Russell Harrison Varian (April 24, 1898 – July 28, 1959) and Sigurd Fergus Varian (May 4, 1901 – October 18, 1961)[1] were brothers who founded one of the earliest high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. Born to theosophist parents who helped lead the utopian community of Halcyon, California, they grew up in a household surrounded with artistic influences, and showed an early interest in electricity. After early careers in electronics and aviation, they came together to invent the klystron, which became a critical component of radar, telecommunications and other microwave technologies. In 1948 they founded Varian Associates to market the klystron and other inventions,[2] and went on to become the first firm to locate in Stanford Industrial Park, the birthplace of Silicon Valley. Russell was a lifelong supporter of the Sierra Club and Sigurd helped found the progressive housing cooperative of Ladera. Both were noted for their progressive political views, and Varian Associates had innovative employee policies that were ahead of its time. In 1950, the Varians were awarded the John Price Wetherill Medal for the development of the klystron,[3] and were both inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame in 1993.[3]
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The parents of the Varian brothers were John and Agnes Varian, both of whom were born and raised in Ireland. They were members of the Theosophical Society in Dublin. They emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1894,[4] settling in Syracuse, New York, where they became involved with a theosophical group headed by William Dower. When Dower moved to Halcyon, California, they joined him in 1914, shortly after its founding. Halcyon was a utopian community that included a sanatorium for the treatment of liquor, morphine, and opium addiction, with socialist leanings and some communal property.[5] There, John Varian became a leader of the Temple of the People, worked as a chiropractor and masseur,[4] wrote theosophist poetry and socialist tracts,[6] and pursued an interest in Irish myth and history. Agnes was the first Halcyon storekeeper and postmistress.[7]
John and Agnes had three sons, Russell, Sigurd and Eric, all of whom had a keen interest in electricity.[7] The family was poor,[6] but noted for affection, laughter and a spirit of adventure. All three boys exhibited an early fascination with electricity, which included pranks such as attaching electrical current to bed springs and door knobs in order to give visitors minor electric shocks.[7] Russell was named in honor of the poet "Æ", George Russell, whom John had befriended in Ireland.[4] Russell was dyslexic, and in his childhood many people thought he was "slow," although later events would demonstrate that he was far from unintelligent; Sigurd was the more outgoing of the older two siblings.[8]
Composer Henry Cowell befriended Russell in 1911,[9] when both men were in their teens, and a piano sonata that Cowell composed for Russell brought Cowell to the attention of John Varian,[10] who, in 1917, asked Cowell to write the prelude for a stage production of John Varian's Irish mythical poetry cycle, The Building of Banba. This piece, titled The Tides of Manaunaun, became Cowell's most famous and widely performed work.[9]
Cowell was also a music tutor of Ansel Adams, and the Varian family became friends with Adams,[10] who became particularly close to Russell and Sigurd through their mutual activity in the Sierra Club.[4] Adams knew the family for over 30 years,[10] and was a hiking companion of Russell's; the pair made many trips into the Sierras.[11] Adams later used a line from one of John Varian's poems, "...What Majestic Word," as the title of his 1963 Portfolio Four, which was dedicated in memory of Russell.[12] The portfolio, of which only 200 copies were printed, was narrated with the words of John and Russell Varian, and was sold as a fundraiser for the Sierra Club.[11]
Russell and his wife, Dorothy, worked to preserve Castle Rock, which ultimately became a state park in 1968. He was also a longtime member of the Sierra Club and, as part of the organization's Conservation Committee, worked on efforts to acquire land to further the conservation efforts of the organization.[3][13] In addition, he was a member of the League for Civic Unity and the ACLU.[14]
Sigurd and his wife, Winnie, were among the residents of Ladera, a housing cooperative near Stanford University.[14] The Varian family's interest in the conservation of California's natural heritage was also carried on by Sigurd's son, Jack Varian, owner of the V6 Ranch near Parkfield, California, which today consists of over 17,000 acres in two counties. The ranch is entirely protected by a conservation easement that is part of the California Rangeland Trust's Diablo Range Project.[15][16]
Russell and Sigurd's brother, Eric Varian, remained in the Halcyon area. He had a career in the central California coast as an electrical contractor,[7] and, beginning in the early 1960s, also assisted the work of his daughter, Sheila Varian, who became a noted breeder of Arabian horses.[17] Russell's wife Dorothy, by then a widow, provided short-term loans that helped support the Varian Arabian horse breeding program in its early years.[18]
Both Russell and Sigurd had their lives cut short; Russell died in 1959 while on a trip to Alaska due to a heart condition. In 1961, Sigurd crashed his private plane near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.[8]
