ThePhilips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (English translation:Philips Physics Laboratory) orNatLab was theDutch section of thePhilips research department, which did research for the product divisions of that company.
In 1975, the NatLab employed some 2000 people, including 600 researchers with university degrees. Research done at the NatLab has ranged from product-specific tofundamental research intoelectronics,physics andchemistry, as well ascomputing science andinformation technology.
Originally located in theStrijp district ofEindhoven, the facility moved toWaalre in the early 1960s. A 1972 municipal rezoning meant the area became part of the Eindhoven municipality again, which was followed some years later by Eindhoven renaming the campus' main street into theProf. Holstlaan, after thefirst director.[1]
The NatLab facility was disbanded in 2001 and the area has been transformed into the commercialHigh Tech Campus Eindhoven, which is open to researchers from many different companies. Philips Research is after many reorganizations one of the smaller tenants. Philips Research also had branches in Germany, the United Kingdom, United States, India and China.
The history of the NatLab spans roughly three periods: 1914–1946, 1946–1972 and 1972–2001.
The NatLab was founded in 1914 after a direct decision ofGerard andAnton 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 companypatent portfolio and reduce the company dependence on patents held by third parties. They hiredphysicistGilles Holst (the first director) who assembled a staff consisting ofEkko 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 had intellectual freedom and access to external research and resources. The external access also includedcolloquia by some of the great physicists of the day (includingAlbert Einstein in 1923).[citation needed]
This managerial philosophy was unique to NatLab, compared to other Philips facilities and laboratories. Unlike the other Philips labs, NatLab similar to AT&TBell 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 ofBernard D. H. Tellegen andBalthasar van der Pol. Van der Pol was hired in 1922 to start a research program intoradio technology. This research program resulted in publishable results in the areas of propagation ofradio 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.[citation needed]
Van der Pol's senior assistant (hired in 1923) wasBernard Tellegen. He started working on triodes and invented (with his director Gilles Holst[2]) thepenthode in 1926. The penthode was the centerpiece of the famous Philips radio and it 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 fromDelft,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, thePhilips Omroep Holland-Indië (PHOHI, thePhilips Holland-Indonesia station) was founded.[citation needed]
In 1946 Holst was succeeded by atriumvirate: physicistHendrik 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 ofFrits 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 (fullacademic freedom, no time devoted to teaching classes, nearly unlimited budgets and so on).Kees Schouhamer Immink, digital pioneer and one of NatLab's top-scientists, formulated the atmosphere at that time: "We were able to conduct whatever research we found relevant, and had no pre-determined tasks; instead, we received full freedom and support of autonomous research. We went to work, not knowing what we would do that day. This view -or rather ambiguous view- on how research should be conducted, led to amazing inventions as a result. It was an innovation heaven".[3] In 1968Kees Teer became director.[4]
The result was a slew of commercial and fundamental results, including thecassette tape in 1962,Plumbicon camera tube and theVideo Long Play disc, which was the technological basis for the 1980compact disc. Results were also achieved in the area ofintegrated circuitry:Else Kooi [nl] invented theLOCOS technology andKees Hart andArie Slob developed the I²L (Integrated Injection Logic) in the early 1970s.
Dick Raaijmakers (under the alias "Kid Baltan", "Baltan" being "Natlab" spelled backwards) andTom Dissevelt's work at the Natlab studios resulted in internationally acclaimedelectronic music andjazz music.
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 theoil 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 floppedvideodisc, theVideo 2000videocassette recorder, and the initial lack of support for thecompact disc).
The compact disc had been initiated and pushed by the audio department,[5] although NatLab researcherKees Schouhamer Immink played an instrumental role in its design. For the industry group 'Audio' and the NatLab the development of a small optical audio disc started early in 1974. The sound quality of this disc had to be superior to that of the large and vulnerable vinyl record. To realize this, Lou Ottens, technical director of 'Audio', formed a seven-person project group. Vries and Diepeveen were members of this project group. In March 1974, during an Audio-VLP meeting Peek and Vries recommended a digital audio registration because an error-correcting code could be included. Vries and Diepeveen built an error-correcting coder-decoder that was delivered in the summer of 1978. The decoder was included in the CD prototype player that was presented to the international press. The error-correcting coder-decoder was abandoned in 1979 in favor ofSony’s superiorCIRC code, which became the adopted CD's standard.[5] To commemorate this breakthrough, Philips received an IEEE Milestone Award on March 6, 2009.[6] This breakthrough was also appreciated by Sony and they started a cooperation with Philips that resulted in June 1980 in a common CD system standard.
