Family background and early education; studying chemistry at Occidental College. Work at Bell Laboratories in 1930s; job freeze during the Depression. Stanley Morgan's work on dielectric constants. Columbia University; Isidor Isaac Rabi's course; comparison of academic and industrial scientists; colloquia and study groups; Karl Darrow, Foster Nix, and William Shockley; transfer to Metallurgy Department, work on single crystals of zinc. The Bell Laboratories Record; work under Lester Germer and Clinton J. Davisson, their experiments; carbon deposits on filaments using x-ray diffraction; Richard Grisdale, Wilfred E. Campbell. Evolution in role of basic research at Bell Labs, Mervin Kelly's role; Oliver Buckley; Bell Labs conference, 1954; American Institute of Physics symposium. Awareness of work on copper oxide rectifiers by Joe Becker, C. Davisson, Walter Brattain; work on microphone carbon; Allan Holden's work on quartz; changes in the solid state program. The war years; material research of Jack Scaff and Grisdale; pn junction; technological application; effects of war on solid state research, interactions with other solid state centers. Postwar years, Leland A. Wooten's group, 1945; Dean Wooldridge's group; reasons for John Bardeen's leaving; James Fisk's group; development of transistor under William Shockley. Also prominently mentioned are: Ralph Bown, Karl Kelchner Darrow, Harvey Fletcher, Harold T. Friis, Conyers Herring, Stanley Owen Morgan, Gerald Leondus Pearson, Pierce, Charles Hard Townes; Bell Telephone Laboratories Colloquia, and Bell Telephone Laboratories Record.