Biographical Memoirs Volume 56 (1987) / Chapter Skim
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James Brown Fisk
James Brown Fisk
Pages 90-117
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From page 91... ...
He exhibited; it a few months afterward at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Ninety years later James Fisk, president of Bell Laboratories, looking ahead to the telephone's hundredth anniversary, suggested to me, a longtime associate, that a historical volume ought to be planned as a record of the clevelopment of telephone science over that period.
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From page 92... ...
His first discovery was John Stone Stone, recruited from Johns Hopkins in IS90 through the recommendations of the renowned physicist Rowland, then on the Hopkins faculty. Following Stone came Campbell from MIT (with additional training at Harvard, Paris, Vienna, and Gottingen)
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From page 93... ...
James, his sister Rebekah (Becky) , and younger brother George were born in West Warwick, Rhocle Island, to the southwest of Providence.
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From page 94... ...
, Fisk made Tau Beta Pi and was secretary of his class for five years following graduation. "Jim had a quiet dignity," writes a cIassmate, "that brought him many assignments, always discharged in a friendly manner and displaying uncommon ability." As an aeronautical engineering student, Fisk came to know and work with Charles Stark Draper, a Stanford and MIT alumnus, a graduate student and faculty member specializing in aircraft instrumentation.
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From page 95... ...
and of its director, Sir Ernest Rutherford, hailecI as "the greatest experimentalist since Faraday," who had in 1910-~1 established the minuteness of the atomic nucleus there could not have been a more felicitous assignment for a lively anc! personable young American.
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From page 96... ...
It was a happy and challenging situation for Fisk. Only twenty-six years oIcl, he enjoyed living in Lowell House, one of the first three "colleges" newly built uncler Harvarct's House Plan, clown by the river, with the acIded privilege of dining informally once a week with the senior fellows.
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From page 97... ...
The generator was not entirely completed when Fisk left the Society of Fellows two years later, anti Getting continued its construction with the sect of a graduate student. There were two Physical Review papers coauthored by Fisk on features of the generator and its use in the physical laboratory.
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From page 98... ...
Following a June wedding and a trip to Europe, Fisk anti his bride moved to Chapel Hill, where he had accepted an associate professorship in physics at the University of North Carolina. He ha(1 presenters a paper there at a National Acaclemy of Sciences meeting in May on disintegration of nuclei by high-energy radiation a topic of much piquancy, coming on the eve of disclosures from Europe on nuclear fission and the possibility of chain reactions.
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From page 99... ...
William C Tinus and I were put in charge of this work, and we immediately jumped to the 600 - 700 megahertz range, three to four times the frequency employed anywhere else, in order to achieve narrower radio beams for better angular precision and resolving power.
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From page 100... ...
cathode located axially, plus six or eight surrounding holes connected to the central hole by narrow slots. The holes (plus slots)
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From page 101... ...
in a speech to oIc! veterans that "the sweet bakeshop aroma that hung over from the old biscuit factory may have inspired us to pump better vacuums," and suggested that "our instincts to be inventive may have been sharpened by the man-eating flies that shuttIec!
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From page 102... ...
As Kelly's emissary in promoting collaboration between Bell Laboratories engineers and the staff there under Lee DuBridge, I found one of DuBricige's group leaders on gunfire-contrl} radar to be Fisk's oIct MIT-Harvard friend, Ivan Getting; while his other MIT friend and mentor, Stark Draper, was inventing a leadcomputing gunsight for naval machine guns, for which we at Bell Labs were designing an antiaircraft radar. This fruitful collaboration included magnetron clevelopment, and as the war continued and it became possible to build magnetrons for even shorter wavelengths (3 cm and 1.25 cm)
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From page 103... ...
He also set up a research activity in electron dynamics to provide a continuing background in fundamental theory for the more developmental type of work on microwave tubes that was increasingly engaging Wilson. The war's end had allowed Bell people, emerging from some of their all-out military commitments, to think again about their own business.
