Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium
Encyclopedia
The Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (English translation: Philips Physics Laboratory) or NatLab was the Dutch
section of the Philips
research
department, which did research for the product divisions of that company. Originally located in the Strijp
district of Eindhoven, the facility moved to Waalre
in the early 1960s
. A 1972 municipal rezoning brought the facility back into Eindhoven, which was followed some years later by Eindhoven renaming the street the facility is on into the Prof. Holstlaan, after the first director.
In 1975 the NatLab employed some 2000 people, including 600 researchers with university degrees. Research done at the NatLab has ranged from product-specific to fundamental research into electronics
, physics
and chemistry
, as well as computing science and information technology
.
The original NatLab facility was disbanded in 2001 and the facility has been transformed into the High Tech Campus Eindhoven
, which is open to researchers from many different companies. Philips Research is still one of the largest campus tenants, although not with anything like the number of people employed in the NatLab days. Philips Research also has branches in Germany
, the United Kingdom
, USA, India
and China
; the non-Netherlands parts of Philips Research account for about half the research work done by Philips nowadays.
and Anton Philips
. At the time Philips was branching out into different areas of electronics and they felt the need to do in-house research to support product development, as well as create a company patent
portfolio and reduce the company dependence on patents held by third parties. They hired physicist
Gilles Holst (the first director) who assembled a staff consisting of Ekko Oosterhuis and a small number of research assistants; this was the entire scientific staff of the facility for the first decade. Holst held the director's position until 1946 and spent his tenure creating and maintaining an academic atmosphere at the facility in which researchers were given a lot of leeway and access to external research and resources. The external access also included colloquia
by some of the great physicists of the day (including Albert Einstein
in 1923).
This managerial philosophy made the NatLab very different from all the other Philips facilities and laboratories. Unlike the other Philips labs, NatLab was more like the AT&T Bell Laboratories in the United States. The research was also not limited to industrial research; a good deal of fundamental research was also performed at NatLab, such as that of Bernard D. H. Tellegen
and Balthasar van der Pol
. Van der Pol was hired in 1922 to start a research program into radio technology
. This research program resulted in publishable results in the areas of propagation of radio waves, electrical circuit theory, harmonics and a number of related, mathematical
problems. Van der Pol also studied the effect of the curvature of the Earth on radio wave propagation.
Van der Pol's senior assistant (hired in 1923) was Bernard Tellegen. He started working on triodes and invented the penthode in 1926. The penthode was the centerpiece of the famous Philips radio and soon found its way into every radio and amplifier in the market. Tellegen also did pioneering research in the area of electrical networks.
In 1925 Van der Pol took on a junior student from Delft
, Johan Numans. Numans designed and built a short wave crystal controlled telephony transmitter for his required period of practical work, with call sign PCJJ. This transmitter made world headlines on March 11, 1927 when it transmitted practically undistorted music and voice across the entire globe. As a result of this, the Philips Omroep Holland-Indië (PHOHI, the Philips Holland-Indonesia station) was founded.
: physicist Hendrik Casimir
(who would later become the primarily responsible of the three and member of the Board of Directors), chemist Evert Verwey and engineer Herre Rinia. The NatLab saw its heyday under this triumvirate.
For the Philips company as a whole, the era of Frits Philips
had made the company part of the world's electronics giants with 350.000 employees in 1970. NatLab grew right along with the company and became a world class research facility. By 1963 a new campus was designed for the facility in Waalre, with space for 3.000 employees (more than any Dutch university). NatLab never grew to quite those numbers though, 2.400 was the record – and that included the foreign branches which had been added in the meantime. The NatLab became a superuniversity where the "best of the best" could do research in practically perfect circumstances (full academic freedom, no time devoted to teaching classes, nearly unlimited budgets and so on).
The result was a slew of commercial and fundamental results, including the Plumbicon camera tube and the Video Long Play disc
, which was the technological basis for the 1980 compact disc
. Results were also achieved in the area of integrated circuitry
: Else Kooi invented the LOCOS
technology and Kees Hart and Arie Slob developed the I²C
in the early 1970s
.
There were also commercial failures. For example, Dick Raaijmakers (using the alias Kid Baltan) and Tom Dissevelt
did fundamental user experience research into the first synthesizer
s, resulting in internationally acclaimed electronic music
and jazz music
; but Philips itself felt that this research was just some "fooling around" and let it go to waste.
