A
more personal change came in 1960, when the Beckmans left their old house in
Altadena.The children had both left
home, and Mabel was looking for a change.When
she found a good deal on a beautiful ranch house overlooking the sea in Corona
del Mar, she convinced Arnold to leave the site of so many happy memories.Their new house was well built and had stunning views of the ocean, and
the fact that the Beckmans acquired it in an auction for half of its asking
price appealed to their Depression-era mentality.They would live in this house together until Mabel’s death in 1989, and
Arnold continues to reside there.
The years 1964 and 1965 brought even more momentous change for Arnold Beckman.In 1964, he became chairman of the Caltech Board of Trustees.His increasing involvement in community organizations led him to contemplate
his successor at Beckman Instruments.At
a meeting of state industrial leaders in Sacramento, Beckman had met William
Ballhaus, a young executive vice president of the Northrup Corporation, a major
defense contractor.In 1965, Beckman
retired as president of Beckman Instruments and passed the job to Ballhaus,
but he assumed the position of chairman of the board.As such, he remained in a position of stewardship at the broadest level
of the company he founded, but was freed to pursue new avenues in the next stage
of his long, productive life.
Beckman had been engaged with fundraising efforts at Caltech since the 1940s.He had chaired their first formal fundraising campaign in 1958.As a member of the board of trustees, he had helped the school renegotiate
its relationship to the government and to society in the new postwar world and
had helped it to survive the ravages of McCarthyism.He and Mabel marked his assumption of the chairmanship of the board
in 1964 by giving $1 million to build the Beckman
Auditorium, a concert hall designed to rival Caltech’s laboratories in excellence.In 1974, when he resigned from the chairmanship, they again gave money,
this time $6 million, to build the Mabel and Arnold Beckman Laboratory of Behavioral
Biology.In addition to his financial
contributions to the school, he offered his wise guidance that helped Caltech
rise to become one of the most respected universities in the world.
Political
activity became a more prominent part of Beckman’s life in these years as well.He only made one political campaign speech in his entire life, during
Richard Nixon’s 1962 bid for governor of California.Nixon lost, despite Beckman’s strong support, and Beckman decided to
do something about that.He organized
the Lincoln Club of Orange County, a private political club of prominent businessmen
who organized fundraising efforts in support of selected candidates.This club was instrumental in the election
of Ronald Reagan as governor of California in 1966 and of Richard Nixon as President
of the United States in 1968.Even though
the club was nominally unaffiliated, they almost uniformly supported conservative
Republicans.Even though Beckman and
his associates preferred to remain “behind the scenes,” at times being almost
secretive, his club and its financial power was immensely influential in local,
state, and national politics.
Beckman
Instruments evolved significantly under Beckman’s tenure as chairman.Ballhaus turned out to be a highly competent president, able to evaluate
the company objectively and chart a solid and profitable course of action.From 1965 to 1971 Ballhaus realigned Beckman’s business portfolio to
emphasize its strengths and downplay its weaknesses.Gone was the systems division, because Ballhaus shared Beckman’s
conviction that the company did not belong in a field where it could not excel.Ballhaus continued to support the instruments division, because they
represented the bread-and-butter of Beckman Instrument’s profitability.The growth area, as he saw it, was in the biotechnology and medical realms.An observation that quickly became a Beckman
Instruments mantra was that for every thousand research labs in the United States,
there are ten thousand clinical labs, all clamoring for equipment.Profitability was further ensured by the insatiable
demand of these facilities for the reagent chemicals and other supplies needed
to operate the instruments.Much of
Beckman Instruments’ R&D budget in this period was directed at this huge
potential market.
Beckman Instruments introduced the glucose analyzer in 1969 and the blood urea
nitrogen analyzer in 1971.Both were
cutting-edge instruments that measured levels of associated substances to infer
the level of the substance they were intended to measure. They allowed doctors to make quick diagnosis
in emergency situations.Following their
time-tested technique, Beckman engineers simplified and integrated their medical
instruments, making them more sophisticated and yet easier to use.In the early 1970s, they began to market the
STAT Lab, a combination of instruments linked to a central computer that could
perform rapid diagnosis in the emergency room.This device went through several evolutions but was wildly popular and
revolutionized the practice of medicine.
A
more personal change came in 1960, when the Beckmans left their old house in
Altadena. The children had both left
home, and Mabel was looking for a change. When
she found a good deal on a beautiful ranch house overlooking the sea in Corona
del Mar, she convinced Arnold to leave the site of so many happy memories.
Their new house was well built and had stunning views of the ocean, and
the fact that the Beckmans acquired it in an auction for half of its asking
price appealed to their Depression-era mentality.
They would live in this house together until Mabel’s death in 1989, and
Arnold continues to reside there.
Political
activity became a more prominent part of Beckman’s life in these years as well.
Beckman
Instruments evolved significantly under Beckman’s tenure as chairman.
The
Post-War Boom