Russell earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Stanford University, overcoming his learning disabilities with what was described as hard work and sheer force of will.[8] He completed his master's degree in 1927.[19] He went to work in the San Francisco area and was introduced to television technology when he worked for Philo Farnsworth.[8][13][19]
Sigurd attended California Polytechnic State University, but, mostly due to boredom, dropped out and never completed a college degree.[20] Through much of his career, Sigurd also was periodically ill due to tuberculosis.[21] After a brief stint working for Southern California Edison Company stringing power lines, he took flying lessons and became a pilot, airplane mechanic,[20] and self-taught engineer.[1] He worked as a barnstormer and later as a pilot for Pan American Airways, at a time when the company developed new routes into Mexico and South America.[8][19] From this experience, he discovered many problems with existing maps, finding, for example, that some Mexican charts showed swamps where there were actually mountains. He also realized how difficult it was to land safely or to detect other planes at night or when it was overcast. As a result, he was very familiar with the inadequacies of existing navigational equipment and became interested in ways to make flying safer.[22]
In the early 1930s, in addition to his strong interest in navigation,[13] Sigurd also was concerned about the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the political situation in Spain.[8] His experience as a pilot in Central and South America made him particularly aware of the vulnerability of the Panama Canal to enemy attack, as he believed it was relatively simple to fly over a military target at night or in heavy overcast without any existing defense system being able to provide warning.[22] Ed Ginzton, who later helped the brothers establish Varian Associates, stated: “[Sigurd] felt that Hitler could easily establish bases in Central America, from which his planes could fly into the United States at night, or at low elevations, and drop bombs, without ever being detected.”[8]
Sigurd was particularly interested in technologies such as all-weather navigation systems,[3] and suggested to Russell that together they could create a radio-based technology using microwaves that could detect airplanes at night or in clouds.[8][19] Russell agreed, and they both quit their jobs, set up their own lab at Halcyon, and began developing plans for a device that could precisely determine the location and direction of an airplane.[8][19] They floundered somewhat due to their isolation,[8] first attempting to create a radio compass, but could not develop a successful design.[21] They ultimately sought assistance from Russell's college roommate, William Hansen, who was by then a professor at Stanford.[8] With Hansen's help, they came to the attention of the head of the Stanford physics department, David Webster, who hired them in 1936 to work on their inventions at the University in exchange for lab space, $100 a year for supplies, and an agreement that Stanford University would have half of the royalties for any patents they obtained.[3][8]
After several rejected models, Russell came up with a way to use velocity modulation to allow electrons to flow in bunches and control their speed.[8] They also benefitted from the work of A. Arsenjewa-Heil and Oskar Heil who published material on velocity modulation theory in 1935.[23] The brothers and Hansen ultimately created the klystron, the first tube that could generate electromagnetic waves at microwave frequencies.[24] Russell was responsible for the design and Sigurd built the first prototype,[3] which was completed in August 1937.
The klystron was noticed in 1938 by Sperry Gyroscope, who gave the Varian brothers and Hansen a contract to do further work on their project.[20] The Varians did not know that the British were working on early radar technology at the same time, which by then could detect submarines, but could not be made light enough to use in airplanes.[8] But upon publication of a peer-reviewed paper in 1939,[25] news of the klystron immediately influenced the work of US and UK researchers working on radar technology. Thereafter, Klystron equipment was set up in Boston in 1939, and successful blind-landing tests of airplanes were completed.[22] The Varians moved to the east coast in 1940 to work for Sperry,[20] where wartime development of the klystron continued.[2] Though little is known of their work in this period because they presumably were working on classified projects, it appears that they directed the vacuum tube and radar work of Sperry during World War II.[20] The US and Britain were able to use this technology to create radar equipment light and compact enough to fit into aircraft.[8] This technology was credited with helping the Allies win the war.[2] After the war, the klystron became an important component in further development of radar and the microwave industry.[3] It was used in broadcast television, and critical in the development of various telecommunications technologies.[13] In 1950, the Varians were awarded the John Price Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute "in recognition of their foresight... energy and technical insight in developing... the klystron..."[3] Today klystron technology is still used in UHF television and the free-electron laser.[3]
