13) Polkinghorn, ‘an Enigmatical Person’

 
Journal of Electrical Engineering Society which carries the speech by Polkinghorn (Expandable)

There is a bit of mystery around Polkinghorn, who handed over the information of transistor technology under the control of GHQ to Japanese team. For example, his family name is sometimes misspelled as ‘Porkinghorn’, and its Japanese pronunciation varies, and so on. In addition, he is unnecessarily wrapped in mystery because of missing portrait photo of himself.
By the way, the office of Private Sector Communication Bureau which Polkinghorn belonged to was on the 3rd floor of then the headquarter building of Daiichi Seimei Corporation where GHQ were located, whereas the office of General McArthur was on the 6th floor.

Polkinghorn came to Japan right after GHQ was instituted. His mission was to work out new policy for the telecommunication system in Japan which had been deadly destroyed during the war. He had been with Bell Telephone Laboratories and got PhD there. So, he was perfect fit for the mission. Under the guidance of occupation policy to separate electricity and telecommunication, he promptly established Institute of Electrical Communication which was originally electrical communication division of Electro Technical Laboratory. Polkinghorn was frequently visited by Komagata, Chief of Electrotechnical Laboratory, for negotiating the reorganization of the laboratory. This is supposedly one of the reasons why Komagata could receive the information regarding semiconductor technology from him.

Polkinghorn made a speech at the joint seminar of major electrical engineering societies in Japan which was held on March 7, 1949. Journal of Electrical Engineering Society published his speech in the April issue. The photo shown above is the first page of the April issue. He criticized that quality of the products made in Japan was not satisfactory enough, whereas there were good equipment and well-educated engineers in place.

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