Taking Superconductors From the Lab to Market : High-Tech Firms, MIT Join Forces to Ensure U.S. Will Enjoy New Technology’s Commercial Benefits
Two of the nation’s top high-technology companies and one of its premier research universities Tuesday announced the creation of a consortium intended to seize the lead in commercializing the new technology of superconductors.
In a joint announcement, American Telephone & Telegraph, International Business Machines and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the consortium, believed to be unique in this country, should serve as a model for other groups trying to take the lead in other new technologies.
The United States now leads the world in basic research on superconductors, and the consortium is intended to assure that U.S. rather than Japanese firms have the advantage in marketing the products or processes that come out of the new science 10 or 20 years from now.
Superconductors are ceramic materials that, when cooled to more than minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit, suddenly let electricity pass through them with no resistance.
Since resistance is the greatest problem in storing and using electricity, creating unwanted heat and dissipating power, superconductors in theory will allow energy to be stored and transmitted with no loss of strength and more cheaply than at present. Fully realized, this could mean faster computers; extremely powerful batteries, magnets and electric motors, and cheaper household current.
The new organization will be called the Consortium for Superconducting Electronics. The first four members are AT&T;, IBM, MIT and Lincoln Laboratories, a separate government-sponsored MIT lab. More companies, universities and government laboratories will be recruited later.
The group formed on the recommendation of a presidential committee established by the White House Science Council, which said in January that such an approach would be necessary if the United States was to avoid continuing the pattern it followed in laser and videotape technologies. Both were created in the United States but commercially exploited by the Japanese.
“The notion behind it is the absolute sharing of information,” said Ralph E. Gomory, IBM senior vice president for science and technology, “and the companies will give up control of the work to the consortium. That’s what I think is exciting.” Gomory chaired the president’s committee and was a chief organizer of the consortium.
Each participant in the consortium is expected to give up something and gain something in the plan.
The companies and universities will put, overall, the equivalent of 25 full-time professionals into the work and will relinquish control over them to managers named by the consortium. The managers will direct all the researchers as a single team.
The companies thus gain what they have eagerly sought: help from top university researchers in developing commercial products. The universities and government labs in return get additional funds to add staff and students. Under a joint “intellectual property” agreement, they will also share with the labs any profit that might come from commercial success.
The four initial participants are turning over an investment equivalent to $10 million to the consortium’s management. The leaders of the group--Gomory of IBM, provost John Deutch of MIT and Saul Buchsbaum, an executive vice president of AT&T--will; present their plan today to the federal government.
They hope to get up to $6 million over the next three years from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
