00:00:01 As you know, we'd like every one of you to visit us here at the Fullerton plant, but we realize that busy schedules make this difficult.

00:00:17 Today, through the medium of film, we are happy to bring you the men and women of Beckman.

00:01:00 The 19th century hung around a little longer in Cullom, Illinois, than in most of America.

00:01:17 When Grandpa was born a hundred years ago, Cullom didn't have electric lights or telephones.

00:01:23 There weren't any cars or modern appliances.

00:01:27 Life was an education and invention.

00:01:30 When Grandpa wanted a toy, he made it himself.

00:01:34 Ingenuity and imagination weren't just useful, they were necessary.

00:01:39 When Grandpa was young, the family didn't have much money.

00:01:42 But there was plenty of food and a lot of love.

00:01:45 His mother provided comfort and discipline.

00:01:48 And Grandpa's work ethic and dedication to craftsmanship came straight from his father.

00:01:53 My father was one of four competing blacksmiths in a town of 500.

00:02:00 Despite that, he did well.

00:02:02 He built a lovely little house for us, the house in which I was born, matter of fact.

00:02:08 But he himself never gone through or beyond grade school.

00:02:14 He had four children.

00:02:17 Every one of them graduated from college.

00:02:20 By the time I was six, seven, eight years old, I used to hang around the blacksmith shop and do various things.

00:02:27 The simplest thing, I'd bust the flies off of the big draft horses that my father would shoe.

00:02:33 I learned, for example, how to make wooden wagon wheels.

00:02:37 A lot of practical things that I never used in life later on,

00:02:41 except you do get a familiarity, I guess, with the use of tools in your hands.

00:02:47 Grandpa's playgrounds were also the rivers and woods of rural Illinois,

00:02:51 the attic of their home, and a small shed out back.

00:02:54 In 1909, he found a book that would change the direction of his life forever.

00:02:59 I ran across a chemistry text up in the attic,

00:03:03 called Steel's 14 Weeks in Chemistry, and I was interested in that.

00:03:07 Half the book was instructions for carrying out simple experiments,

00:03:12 using things available around the home, vinegar, salt, soda, lye, and things like that.

00:03:17 Then I'd pick up a few extra chemicals, like a little copper sulfate or something like that, from the local drug store.

00:03:23 For his tenth birthday, his father gave him a shed behind the house.

00:03:27 This became Grandpa's first laboratory.

00:03:30 And, though the threat of fire was imminent, and the family worried, Grandpa never did burn down the house.

00:03:36 His early years in small-town America set the stage for a future that would impact the world.

00:03:42 1922. At that time, I was educated, but do you realize that I'd never even heard of penicillin or streptomycin,

00:03:53 I'd never even heard of a transistor, never even seen a television show at that time,

00:03:57 and yet I was supposedly an educated person.

00:04:00 In fact, he was quite educated, receiving a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois and a doctorate at Cal Tech.

00:04:07 To fund his education, he used a skill taught by his mother.

00:04:11 He played piano for silent movies and in local bands.

00:04:15 Grandpa also worked for a time in New York City at Western Electric Engineering, where he learned a lot about electronics.

00:04:22 He was courting Mabel Meinzer, his future wife and our grandmother.

00:04:26 Ms. Beckman and I were very, very close.

00:04:29 We were married for 64 years, and, yeah, she's not a scientist, but she was good to talk to.

00:04:40 She could find weaknesses in arguments and things like that, and it was always a joy to talk with her.

00:04:49 She was not technically trained, but still, there are many things that have to do with dealing with people.

00:04:55 And how people might react to this or that.

00:05:00 She was a very sensitive person, so it was very helpful.

00:05:05 In the depths of the Great Depression, with the blessings and assistance of his wife, Grandpa went into business.

00:05:11 It all started with lemon juice.

00:05:14 Well, we got started very casually just 20 years ago, Ken.

00:05:18 I was teaching chemistry at Cal Tech when an undergraduate friend of mine came in and told me his troubles.

00:05:24 He had to measure the acidity of lemon juice, and he had difficulty with the equipment which was then available.

00:05:30 So I built an electronic amplifier for him to help him out of his troubles.

00:05:35 He came back in two or three months and wanted to know whether I wouldn't build him another one,

00:05:39 because someone else was always using the first one.

00:05:41 I decided that was enough to start a business.

00:05:43 This invention, the pH meter, was enough to grow a business.

00:05:49 For $5 a month, Grandpa rented a nine-foot section of a garage in Pasadena.

00:05:54 Two Cal Tech students working part-time were the workforce.

00:05:58 And it grew. Finally, by 1939, somebody had to run it.

00:06:03 Either get a full-time person or else I had to give up my relationship with Cal Tech and go into business.

00:06:12 Because you learn the value of money.

00:06:14 So when you had to live from one sale to the next,

00:06:20 we sold the first pH meter and used that money to buy parts for the next two or three.

00:06:26 We never had any venture capital.

00:06:29 But more people came to Grandpa with problems, and he provided practical, reliable solutions.

00:06:35 I'm not a businessman, and bottom line figures were not the things that drove the company.

00:06:42 The thing that drove the company was, here's a technical job to be done. Let's do it.

00:06:47 The money came afterwards.

00:06:49 According to Grandpa, there was no satisfactory substitute for excellence.

00:06:54 And as Beckman Instruments grew, Grandpa's insistence on quality gave the company a great reputation.

00:07:01 As World War II raged, Grandpa's company was put to task.

00:07:05 The U.S. undertook a crash program to produce synthetic rubber.

00:07:09 His company provided an infrared instrument that analyzed the ingredients from which the rubber was made.

00:07:15 It wasn't the company's sole involvement in the war effort.

