Background
Oliver Ellsworth Buckley was born on August 8, 1887 in Sloan, Iowa, the son of William Doubleday Buckley, a lawyer and superintendent of public schools, and Sarah Elizabeth Jeffrey, a teacher.
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Oliver Ellsworth Buckley was born on August 8, 1887 in Sloan, Iowa, the son of William Doubleday Buckley, a lawyer and superintendent of public schools, and Sarah Elizabeth Jeffrey, a teacher.
Buckley became interested in electricity and electronic communications at an early age. He read a five-volume set of books on electricity he found in his father's library; and when Sloan acquired a telephone exchange during his senior year of high school, he helped install it. He graduated in 1909 with the B. S. degree from the Grinnell College. He received the Ph. D. at Cornell University (1910) four years later.
As a student at Grinnell College, Buckley's greatest interests were mathematics and physics; and he taught there for a year after graduating in 1909 with the B. S. This led to a teaching assistantship in physics at Cornell University (1910), where Buckley received the Ph. D. four years later. Although Buckley was not considered a brilliant student, he was hardworking; and his dissertation adviser predicted a promising career.
At Cornell, Buckley met Frank B. Jewett, of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. He was fascinated by Jewett's description of the interactions of science, engineering, and production at Bell; and in 1914 he obtained a position in the engineering department of the Western Electric Company (part of the Bell System).
By 1924, Buckley had developed a successful underwater telegraph cable system with a fourfold increase in capacity. At the same time he initiated work on a multichannel submarine cable for telephones, which was used over short distances by 1930. A great advance in the state of the art, it stimulated further research into long-distance transatlantic telephonic systems. The work required vacuum-tube amplifiers and other equipment with a trouble-free lifetime of at least twenty years in order for the system to be operationally and economically feasible--but no such components were available.
By this time Buckley had other administrative duties; and World War II brought other research requirements, so that the submarine telephonic cable system was not activated until 1956.
In 1933 Buckley had become director of research at Bell Telephone Laboratories and executive vice-president in November 1936, reporting to Jewett, then president of Bell Laboratories. Responsibilities for operations and the organization of 4, 500 scientists, engineers, and staff increasingly separated Buckley from the research that he enjoyed.
In the late 1930's the new facilities of Bell Laboratories, at Murray Hill, New Jersey, became the first such complex planned to incorporate distinctive and functional research requirements. Buckley worked closely with the architects to determine the requisites of functional lab space. The resulting custom-built lab complex had features that have been copied by other laboratories. He succeeded Jewett as president of Bell Laboratories in 1940 and guided the complex through hundreds of military projects during World War II, including extensive work in radar.
In the postwar era Buckley and Bell management agreed not to commit more than 20 percent of the resources of Bell Laboratories to military research and development. This was not an easy task, since Bell's competence and quality of work were highly valued by the armed services; and Buckley devoted considerable time to selecting military proposals that he deemed relevant to Bell Laboratories' capabilities.
Significant projects included the Army's "Nike" antiaircraft guided missile system and the atomic weapons program, carried out by a subsidiary, the Sandia Corporation. Meanwhile, Buckley launched vigorous programs in new communications technology and fundamental research that led to microwave radio relay systems and the invention of the transistor.
Whenever possible, he left his office and prowled laboratories wherever exciting work was in progress. In 1950 he accepted a presidential appointment as chairman of the Science Advisory Committee. To do so, he resigned as president of Bell Telephone Laboratories, becoming chairman of its board of directors until his retirement in 1952.
He died in Newark, New Jersey.
On October 14 of 1914 he married a Grinnell classmate, Clara Louise Lane. They had four children.