In 1973, starting with the oil crisis
, the long period of economic growth came to an end and companies could no longer afford expensive research departments. With that economic reality, the belief in the stimulating value of fundamental research also seemed to disappear. On top of that, a number of bad decisions by the NatLab management did little to ingratiate the facility to the Philips Board of Directors (such bad decisions including the development of the flopped videodisc
, the Video 2000
video recorder
, and the initial lack of support for the compact disc
. The compact disc had been initiated and pushed by the audio department, although NatLab researcher Kees Schouhamer Immink played an instrumental role in its design.
Philips as a whole took a turn for the worse and by the end of the 1980s
bankruptcy
seemed a very real possibility. Under research director Kees Bulthuis the position of long-term fundamental research at NatLab came under more and more pressure, especially after Philips introduced decentralized financing. Bulthuis reduced research budgets by the equivalent of 60 million euro
in three years' time. Hundreds of NatLab employees were fired and departments were closed, including the entire mathematics department in Brussels
. By 1989 the NatLab, which had formerly been on the Board of Directors budget, drew two-thirds of its income from contracts with the product divisions. This made the role of the NatLab far more limited than before: it became a source of expertise rather than a source of innovation. Fundamental research, research driven purely by curiosity, was strictly reined in and priority was given to the interests of the product divisions.
In 2000, Philips decided on a new direction for the NatLab and the grounds it was housed on: the decision was made to transform the whole of it into an open innovation
facility for technology companies, of which Philips Research was only one. The name chosen for this facility is the High Tech Campus Eindhoven
, which has by now completely subsumed the old NatLab. This decision by Philips also fit with the new direction chosen by the company, "Health and Lifestyle". As a result of this new direction, Philips has divested itself of branches like the semiconductor
s branch (now the independent NXP
), which has reduced the on-site size of Philips Research to 600 as of 2006.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
section of the Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
department, which did research for the product divisions of that company. Originally located in the Strijp
Strijp
Strijp is a former village in the Dutch province of North Brabant, now a neighbourhood of Eindhoven.Strijp was a separate municipality until 1920, when it became part of Eindhoven. The Philips Stadion, home of football team PSV Eindhoven is based in Strijp...
district of Eindhoven, the facility moved to Waalre
Waalre
Waalre is an affluent municipality and town in the southern Netherlands, immediately south of the city of Eindhoven.- Population centres :Aalst, Achtereind, De Heuvel, Heikant, Loon, Timmereind and Waalre....
in the early 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
. A 1972 municipal rezoning brought the facility back into Eindhoven, which was followed some years later by Eindhoven renaming the street the facility is on into the Prof. Holstlaan, after the first director.
In 1975 the NatLab employed some 2000 people, including 600 researchers with university degrees. Research done at the NatLab has ranged from product-specific to fundamental research into electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
, physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
, as well as computing science and information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
.
The original NatLab facility was disbanded in 2001 and the facility has been transformed into the High Tech Campus Eindhoven
High Tech Campus Eindhoven
The High Tech Campus Eindhoven is a high tech center and R&D ecosystem in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. The High Tech Campus houses more than 90 different companies and institutions, comprising over 8.000 R&D-staff and entrepreneurs, and over 50 different nationalities...
, which is open to researchers from many different companies. Philips Research is still one of the largest campus tenants, although not with anything like the number of people employed in the NatLab days. Philips Research also has branches in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, USA, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
; the non-Netherlands parts of Philips Research account for about half the research work done by Philips nowadays.
History
The history of the NatLab spans roughly three periods: 1914-1946, 1946-1972 and 1972-2001.The start: 1914-1946
The NatLab was founded in 1914 after a direct decision of GerardGerard Philips
Gerard Leonard Frederik Philips was a Dutch industrialist, co-founder of the Philips Company as a family business in 1891. Gerard and his younger brother Anton Philips changed the business to a corporation by founding in 1912 the NV Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken...
and Anton Philips
Anton Philips
Anton Frederik Philips co-founded Royal Philips Electronics N.V. in 1912 with his older brother Gerard Philips in Eindhoven, the Netherlands...
. At the time Philips was branching out into different areas of electronics and they felt the need to do in-house research to support product development, as well as create a company patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
portfolio and reduce the company dependence on patents held by third parties. They hired physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Gilles Holst (the first director) who assembled a staff consisting of Ekko Oosterhuis and a small number of research assistants; this was the entire scientific staff of the facility for the first decade. Holst held the director's position until 1946 and spent his tenure creating and maintaining an academic atmosphere at the facility in which researchers were given a lot of leeway and access to external research and resources. The external access also included colloquia
Colloquium
Colloquium can refer to:* the Parliament of Scotland, called a "colloquium" in Latin records.* any musical piece celebrating birth or distribution of good news, a hymn...
by some of the great physicists of the day (including Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
in 1923).