00:07:19 They designed and produced the Model A helipot, a crucial component to the then-secret radar.

00:07:25 In 1940, they introduced the DU spectrophotometer,

00:07:29 an instrument that was used to measure petroleum products and other essential war materials,

00:07:34 as well as determine vitamin content in foods.

00:07:37 Keeping our instruments in perfect operating condition is very important,

00:07:42 because if the instrument isn't working, there's no value.

00:07:46 So we've always insisted on having fine service,

00:07:50 and spare parts stores also, so we could get spare parts immediately.

00:07:55 I remember Grandpa telling about the one time he was worried about Beckman Instruments' reputation.

00:08:01 The only one we were really concerned about was the gas marker that went out to Mars,

00:08:07 and how we were going to get out there to service that.

00:08:09 But then we got another clause we had to put in,

00:08:13 the user has to return the instrument to the factory.

00:08:17 Unfortunately, we did not use it because the instrument worked perfectly.

00:08:21 By this time, his instruments were being used worldwide.

00:08:25 Grandpa is proud of his accomplishments, of his lasting contributions to science.

00:08:31 His family is proud of the man he is, an honest man,

00:08:35 with a dogged determination to solve problems,

00:08:38 to make a complex world a little simpler through his inventions.

00:08:44 You keep asking yourself why, you'll come up with some useful inventions.

00:08:49 I've always enjoyed explaining things, whether it's called teaching, whether it's anything else.

00:08:56 That's probably a challenge to my skill in trying to convey what's on my mind.

00:09:04 You should do everything possible to expose the young generation

00:09:08 to chances of using their own ideas, their own ingenuity.

00:09:13 You should allow the kid to do it the best way he can.

00:09:16 Even if he comes up with the wrong answer,

00:09:18 the fact that he's using his own powers of induction and trial and error,

00:09:22 that develops the brain.

00:09:24 It's not the answer that's important,

00:09:26 it's the thought process that led to the getting of the answer.

00:09:30 That's the training of the mind.

00:09:32 It was that thought process that led to the initial success of Beckman Instruments.

00:09:36 It was Grandpa's dedication to doing the right thing that allowed success to continue.

00:09:41 The number one characteristic that we must observe is integrity.

00:09:45 And I'm thinking not just of the cash drawer integrity, but intellectual integrity.

00:09:50 We must learn not to kid ourselves, not to accept only the things we want to accept.

00:09:57 We have to accept the bad news, bad data, as well as the good data.

00:10:02 So that absolute integrity, I think, is essential,

00:10:07 whether it's in science, whether it's in business, or whether it's in our daily lives.

00:10:12 Whatever happens will exceed your wildest imaginations, I think.

00:10:15 If you look back, there are many rewards, let's say, of being in the business.

00:10:19 One is that it is gratifying to see people like you making use of instruments to advance mankind.

00:10:29 And I'm happy to have a little part in making the tools that are useful.

00:10:52 Even if Grandpa didn't consider himself a chemist, he sure earned their respect.

00:10:57 He began inventing instruments to analyze blood samples, measure brain waves,

00:11:02 examine pollutants in auto exhaust, control huge chemical refineries,

00:11:07 and unraveled the genetic secrets of DNA.

00:11:11 He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, among many other honors.

00:11:16 In business, Grandpa had done well, very well.

00:11:21 In addition, he and Grandma wanted to do good,

00:11:24 by giving away much of the money earned through his inventions.

00:11:28 It turns out that despite Black Monday, it's overthrowing our council,

00:11:32 I suspect I have a few funds left over, which, combined with Social Security,

00:11:37 will probably take care of us in our many days.

00:11:42 Actually, I might say, modestly, that I worked hard 50 years on here,

00:11:48 and I hate to see that surplus wasted.

00:11:52 So I'm looking around for ways in which this money can be invested.

00:11:56 He didn't have to look far.

00:11:58 My grandparents started giving to the schools that had given so much to them,

00:12:03 and to the disciplines of science to which Grandpa had dedicated his life.

00:12:07 I realized that I owe a lot to the University of Illinois.

00:12:12 When I came here as a freshman, I paid no attention to that.

00:12:16 For granted, we'd had laboratories and classrooms and teachers and all this and that.

00:12:20 It's only later, as I got older and a little bit more mature in my thinking, possibly,

00:12:25 that I realized that I owed a debt to pay off those who had provided these facilities ahead of me.

00:12:32 So it's now my turn to try to come in and make a contribution

00:12:35 so I could help provide facilities for the oncoming generation.

00:12:40 Mrs. Beckman and I, years ago,

00:12:45 decided that we would try to distribute the money we had during our lifetime.

00:12:54 Distribute the assets, not just the income from it.

00:12:58 So we tried that, and that's why we gave a few major gifts, 40, 50 million dollars.

00:13:04 But then Mrs. Beckman died, so we failed on that.

00:13:09 So then we decided now to take the remaining money, there's a fair amount left,

00:13:16 put that into a foundation in perpetuity.

00:13:20 Grandpa's legacy extends beyond the thousands of instruments he and his coworkers

00:13:25 invented, manufactured, and sold worldwide.

00:13:29 He has contributed to the progress of mankind.

00:13:33 Grandpa came a long way from a chemistry book and shed in Cullum, Illinois.

00:13:39 As I look back on my life, I'm happy that I have played a role,

00:13:44 not necessarily major, but at least played a role in the advancement of science.

00:13:49 And through the facilities which have been established, which will outlast me,

00:13:55 I have a satisfactory feeling that my influence will extend beyond my own life.

00:14:25 Thank you.

00:14:55 Thank you.

00:15:25 Thank you.

00:15:55 Thank you.

00:16:25 Thank you.

00:16:55 Thank you.