COOLIDGE, WILLIAM DAVID

(b. Hudson, Massachusetts. 23 October 1873; d. Schenectady, New York, 3 February 1975)

physics.

Coolidge spent most of his career doing and managing research in industry, making inventions of major commercial importance in the fields of lighting and X rays, and later directing the General Electric Research Laboratory. He was the only child of Albert Edward Coolidge, a farmer and shoe factory worker, and Martha Alice Shattuck Coolidge, a dressmaker. On 30 December 1908 he married Ethel Woodward; they had two children, Elizabeth and Lawrence. His wife died in 1915, and on 29 February 1916 he married Dorothy Elizabeth Machaffie.

Coolidge attended the public schools of Hudson and earned a state scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1896 with a degree in electrical engineering. Summer work in a factory inclined him against an industrial career, and he chose the position of assistant in physics at M.I.T. He won a fellowship to study physics at the University of Leipzig in 1897 and 1898, under Gustav Wiedemann and Paul Drude, and earned his doctorate in 1898 with a dissertation on the determination of the dielectric constant of liquids.

Returning to M.I.T. in 1899. Coolidge taught physics for a semester before accepting a position as assistant to Professor Arthur A. Noyes, a physical chemist. When Noyes established the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry at M.I.T. in 1902, Coolidge joined him, focusing on the ionic theory of solutions. Coolidge’s contributions were primarily experimental; for example, he designed a pressure vessel capable of sustaining high temperatures and pressures that Noyes and Coolidge used to study the properties of solutions at high temperatures.

A chemist and M.I.T. colleague, Willis R. Whitney, also served as director of the Research Laboratory of the General Electric Company, founded at Schenectady, New York, in 1900. After unsuccessfully trying to recruit Coolidge in 1902, he succeeded in 1905. Lures included a doubling of Coolidge’s M.I.T. salary (he was still in debt from his years of graduate study) and a promise that he could bring his pressure vessel to Schenectady and spend one third of his time there doing pure research of his own choosing.

Coolidge brought the vessel, but immersed himself full-time in the most pressing problem facing the GE laboratory, the development of higher efficiency incandescent lamps. One route was by raising the melting point of the lamp’s filament (hotter wires emit more visible light than cooler ones). Researchers in Europe had developed processes for mixing the refractory but brittle metal tungsten with a binder to make a ductile mixture, and forcing it through a diamond die to form a filament. Theresulting filaments were usable but brittle after heat treatment had driven the binder off.

In 1906 Coolidge invented an improved version of this process, employing metallic rather than organic binders. Then, in an arduous empirical effort over the years 1907 to 1910, he developed a new continuous process for making tungsten wire. Blocks of hot sintered tungsten passed through a series of swaging, rolling, and drawing steps at gradually reduced temperatures. The tungsten grains gradually deformed from cubes to extended fibers, which yielded a wire that was ductile at room temperature. The great majority of all the incandescent lamps made in the world today are made by this “Coolidge process,” which was one of the first inventions made by a scientist in a U.S. industrial laboratory to achieve large commercial success.

In 1911 Coolidge used tungsten as a heat-resistant target for bombardment by a high-voltage discharge to produce X rays. In 1913 he combined this with discoveries by GE colleague Irving Langmuir in electron physics to invent an X-ray tube based on a tungsten target bombarded in high vacuum with a discharge consisting overwhelmingly of electrons, rather than the previous mixture of electrons and ions. This made possible much more precise control over the frequency of X rays produced than in the previous tubes and also facilitated development of higher-voltage tubes. The improvements were so pronounced that this’ Coolidge tube’ became and remains the main type used in medical diagnostics.

During World War 1. Coolidge helped develop a portable X-ray unit for field use and invented a shipboard acoustic device for locating submarines (the’ C tube’) that saw combat use. Over the next twenty years, he made many improvements in the technology of generating X rays and electron beams at high voltage, carrying those technologies up to millions of volts. Out of this work came the majority of his total of eighty-three patents, including techniques widely used in early experimental nuclear physics.

