Draft:MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics

• Comment: This is an essay on a research laboratory at MIT. As such it belongs on a MIT web page, not on Wikipedia. Please read carefully WP:!, sections such as WP:NOTPROMO. If you want to pursue this then you need to prove the lab is notable using independent sources. Ldm1954 (talk) 12:43, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

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The Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT

Fairchild Building (MIT) - DSC00278
Location	Cambridge, MA
Affiliations	Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Introduction

The Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at MIT was founded in 1946 under the joint sponsorship of MIT’s Departments of Physics and Electrical Engineering. RLE is the successor to the Radiation Laboratory (RadLab) of World War II. Every initial member of the staff was engaged in governmental research during the war.

At its founding, MIT described the objectives of RLE as follows:

‘The purpose of the laboratory is to assure a continuing flow of competent young men trained in electronics, and the steady advance of scientific knowledge in this field. Extraordinary advances in electronic techniques achieved during the war will exert an enormous influence on industry and science alike. As host to the Radiation Laboratory, M.I.T. has been intimately associated with these developments. In establishing the Research Laboratory of Electronics it is the intent of the Institute to make further contributions in this field. Much of the basic research program of the M.I.T. Radiation Laboratory will be continued in this newly-created center.’

Today, RLE has an annual research volume of approximately $80M with more than 70 Principal Investigators conducting research in Electrical Engineering, Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics, and Condensed Matter Physics. Since 2020, RLE has supported MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL). It also supports MIT’s Center for Quantum Engineering (CQE), and MIT’s Grainger Electric Machines Facility, the successor to the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES), and the High Voltage Research Laboratory (HVRL). RLE manages approximately 200,000 sqft of research space, with substantial research efforts housed in buildings 36, 26, 38, 39, 13, and 10.  

During its history, RLE has served as the incubator for numerous new research directions and organizations at MIT, including MIT Lincoln Laboratory, MIT’s Department of Linguistics, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).

Notable Contributions

Norbert Wiener in 1963.

1948 — Following from RLE’s Norbert Wiener’s wartime development of filters that generate statistical estimates of a signal in the presence of noise, RLE doctoral student Thomas Cheatham, Jr. builds the first electronic analog correlator for communications systems., paving the way for Henry Singleton’s digital correlator in 1949

1951 — RLE research in continental air defense, associated with MIT’s Project Charles, helps to spawn Lincoln Laboratory and ultimately the first computerized and integrated strategic air defense system for the U.S. Project SAGE.

1952 — RLE’s Jerrold Zacharias, James Yates, and R.D. Haun produce the first practical atomic clock, based on atomic beam frequency standards developed by Zacharias.

1954 — The TX‑0 computer, constructed at Lincoln Laboratory, moves to RLE, where it hosts early imaginative tests of programming, including a Western movie shown on TV and 3‑D tic-tac-toe.

1955 — RLE’s Norbert Wiener John Barlow and Walter Rosenblith observe the auto-correlation function of brain waves, promoting the application of statistical communication techniques to communication biophysics.

C.E. Shannon.

1955 — Joseph R. Applegate comes to MIT to join RLE’s mechanical translation project. He becomes MIT’s first African-American faculty member when he is appointed Assistant Professor of Modern Languages the following year.

1956 — RLE’s Dudley A. Buck invents the cryotron, the first practical device exploiting superconductivity, which becomes a revolutionary component for miniaturizing the room-sized computers typical through the early 1950s.

1956 — Claude E. Shannon joins RLE’s Processing and Transmission of Information group. RLE begins collaboration with the new Eaton-Peabody Laboratory at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, where RLE’s Nelson Y.S. Kiang is the first director.

Jerome Lettvin in Building 20 at MIT in 1952[2]

1957 — RLE moves into the Compton Laboratories (Building 26) with the Laboratory for Nuclear Science and MIT’s Computation Center.

1958 — RLE’s John McCarthy develops the LISP programming language that can manipulate symbolic expressions as well as code and debug major subroutines.

1959 — Robert N. Noyce, who had been a graduate research assistant in RLE’s Physical Electronics Group from 1949 to 1953, co-invents the integrated circuit at Fairchild Semiconductor which he co-founded in two years earlier. He later co-founds Intel in 1968.

1959 — RLE’s Jerome Lettvin and Walter Pitts publish their landmark neurophysiological research in the paper, “What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain.”

1959 — Julius A. Stratton, RLE’s first Director, is appointed eleventh President of MIT.

1961 — The MIT Department of Linguistics is formed, with major part of its nucleus composed of RLE researchers in human communication.

1962 — RLE graduate research assistant Ivan E. Sutherland develops Sketchpad, the first interactive computer graphics program and the first graphical user interface (GUI). Sutherland later becomes a vice president of Sun Microsystems.

1962 — Project “Luna See,” conducted by RLE’s Louis Smullin and George Fiocco, demonstrates high-power optical maser technology by bouncing a laser beam off the moon’s surface. It was the first time outer space had been spanned by laser light.

Amar Bose. From Amar Bose ’51, SM ’52, ScD ’56, Bose Corporation’s founder, has died at 83 | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1963 — J.C.R. Licklider, formerly of RLE, funds ARPA’s Project MAC at MIT with RLE’s Robert M. Fano as its first director. Project MAC spawns both the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory in 1970 and the Laboratory of Computer Science (LCS) in 1975. The two laboratories later merge to become the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in 2003.