This managerial philosophy made the NatLab very different from all the other Philips facilities and laboratories. Unlike the other Philips labs, NatLab was more like the AT&T Bell Laboratories in the United States. The research was also not limited to industrial research; a good deal of fundamental research was also performed at NatLab, such as that of Bernard D. H. Tellegen
Bernard D. H. Tellegen
Bernard D.H. Tellegen was a Dutch electrical engineer and inventor of the penthode and the gyrator...
and Balthasar van der Pol
Balthasar van der Pol
Balthasar van der Pol was a Dutch physicist.Van der Pol studied physics in Utrecht, and in 1920 he was awarded his doctorate . He studied experimental physics with John Ambrose Fleming and Sir J. J. Thomson in England...
. Van der Pol was hired in 1922 to start a research program into radio technology
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
. This research program resulted in publishable results in the areas of propagation of radio waves, electrical circuit theory, harmonics and a number of related, mathematical
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
problems. Van der Pol also studied the effect of the curvature of the Earth on radio wave propagation.
Van der Pol's senior assistant (hired in 1923) was Bernard Tellegen. He started working on triodes and invented the penthode in 1926. The penthode was the centerpiece of the famous Philips radio and soon found its way into every radio and amplifier in the market. Tellegen also did pioneering research in the area of electrical networks.
In 1925 Van der Pol took on a junior student from Delft
Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology , also known as TU Delft, is the largest and oldest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands...
, Johan Numans. Numans designed and built a short wave crystal controlled telephony transmitter for his required period of practical work, with call sign PCJJ. This transmitter made world headlines on March 11, 1927 when it transmitted practically undistorted music and voice across the entire globe. As a result of this, the Philips Omroep Holland-Indië (PHOHI, the Philips Holland-Indonesia station) was founded.
Growth and success: 1946-1972
In 1946 Holst was succeeded by a triumvirateTriumvirate
A triumvirate is a political regime dominated by three powerful individuals, each a triumvir . The arrangement can be formal or informal, and though the three are usually equal on paper, in reality this is rarely the case...
: physicist Hendrik Casimir
Hendrik Casimir
Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir FRS was a Dutch physicist best known for his research on the two-fluid model of superconductors in 1934 and the Casimir effect Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir FRS (July 15, 1909 in The Hague, Netherlands – May 4, 2000 in Heeze) was a Dutch physicist best known...
(who would later become the primarily responsible of the three and member of the Board of Directors), chemist Evert Verwey and engineer Herre Rinia. The NatLab saw its heyday under this triumvirate.
For the Philips company as a whole, the era of Frits Philips
Frits Philips
Frederik Jacques "Frits" Philips was the fourth chairman of the board of directors of the Dutch electronics company Philips, which his uncle and father founded...
had made the company part of the world's electronics giants with 350.000 employees in 1970. NatLab grew right along with the company and became a world class research facility. By 1963 a new campus was designed for the facility in Waalre, with space for 3.000 employees (more than any Dutch university). NatLab never grew to quite those numbers though, 2.400 was the record – and that included the foreign branches which had been added in the meantime. The NatLab became a superuniversity where the "best of the best" could do research in practically perfect circumstances (full academic freedom, no time devoted to teaching classes, nearly unlimited budgets and so on).
The result was a slew of commercial and fundamental results, including the Plumbicon camera tube and the Video Long Play disc
Laserdisc
LaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
, which was the technological basis for the 1980 compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
. Results were also achieved in the area of integrated circuitry
Ic
IC, ic, or i.c. may stand for:In computing and technology:* .ic.gov, a second-level domain name administered by the US Government for members of the intelligence community* Integrated circuit* Initial condition...
: Else Kooi invented the LOCOS
LOCOS
LOCOS, short for LOCal Oxidation of Silicon, is a microfabrication process where silicon dioxide is formed in selected areas on a silicon wafer having the Si-SiO2 interface at a lower point than the rest of the silicon surface....
technology and Kees Hart and Arie Slob developed the I²C
I²C
I²C is a multi-master serial single-ended computer bus invented by Philips that is used to attach low-speed peripherals to a motherboard, embedded system, cellphone, or other electronic device. Since the mid 1990s, several competitors I²C ("i-squared cee" or "i-two cee"; Inter-Integrated Circuit;...
in the early 1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
.
