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Memorial Tributes Volume 24 (2022) / Chapter Skim
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EUGENE D. REED
Pages 292-297

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From page 293...
... There he endured the terror of the Blitz while moving ahead with his education, earning a bachelor of science at the University of London in 1941. He and Joan married in 1942 and, with his family, left to join cousins who had earlier emigrated to Brooklyn, New York, where he enlisted in the US Army and served through the end of World War II.
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From page 294...
... Gene played a major role in guiding this revolution, harnessing intelligent systems into not only the arming and fusing func tions but guidance and other control functions as well. The revolution in the use of integrated circuits in micro­ electronics in the wider world was simply breathtaking throughout Gene's tenure and allowed many major advances in the safety, security, and reliability of nuclear weapons and other important national security systems.
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From page 295...
... Among those he helped develop into outstanding leaders at the laboratories were Leon Smith, Bob Gregory, Jack Worth, Bill Spencer, Orval Jones, Harry Saxton, and John Crawford. Gene is particularly remembered for helping to migrate the technology, skills, and manufacturing techniques that were originally developed at Bell Labs to the crucial defense systems work at Sandia -- demonstrating the wisdom of those who, under Harry Truman, had recommended the creation of Sandia as a major standalone lab, like its sister labs at Los Alamos and Livermore, which together comprised the US nuclear weapons research and development mission.
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From page 296...
... Although this work began in reclaimed World War II buildings, it quickly converted much of Sandia's campus into "clean rooms" that produced advanced electronics for a wide variety of systems for the stockpile as well as for all major satellites for use in space systems. Soon after completion in the late 1960s the Rad-Hard Microelectronics facility's products quickly diversified to the point that half of its microelectronics systems
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From page 297...
... This became a pattern for wider applications of Sandia's major advanced electronic systems being applied for the benefit of many US defense and space programs as well as US commercial and industrial systems. These major national transformations significantly helped to render in fact the words of President Harry S Truman in his letter to AT&T asking the company to manage the Sandia Laboratories: "I believe you have an opportunity to render an exceptional service in the national interest," a phrase that became the enduring purpose for the laboratories.
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