ABSTRACT
Having been asked to write about the emergence of the Nb/Aloxide-Nb technology, I have no choice but to put on a historian’s hat. Becoming such an accidental historian, I will try to describe how refractory Josephson junction (JJ) technology was born, where it was born, of what parents, and why it was conceived in the first place, attempting to make a detailed “case study” of this particular innovation. As almost all new technologies in our time, it was a collective undertaking not limited to a single individual, to a single group, or even to a single institution. I will “name names” of those who were most involved in it at Bell Labs, and of those who most influenced our work from the outside of Bell, and will try to assign credit. In that, I may be subjective, although I will try to curb my subjectivity as best I can. Relevant technical detail without which the story would be less clear will be provided. To make it interesting on 84a human level, I will venture into a bit of reminiscence about the people I knew and the happy years at Bell Labs when this work was done. This inevitably requires extensive use of pronoun “I,” which is normally avoided in scientific papers, and for which we (that is, I) apologize. The story would be incomplete without saying a few words about Bell Labs, where it took place, and that is where we will start.