1964 — Amar G. Bose, who joined RLE in 1953 as a graduate student working with RLE’s Yuk Wing Lee and Norbert Wiener in statistical communication theory, and who later conducted research in RLE on physical acoustics and psychoacoustics, founds Bose Corporation, which becomes an industry leader in commercial audio products and applications.

1968 — RLE’s David H. Staelin and E.C. Reifenstein, using radio telescopes, discover that the Crab Nebula contains a rapidly-rotating central star. This discovery helps to connect supernovae, neutron stars and pulsars.

1968 — RLE’s Thomas Huang uses an optical scanner to perform Fourier transform coding, and introduces the concept of coding in blocks smaller than the original image.

1971 — Jerome B. Weisner, RLE’s third Director, is appointed thirteenth President of MIT.

1972 — RLE’s Bruno Coppi designs and constructs the first high-field toroidal plasma machine, the Alcator A tokamak.

1973 — A major portion of RLE moves into the new Sherman Fairchild Complex (Buildings 36 and 38).

1973 – RLE’s Rainer Weiss publishes “Electromagnetically Coupled Broadband Gravitational Antenna” Quarterly Reports of the Research Laboratory of Electronics MIT 105, p. 54 (1973). The work becomes the foundation for the development of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) recognized by the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics.

1975 — RLE’s William F. Schreiber and Donald E. Troxel collaborate to produce the Laserphoto system for the Associate Press (AP), which quickly replaces all AP Wirephoto machines throughout the United States.

1975 — RLE’s Alan V. Oppenheim and Ronald Schafer of the Georgia Institute of Technology publish “Digital Signal Processing,” which becomes the landmark textbook in the field.

1976 — MIT’s Plasma Fusion Center (now the Plasma Science and Fusion Center) is formed, with a significant part of its nucleus composed of RLE’s research in experimental plasma physics and engineering.

1983 – HVRL’s John Trump posthumously wins National Medal of Science in Engineering Sciences for his "introduction of new methods for the beneficial application of ionizing radiation in medicine, industry and atomic physics.” After beginning his career developing high voltage sources with Robert Van der Graaff, Trump’s legacy included the development of rotational radiation therapy for cancer treatment.

1985 — Irwin M. Jacobs, a graduate research assistant in RLE’s Statistical Communication Theory Group in the 1950s and a member of the RLE faculty in the 1960s, founds Qualcomm, Inc., which becomes a global industry leader in advanced communication systems and products.

Jim Fujimoto. RLE1987 — RLE’s Radio Astronomy group, led by RLE’s Bernard Burke, demonstrates the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) and produces the world’s first astronomical space-ground VLBI observations.

1988 – LEES Fred Schweppe, together with Michael Caramanis, Richard Tabors and Roger Bohn introduces spot pricing for electricity markets.

1991 — RLE’s James G. Fujimoto, David Huang, together with Eric Swanson, invent optical coherence tomography (OCT) by exploiting low coherence interferometry. OCT becomes a revolutionary new technique to image biological structures non-invasively.

1995 — Bose-Einstein condensation is achieved by RLE’s Wolfgang Ketterle. His work improves on the first achievement of BEC by RLE alumnus Eric Cornell at the University of Colorado earlier in the year.

1995 — RLE’s Hermann A. Haus is awarded the National Medal of Science for his brilliant teaching and pioneering research, which spans fundamental investigations of quantum uncertainty as manifested in optical communications to the practical generation of ultra-short optical pulses.

Wolfgang Ketterle

1996 — The Federal Communications Commission adopts the Grand Alliance HDTV System, developed jointly by RLE’s Jae S. Lim, as the digital television standard for the United States. The work is recognized with an Emmy award in 1997. HDTV broadcasts begin in the United States in 1998.

1997 — William D. Phillips, who was a graduate research assistant in RLE’s Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics group in the 1970s, is a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

1998 — Robert B. Laughlin, who was a graduate research assistant with RLE’s John D. Joannopoulos in the late 1970s, is a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.

1999 — RLE’s original home—MIT’s Building 20, the Magical Incubator—is demolished to make way for the new Ray and Maria Stata Center.

2000 — RLE’s Kenneth N. Stevens is awarded the National Medal of Science for his pioneering contributions to the theory, mathematical methods and analysis of acoustics in speech production, leading to the contemporary foundations of speech science.

2001 — RLE’s Wolfgang Ketterle shares the Nobel Prize in Physics with RLE alumni Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates.

2011 – MTL’s Judy Hoyt and Eugene Fitzgerald are recognized for their development of high mobility strained silicon, winning the IEEE Andrew S. Grove award “for seminal contributions to the demonstration of Si/Ge lattice mismatch strain engineering for enhanced carrier transport properties in MOSFET devices.”

2012 - MTL Former director of MTL Rafael Reif becomes MIT’s 17th President

2015 RLE’s Millie Dresselhaus wins IEEE Medal of Honor for her contributions that helped modern define nanoscience and nanotechnology, including the first basic model for low-dimensional thermoelectrics and the Saito-Fujita-Dresselhaus Model for the band structures of carbon nanotubes.