There were also commercial failures. For example, Dick Raaijmakers (using the alias Kid Baltan) and Tom Dissevelt
Tom Dissevelt
Thomas Dissevelt was a Dutch composer and musician. He is known as a pioneer in the merging of electronic music and jazz...
did fundamental user experience research into the first synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
s, resulting in internationally acclaimed electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and jazz music
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
; but Philips itself felt that this research was just some "fooling around" and let it go to waste.
The end: 1972-present
The period under Casimir was a time of great success and achievement for the NatLab. But the time after his retirement in 1972 was one of decline and loss.In 1973, starting with the oil crisis
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
, the long period of economic growth came to an end and companies could no longer afford expensive research departments. With that economic reality, the belief in the stimulating value of fundamental research also seemed to disappear. On top of that, a number of bad decisions by the NatLab management did little to ingratiate the facility to the Philips Board of Directors (such bad decisions including the development of the flopped videodisc
Videodisc
Videodisc is a general term for a laser- or stylus-readable random-access circular disc that contains both audio and analog video signals recorded in an analog form...
, the Video 2000
Video 2000
Video 2000 was a consumer videocassette recorder system and analog recording videocassette standard developed by Philips and Grundig to compete with JVC's VHS and Sony's Betamax video technologies...
video recorder
Video recorder
A video recorder may be any of several related devices:*Digital video recorder ; Personal video recorder *DVD recorder*Videocassette recorder *Video tape recorder...
, and the initial lack of support for the compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
. The compact disc had been initiated and pushed by the audio department, although NatLab researcher Kees Schouhamer Immink played an instrumental role in its design.
Philips as a whole took a turn for the worse and by the end of the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
seemed a very real possibility. Under research director Kees Bulthuis the position of long-term fundamental research at NatLab came under more and more pressure, especially after Philips introduced decentralized financing. Bulthuis reduced research budgets by the equivalent of 60 million euro
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
in three years' time. Hundreds of NatLab employees were fired and departments were closed, including the entire mathematics department in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
. By 1989 the NatLab, which had formerly been on the Board of Directors budget, drew two-thirds of its income from contracts with the product divisions. This made the role of the NatLab far more limited than before: it became a source of expertise rather than a source of innovation. Fundamental research, research driven purely by curiosity, was strictly reined in and priority was given to the interests of the product divisions.
In 2000, Philips decided on a new direction for the NatLab and the grounds it was housed on: the decision was made to transform the whole of it into an open innovation
Open Innovation
Although the idea and discussion about some consequences date back at least to the 60s, open innovation is a term promoted by Henry Chesbrough, a professor and executive director at the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, in his book Open Innovation: The new...
facility for technology companies, of which Philips Research was only one. The name chosen for this facility is the High Tech Campus Eindhoven
High Tech Campus Eindhoven
The High Tech Campus Eindhoven is a high tech center and R&D ecosystem in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. The High Tech Campus houses more than 90 different companies and institutions, comprising over 8.000 R&D-staff and entrepreneurs, and over 50 different nationalities...
, which has by now completely subsumed the old NatLab. This decision by Philips also fit with the new direction chosen by the company, "Health and Lifestyle". As a result of this new direction, Philips has divested itself of branches like the semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
s branch (now the independent NXP
NXP
NXP Semiconductors is one of the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders, and was originally founded by Philips more than 50 years ago. Formerly known as Philips Semiconductors, the company was sold by Philips to a consortium of private equity investors in 2006. The new name, NXP, stood for...
), which has reduced the on-site size of Philips Research to 600 as of 2006.
Famous NatLab researchers
- Hendrik CasimirHendrik CasimirHendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir FRS was a Dutch physicist best known for his research on the two-fluid model of superconductors in 1934 and the Casimir effect Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir FRS (July 15, 1909 in The Hague, Netherlands – May 4, 2000 in Heeze) was a Dutch physicist best known...
- Else Kooi
- Balthasar van der PolBalthasar van der PolBalthasar van der Pol was a Dutch physicist.Van der Pol studied physics in Utrecht, and in 1920 he was awarded his doctorate . He studied experimental physics with John Ambrose Fleming and Sir J. J. Thomson in England...
- Kees Schouhamer Immink
- Bernard Tellegen
- Roelof Vermeulen
- Dick Raaijmakers