In 1932 Coolidge succeeded Whitney as director of the GE Research Laboratory. His reticence, modesty, formality, and quiet authority contrasted with his predecessor’s outgoing enthusiasm. He continued Whitney’s policy of putting most of the laboratory’s effort into work of immediate commercial importance while maintaining a few smallscale efforts in purely scientific research of possible long-range industrial impact, such as electron and high-energy physics, and polymer and surface chemistry. The polymer work, in particular, paid off with later business successes in engineering plastics and silicones. Coolidge also served on several government advisory bodies, including the federal government’s 1940–1941 Advisory Committee on Uranium, which concluded (though with less urgency than the recommendations of subsequent committees, which led to the Manhattan Project) that research on the possibility of an atomic bomb be pursued. He postponed retirement to direct the GE Research Laboratory throughout World War II, during which it was devoted to war-related efforts ranging from electronic devices for radar countermeasures to silicone rubber gaskets for battleship searchlights. After retiring from GE in 1945, he devoted the remainder of a long and active life to such hobbies as travel and photography.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Coolidge published more than fifty papers in scientific journals, of which the most important describe his two major inventions: “Ductile Tungsten,” in Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, 29 , pt. 2 (1910), 961–965; and “A Powerful Röntgen Ray Tube with a Pure Electron Discharge,” in Physical Review. 2nd ser. 2 (1913), 409–430. Other significant scientific papers include “Electrical Conductivity of Aqueous Solutions at High Temperatures,” in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 39 (1903) 163–219, with Arthur A. Noyes: and “High Voltage Cathode Ray and X-Ray Tubes and Their Operation,” in Physics, 1 (1931), 230–244, with L. E. Dempster and H. E. Tanis, Jr.

His papers are in the possession of his daughter, Eliz abeth Coolidge Smith, in Portland, Oregon.

II. Secondary Literature. Biographies of Coolidge include Herman A. Liebhafsky, William David Coolidge: A Centenarian and His Work (New York, 1974), which focuses on the invention of ductile tungsten; John Anderson Miller, Yankee Scientist: William David Coolidge (Schenectady, N.Y., 1963), the most complete; and C. Guy Suits, “William David Coolidge,” in Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences, 53 (1982), 141–157, Coolidge’s work is put into the context of the historical development of industrial research at GE and in the United States by Kendall A. Birr, Pioneering in Industrial Research: A History of the GE Research Laboratory (Washington. D.C. 1957); Leonard A. Reich. The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell 1876–1926 (New York, 1985): and George Wise, Willis R. Whitney, General Electric, and the Origins of U.S. Industrial Research (New York, 1985).

George Wise

Coolidge, Calvin (1872–1933), thirtieth president of the United States.Born in Plymouth, Vermont, John Calvin Coolidge graduated from Amherst College and worked as an attorney before entering politics as a Republican. After holding various local and state offices, he was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1918. He won national attention in 1919 by using state troops against striking Boston police. Elected vice president in 1920, he became president upon Warren Harding's death in 1923. He won election in his own right in 1924, easily defeating the Democrat John W. Davis and the Progressive Robert La Follette. Choosing not to seek an additional term, he left the White House in 1929, assuring the nation that continued prosperity lay ahead. As his successor Herbert Hoover coped with the Great Depression, Coolidge confined himself to writing articles extolling conservative principles.

When he was in office, Coolidge's dour Yankee taciturnity became the target of humorists. In contrast to the scandal‐ridden Harding administration, Coolidge symbolized the older virtues of honesty and sober practicality. In domestic affairs, Coolidge embraced the complementary ideologies of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (1855–1937) and Commerce Secretary Hoover. Combining Mellon's belief in unrestricted capitalism with Hoover's philosophy of corporate cooperation and voluntaristic effort for humane purposes, Coolidge presided over the most conservative administration in modern American history—an administration committed to freeing business from governmental restraints, raising tariffs to benefit industry, lowering taxes for the wealthy, and suppressing labor unions. He twice vetoed the McNary‐Haugen Bill designed to raise agricultural prices to help economically depressed farmers.

In foreign policy, the Washington Naval Arms Conference of 1922, an early arms‐control effort negotiated by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, temporarily slowed an arms race among the world's naval powers. In general, however, Coolidge continued the nation's post–World War I retreat from world affairs. Accepting a plan devised by Vice President Charles G. Dawes (1865–1951), the Coolidge administration somewhat scaled back the disastrous reparation payments that the 1919 Versailles treaty had imposed on defeated Germany, but the effect was neutralized by high U.S. tariffs and Germany's worsening economy. In Latin America, the government under Coolidge somewhat modified the aggressive interventionism of previous years, while encouraging the expanding economic penetration of U.S. corporations. Although the Kellogg‐Briand Pact of 1928, signed by the United States and France along with many other nations, renounced war as an instrument of national policy, its benign optimism and lack of enforcement provisions marked an appropriate end to an administration based on the premise that government functioned best when it functioned least.
See also Conservatism; Depressions, Economic; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America; Isolationism; Republican Party; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Robert Ferrell , The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge, 1994.