In 1985 Kees Teer retired as director.[4] Philips as a whole took a turn for the worse and by the end of the 1980sbankruptcy seemed a very real possibility. Under research directorKees 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 millioneuro in three years' time. Hundreds of NatLab employees were fired and departments were closed, including the entire mathematics department inBrussels. 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. In 1998, whenArie Huijser became general research director, top researchersJoseph Braat, Rudy van de Plassche,Kees Schouhamer Immink, and Dieter Kasperkovitz[7]resigned, further accelerating NatLabs's decline.Kees Schouhamer Immink, in a newspaper interview, told that the research management was a chaos which spoiled the atmosphere. As a result, academic freedom was far gone.[8] Fundamental research, research driven purely by curiosity, was strictly reined in and priority was given to the short-term 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 and sell the whole of it into anopen innovation facility for technology companies, of which Philips Research was only a small one. The new name is theHigh 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".
Philips has divested itself of branches like the Lighting andsemiconductors branches (now the independentNXP), which has reduced the on-site size of Philips Research to 200 as of 2016.[9]
In March 2012 High Tech Campus Eindhoven was sold by Philips to Ramphastos Investments, a private consortium of investors. Philips remained as tenant, but its status changed from owner/manager to resident.[citation needed]
The Natlab had a great impact on science inThe Netherlands. The list of appointments and honors[10] compiled by Henk Hagenbeuk, shows the close cooperation between the Dutch universities and Philips Research until the 1990s. The cooperation worked both ways:researchers were appointed as (part-time) professor at the universities, and vice versa graduates joined the Philips Research. Philips researchers received prestigious awards in technical fields.[citation needed]
| Alumni | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
.jpg) | Hendrik Casimir | was a Dutchphysicist best known for his research on the two-fluid model ofsuperconductors (together withC. J. Gorter[11]) in 1934 and theCasimir effect (together withD. Polder) in 1948. Was the head of NatLab from 1946 until 1972. |
| Balthasar van der Pol | main interests were inradio wave propagation, theory ofelectrical circuits, andmathematical physics. TheVan der Pol oscillator, one of the most widely used models of nonlinearself-oscillation, is named after him. He was awarded theInstitute of Radio Engineers (now theIEEE)Medal of Honor in 1935. | |
 | Kees Schouhamer Immink | pioneered and advanced the era of digital audio, video, and data recording, including popular digital media such asCompact Disc,DVD andBlu-ray Disc. He has been a prolific and influential engineer, who holds more than 1100 US and international patents. He was awarded both the 2017IEEE Medal of Honor[12] "for pioneering contributions to video, audio, and data recording technology, including compact disc, DVD, and Blu-ray", and the 1999IEEE Edison Medal, and a personalEmmy award in 2004. |
| Bernard Tellegen | was a Dutchelectrical engineer and inventor of thepentode and thegyrator. He is also known for a theorem in circuit theory,Tellegen's theorem. He won theIEEE Edison Medal in 1973 "For a creative career of significant achievement in electrical circuit theory, including thegyrator" | |
| Dick Raaymakers | was aDutchcomposer, theater maker and theorist. He was known as a pioneer in the field ofelectronic music andtape music. | |
| Carlo Beenakker | is aDutchphysicist. He is known for his contributions tomesoscopic physics and is currently a professor at Leiden university. | |
| Amar Bose | stayed one year at NatLab. He was an American academic and entrepreneur, and a professor atMIT and the founder and chairman of Bose corporation |
Over time, Van Rumpt and Kasperkovitz tired of the corporate hoop-jumping at Philips, decided to resign and create their own company in 1998.
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