Each brother went on to develop a number of other inventions. Russell gained patents for technology related to thermionic tubes, magnetic resonance of the nuclei of atoms (NMR), as used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and various radar technologies.[3][13] Sigurd's own inventions, some of which he patented, included a system of pumps, filters, and heaters for his swimming pool, as well as a high-speed drill press.[3][13] Sigurd also led projects to build models and prototypes that put Russell's concepts into usable products.[2]
The Russell Varian Prize, sponsored by Varian Inc., honors the memory of Russell Varian, recognizes "innovative contributions of high and broad impact on state-of-the-art NMR technology", and carries with it a prize of €15,000.[26] It is presented annually at EUROMAR, the annual joint conference of the European magnetic resonance scientific community, including the UK Royal Society of Chemistry NMR group, AMPERE Congress, and the European Experimental NMR Conference (EENC).[27]
The Varian brothers and their associates individually left Sperry and returned to the West Coast between 1945 and 1948.[28] In 1948, Varian Associates was founded by Russell and Sigurd, along with William Webster Hansen and Edward Ginzton. They initially created the company to commercialize the klystron[24] and develop other technologies, such as small linear accelerators to generate photons for external beam radiation therapy.[23] They also were very interested in nuclear magnetic resonance technology.[21] Russell's wife, Dorothy, was also active in the development of the company and its operations.[13] The Articles of Incorporation were filed on April 20, 1948, and signed by nine directors: Edward L. Ginzton, who had worked with the Varian brothers since his days as a doctoral student; William W. Hansen, Richard M. Leonard, an attorney; Leonard I. Schiff, then head of the physics department at Stanford; H. Myrl Stearns, Russell H. Varian, Dorothy Varian, Sigurd F. Varian and Paul B. Hunter. The company began with six full-time employees: the Varian brothers, Dorothy, Myrl Stearns, Fred Salisbury, and Don Snow. Technical and business assistance came from several members of the faculty at Stanford University, including Edward Ginzton, Marvin Chodorow, William Hansen, and Leonard Schiff.[28][29] Francis Farquhar, an accountant and friend of Russell's from the Sierra Club, later became a director, as did Frederick Terman, Dean of Engineering at Stanford, and David Packard, of Hewlett-Packard.[28] Russell served as the company President and a board member until his death;[13] Sigurd served as Vice-President for Engineering, and served on the Board of Directors until his death, sometimes serving as Chairman of the Board.[3] Following the deaths of both Varian brothers, Ginzton became the CEO of the company.[21]
Most of the founders of Varian Associates, including Russell and Sigurd, had progressive political leanings,[14] and the company "pioneered profit-sharing, stock-ownership, insurance, and retirement plans for employees long before these benefits became mandatory".[3] Nearly 50 years later, in 1997, the company was still recognized by Industry Week as one of the best-managed companies in America.[30]
The company was initially headquartered in San Carlos, California,[31] and started with only $22,000 in funding.[28] It had problems raising additional capital, particularly due to Russell's insistence that the company be owned by its employees and his related refusal to accept outside investors.[31] Hansen mortgaged his home for $17,000 to raise additional cash, and the group sought out additional funds from their friends.[31] Ultimately, however, the company raised $120,000 of necessary capital via an offer of stock to all employees, directors, consultants, and a few sympathetic local investors who shared the company's goals.[31] Military contracts for technology deemed necessary during the Cold War, including some classified projects, also helped the firm succeed.[31] In 1953, Varian Associates moved its headquarters to Palo Alto, California,[32] at Stanford Industrial Park – noted as the "spawning ground of Silicon Valley" – and was the first firm to occupy a site there.[3] Several spin-off corporations developed after the death of the Varian brothers; one branch, Varian, Inc., was acquired by Agilent Technologies in May, 2010.[33]
One of Varian Associates' major contracts in the 1950s was to create a fuse for the atomic bomb. The Varian brothers had initially been supportive of military applications for the klystron and other technologies, on the grounds that they were primarily defensive weapons. This contract, however, was different. Although politically progressive to the point of having socialist leanings, the Varians were patriotic at heart and had no sympathy for the Marxist model of socialism practiced by the Soviet Union. They also needed military contracts to survive and relished the technical challenges of this sort of work, but as early as 1958 Russell and Sigurd expressed regret for their involvement in the development of weapons of mass destruction.[31]
In 1998, the Congressional Record noted the 50th anniversary of the founding of Varian Associates, which then employed 7,000 people at 100 plants in nine countries. It had branched out into health care systems, analytical equipment and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. California Representative Anna Eshoo stated that the company had been awarded over 10,000 patents and was a "jewel in the crown of...Silicon Valley."[30]