We aren’t thinking of a super-race
The principles of this may not be popular, but they are sound
Nine days before Christmas, John Bardeen had a theory. The two gold points on the germanium should be spaced as closely together as possible. Walter Brattain attached a piece of gold foil to the side of the plastic triangle, slicing it to create the separation. It worked. They were witnessing the transmitter effect for the first time. They tried it again, this time adjusting the power. It was repeatable.
The scientists recognized the breakthrough, but weren’t convinced of its practicality in replacing vacuum tubes. Brattain told Bardeen, “I think we better call Shockley.”
The manager’s reaction was mixed, though he recognized its import. There was some credit due to William Shockley in all of this. For one thing, he’d done some foundational research at Bell Labs that led to the breakthrough. Perhaps just as importantly, he’d had the common sense to get out of the way of Brattain and Bardeen’s work. But when time came to take credit, he had no intention of remaining a bystander, even going so far as planning to file his own patent as sole creator.
After witnessing the demonstration, Shockley noted to his staff members that “sometimes the people who do the work don't get credit for it.” Brattain said nothing, but Bardeen couldn’t help himself. "Oh hell, Shockley,” he snapped back, “there's enough glory in this for everybody.”
Indeed, there was. When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored the transistor breakthrough nine years later, the trio shared the Nobel Prize in Physics.
One of Bell’s earliest employees, Shockley had established himself among American’s leading scientific mind years before the Nobel-winning breakthrough. At the tail end of the Second World War, a report from the physicist may have helped tip the War Department over the edge on the question of dropping atomic bombs on Japan. He found further success the year of the award, in the form of Mountain View’s Shockley Semiconductor, helping pave the way for what would become Silicon Valley.
Within a few years, however, it was clear the firm’s real contribution would come in the form of the companies that emerged from it. A notoriously paranoid and draconian manager, his increasingly erratic behavior led to a mass exodus among his researchers. Shockley deemed the group the “Traitorous Eight.” They would go on to found dozens of companies that would both knock Shockley Semiconductor from its perch and play a vital role in birthing a new industry, in spite of their former boss’s insistence that they were doomed to fail.
A bruised Shockley returned to academia, becoming a professor of engineering at Stanford. It was during his time at the University that he fashioned himself an expert in genetics. A eugenicist and supremacist, he advocated for forced sterilization of anyone with an IQ below 100. A 1982 U.S. Senate campaign built entirely around his notions of dysgenic breeding garnered him eighth place in the California Republican primary, with 0.37-percent of the vote.
Shockley found a glimmer of hope for his future vision in the work of a fellow inventor. Robert Graham had made his own fortune – more than $70 million – by giving the world the shatter-resistant eye glasses. He spent the early 70s developing plans to create his own sovereign nation, Grahamland. It would be a haven for follow geniuses, a place where scientists and their ilk could gather and live, away from throngs of dullards who contributed little to the human race. They would be supplied with high-tech labs and luxury living quarters.
One of his employees scouted suitable locations – small islands in the Atlantic that might be purchased from England. Ultimately, Graham’s plans were foiled by his own distractions. Little progress would be made on Grahamland before the project was abandoned outright. He did however, summon the drive to complete his next grand project. By the end of the decade, he stepped away from his role at the company he’d founded and began work on an altogether different approach to utopia.
“The principles of this may not be popular, but they are sound,” he told a reporter from The Los Angeles Times. “So far, we’ve refused to apply to humans what we already know and apply to animals and plants.”
The article included a tour of Graham’s new facility. Though located on a beautiful, sprawling estate 30 minutes northeast of San Diego in Escondido, the facility lacked its charm. Inside a converted underground bunker was a vat of liquid nitrogen used to store human sperm at -320-degrees Fahrenheit.
The story was published on February 29th under the headline, “Sperm Bank Donors All Nobel Winners: Plan Seeks to Enrich Human Gene Pool.” It detailed Graham’s ambitions to breed genius, though he refused to disclose the names of his donors. Graham is believed to have collected sperm from three Nobel Prize Winners, though only one came forward to lend credibility to the project.
“Yes, I’m one of them,” Shockley told the reporter. “This is a remarkable attempt, and I am thoroughly in sympathy with this sort of an approach. Everyone talks about it, but by God, Graham is doing something about it.”
While Graham noted that Shockley’s admission lent the sperm bank legitimacy, the Nobel Prize winner’s deeply-held belief in eugenics and racial superiority underlined the fact that the Repository for Germinal Choice’s entire inventory came from white donors. Soon Saturday Night Live lampooned the project in a sketch starring that week’s guest, Rodney Dangerfield, while legendary San Francisco columnist Herb Caen declare the undertaking, “proof that masturbation makes you crazy.”
Days after the Times article was published, Graham held a press conference to defend himself and the repository against claims of Nazism. “I don’t know much about Hitler and his vision,” he told the press. “I don’t see a parallel. We aren’t thinking of a super-race. We are thinking in terms of a few more creative, intelligent people who otherwise might not be born.”
Like Shockley, Graham held his own eugenic beliefs, and in spite of the infamy, he continued to operate the bank until his death in 1999. By that time, however, the promise of an exclusive catalogue of Nobel Prize winners diluted considerably, owing to a shallow pool and the average age of viable candidates.
The repository operated for an additional two years after Graham’s death, claiming to have facilitated 218 births in its 20+ year existence. A team tasked with disposing of medical waste arrived at the office and bagged the remaining samples before dumping them in an incinerator.
Sources:
The Genius Factory by David Plotz
Robert Graham, Founder of Exclusive Sperm Bank, Dies https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-18-mn-29931-story.html
The “Nobel Prize Sperm Bank” Was Racist. It Also Helped Change the Fertility Industry https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nobel-prize-sperm-bank-was-racist-it-also-helped-change-fertility-industry-180963569/