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From page 104... ...
The move to Harvard was clelayoct for a year to enable Fisk to respond to an urgent request from the newly formect Atomic Energy Commission to be its first director of research. In this capacity he was influential in emphasizing the role that should be assigned to basic research, as distinguished from reactor development, and introcluced several programs to include such fundamental work in the AEC's plans (later he was to serve for six years' 1952 to 195S, as a member of AEC's General Advisory Committee)
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From page 105... ...
On occasion he wouIct invite a stuclent to accompany him to a Rect Sox balIgame at Fenway Park, winding up the day with ~ ro',nc1 of hits favorite cigars C~ ~ -, Corona BeIvecleres. In a neighboring office was Edward M
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From page 106... ...
~ The term transmission, understood as the faithful transport of large bundles of voices over long or short distances, speaks for itself. The term switching, with its suggestion of the railroad yard, unfortunately conveys no notion of the fascinating complexity and intellectual challenge of this field.
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From page 107... ...
At Kelly's behest Fisk and Frank Leamer, seasoned director of personnel uncler two aciministrations, formulated a statement of salary policy, inclucling a graphic merit scale, that was available to any technical staff member for discussion with his superiors. The document was so clear, straightforward, and unequivocal that it evoked wicle commendation in the personnel management world and was .
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From page 108... ...
Accordingly, it is short-sighted policy to delay or restrict publication beyond the very minimum required for patent applications, or discourage in other ways the driving urge of good scientists to be known and respected in their professional circles. No predecessor or contemporary in Bell Laboratoriesor perhaps anywhere held these views more strongly than James Fisk, or was more unswerving in their implementation.
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From page 109... ...
lest this "decentralization" might be carried too far. He enjoined his colleagues to preserve at all costs, as he expressed it at our annual executive conference at Seaview that autumn, "the blessings of unity and compactness and close personal contact that have macle it so easy for us to pull together and act as one Bell Laboratories." Unsparing of himself in the interest of his government, in micI-1958 Fisk accepted an appointment by President Eisenhower to heacI a delegation of scientists to go to Geneva to lay the technical groundwork for a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviets.
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From page 110... ...
secure with a treaty that allows too few inspections." During the fourteen years of his presidency, while he continucct to serve the government in many ways, as well as the To cause of higher education, Fisk guided the Laboratories through some major developments. Perhaps most spectacular among these was the satellite program, beginning with the passive reflecting balloon Echo launched in August 1960 in collaboration with NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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From page 111... ...
The Fisks loved the countryside, and Cynthia, having taught piano, conducted children's concerts for eleven years in nearby Morristown. One of the delights for the Bell Labs executive group known as the "cabinet" was a social hour and buffet at sunset time, after which some two dozen of us, plus wives, having participated in the Fisk largesse, couIct sometimes prevail upon Cynthia for a brief musicale.
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From page 112... ...
and the breakthroughs in optical fibers, which with lasers and other crevices in the new art of"photonics" are providing a new long-distance communication medium of extraordinary capacity. Less spectacular, but likewise affording Fisk much satisfaction, was the continued emphasis by Baker anct Ross on a program Fisk tract initiated, the application of computerbasec!
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From page 113... ...
His death on August 10, in neighboring Elizabethtown, came three weeks before his sev enty-first birthday. Faithful colleague Frank Leamer, hurrying over to Keene Valley from Saranac Lake for the services at the Congregational church, paid a warm tribute shared by all Bell people.
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From page 114... ...
THIS MEMOIR, written from a retirement haunt in the deep South, has benefited from notes graciously furnished by Cynthia Fisk, up in New England; by Dr. Fisk's sister Becky, Mrs.
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From page 115... ...
The emission of secondary electrons under high energy positive ion bombardment.
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From page 116... ...
Bell Telephone Laboratories. In: The Organisation of Research Establishments, ed.
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