David Burner

COOLIDGE, CALVIN

Born John Calvin Coolidge—after his father—on July 4, 1872, in Plymouth, Vermont, he shortened his name to Calvin Coolidge after leaving college. Coolidge became the thirtieth president of the United States upon the death of President warren g. harding. He was educated at Amherst College, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1895 and a doctor of laws degree in 1919. He also received doctor of laws degrees from several other institutions, including Wesleyan University and Tufts University.

"Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business."
—Calvin Coolidge

In 1897, Coolidge was admitted to the bar and established his legal firm in Northampton,

Massachusetts, where he practiced until 1919. He became councilman in Northampton in 1899, then city solicitor from 1900 to 1901, clerk of courts in 1904, and member of the General Court of Massachusetts from 1907 to 1908. In 1910, he was elected mayor of Northampton, a post that he held for one year.

Coolidge served in the Massachusetts Senate from 1912 to 1915, acting as president during 1914 and 1915. He was the lieutenant governor of the state from 1916 to 1918 and the following year became governor. As governor, he gained public recognition for his strong policy regarding the Boston police strike of 1919, regarding which he denied the right of any individual or group to strike if the public welfare is jeopardized.

With such extensive experience in state government, Coolidge was a natural choice for a federal position. In 1921, he was elected to the vice presidency of the United States. On August 2, 1923, President Warren G. Harding died suddenly and Coolidge became president. He was sworn in by his father, a notary public, on August 3, 1923, at 2:47 a.m. in his hometown of Plymouth, Vermont. In the next presidential election, held in 1924, Coolidge was elected, and so his administration lasted for five years.

As president, Coolidge adopted policies that favored business and discouraged government intervention in the economic system. He influenced the speculative activity of the stock market toward the end of the 1920s, which, some believe, precipitated the crash of 1929. When Coolidge left office in that year, the country was on the brink of economic disaster.

Coolidge spent his last years in retirement, writing articles. His Autobiography was published in 1929. He died January 5, 1933, in Northampton, Massachusetts.

further readings

Gilbert, Robert E. 2003. The Tormented President: Calvin Coolidge and the Trauma of Death. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.

Sobel, Robert. 2000. Coolidge: An American Enigma. Washington, D.C.: Regnery.

cross-references

Harding, Warren Gamaliel; Hoover, Herbert Clark.

Coolidge, William David

William Coolidge (1873-1975) was born in Hudson, Massachusetts, the son of a fanner and a dressmaker. As a youth, he worked in a shoe factory to help support his family. After attending public schools, Coolidge funded his own college education by borrowing money and earning scholarships and fellowships. With a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Coolidge went to Germany to study physics. After earning his doctoral degree with high honors, he returned to MIT to do research.

Although Coolidge was content at MIT, in 1905 he was lured to General Electric Company's research laboratory with an offer to double his MIT salary. Coolidge had avoided a career in industry after experiencing factory work, but General Electric (GE) promised him freedom to pursue his own interests as well as the company's commercial research goals.

In just a few years, Coolidge solved one of the greatest technological problems of the time—developing a better filament for incandescent (very bright) light bulbs. Early electric light bulbs used carbon filaments, which were not only delicate to handle but also limited in the amount of light they could produce. Scientists knew that tungsten (the metal with the highest melting point), would perform better than carbon, but because tungsten is brittle, no one could figure out a way to make filaments from it. Coolidge invented a process for making tungsten bendable. As a result, modern electric light bulbs are still made with tungsten.

Coolidge also invented an X-ray tube that is still used by doctors and dentists. His revolutionary tube was based on a tungsten "target," which is bombarded in a vacuum by a stream of electrons to produce X-rays. Coolidge's tube allowed much more precise control over the X-ray wave length and could also accommodate much higher voltages.

During World War II (1939-1945), Coolidge contributed his expertise to various war-related projects. He postponed his retirement until 1945 in order to work throughout the war. Coolidge lived to the age of 102, continuing to enjoy hobbies such as travel and photography.

William David Coolidge 1873–1975, American physical chemist, b. Hudson, Mass., grad. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1896. He joined the General Electric Company in 1905 and served as director of its research laboratory (1932–40) and as vice president and director of research (1940–44). He made special studies of X rays, invented an X-ray tube, and invented and developed ductile tungsten.