma's brother Wayne had moved to Phoenix while we were there in the 1950s. He had died
shortly after bringing his family to Phoenix and his wife Hazel stayed on in the house that we
had helped them to purchase. Frequently we visited Hazel and her three children, the youngest
of whom, Forrest, was in high school. Forrest had a considerable amount of artistic ability
although I had difficulty characterizing some of his work as art. But his artistic ability exceeded
his scientific ability. He once conceived the idea of a car which would run forever without need
of refueling. It would be an electric car driven by batteries which would be charged by an
ordinary alternator as the battery is charged in a conventional automobile. I was never able to
convince him that such a device would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics which he
considered to be no more immutable than laws against speeding which he occasionally did
violate.
Around 1980 the TYCO Corporation decided that, although the Phoenix Division was profitable,
it was too difficult and expensive to manage from headquarters in Boston so the division was
sold. After a series of management changes and because we were not becoming any younger
and the 900 mile drives between Phoenix and Abilene were becoming a bit tiring, we decided to
retire again and settle down to live in Abilene.
Thelma's uncle and aunt, Olave and Ola Piper, were quite old and were becoming rather feeble
so we made several trips to Kansas each year to visit them. Late in 1983 they suffered an
automobile accident in which both were severely injured. Aunt Ola died from her injuries on 28
November 1983. Olave spent months in St. Joseph's Hospital in Wichita being treated for the
injuries he sustained in the accident. He was ultimately released but was never able to walk
alone again and died on 17 October 1986. For several years we were occupied with the
settlement of the Piper estates which was ably handled by Ola's son Eugene S. Bush, who served
as administrator.
The loss of her uncle was a severe blow to Thelma who had always thought of her uncle Olave
as more like a brother than an uncle. He did not marry until middle age and while she was
young, she used to spend much time at the home of her uncle and grandparents where she
learned to enjoy horseback riding. Although Ola was not related to us in any way (except by
marriage to Olave after her own children were grown), she was always kind and thoughtful to us
and her loss came as a cruel blow, even though she was well past the ninety year mark in age.