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JAMES BROWN FISK
August 30, 1910-August 10, 1981
BY WILLIAM H. DOHERTY
EARLY IN IS7G, the hundredth year after the signing of
the Declaration of Inclepenclence, Alexander Graham
Bell invented the telephone in Boston. He exhibited; it a few
months afterward at the Centennial Exposition in Philadel-
phia.
Ninety years later James Fisk, president of Bell Labora-
tories, looking ahead to the telephone's hundredth anniver-
sary, 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.
Several colleagues and I, going through the "Boston Files"
of the earliest years, made an interesting discovery. The first
trained scientist Direct by the infant Bell company (late in
BASS), Hammond V. Hayes, reminded us in many ways of
our own Fisk. Hayes and Fisk came from oIcl New England
families. Both hac! studied at Harvard and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Both had earnect doctorates in phys-
ics. But the resemblance ran much creeper, into their inner-
most personalities, their attitudes, their approaches, anct
their ways of operating: kindred spirits, aristocratic gentIe-
men both, born two generations apart.
91
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92
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
The thousand-page volume produced in late 1975,1 the
eve of the telephone's centennial, covered the first fifty years
(up to 1925, the year Bell Laboratories was incorporated).
Fisk does not appear in that volume. He was not with us until
1939. But this memoir is about him, and its preparation has
repeatedly recalled the approaches taken by Hammond
Hayes in facing up to critical problems human as well as
technical as the telephone art progressed from its primitive
forms. Hayes had quickly seen that the scientific roots of te-
lephony must extend into deeper soil than could be culti-
vated with the primitive tools of the early electricians and
telegraph wiremen, scorned by Lord Rayleigh as "so-called
practical men whose minds do not rise easily above ohms and
volts."
The invention of the telephone had stirred up an intel-
iectual ferment in the world of engineering and physics con-
cerning electric waves and oscillations. Hayes, while facing a
host of practical and "earthy" problems, sensed the need for
a cadre of keen, academically trained minds. His first discov-
ery was John Stone Stone, recruited from Johns Hopkins in
IS90 through the recommendations of the renowned phys-
icist Rowland, then on the Hopkins faculty. Following Stone
came Campbell from MIT (with additional training at Har-
vard, Paris, Vienna, and Gottingen); Colpitts from Harvard;
Pickard from Harvard and MIT; and Tewett from Chicago,
brought over from the MIT faculty. These were the bright
lights of the earliest days; their contributions, inspired by
Hayes, demonstrated convincingly the importance of fun-
damental knowledge. Thus the pattern was established long
before there was a corporate Bell Laboratories with Frank B.
Hewett as its president (19251. And to Tewett's successors, of
~ A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: The Early Years (1875 - 1925)
(Murray Hill, N.~.: Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1975). Six additional volumes have
completed the series.
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JAMES BROWN FISK
02
JO
whom Tames Fisk was the third, there has been no higher
priority than to engage and stimulate the best intellects.
There tract been no scientists in the immediate Fisk family.
James, his sister Rebekah (Becky), and younger brother
George were born in West Warwick, Rhocle Island, to the
southwest of Providence. Their parents, Henry lames ancT
Bertha (Brown) Fisk, natives of Providence, had been
charmed by the Far West during a wedding trip. They sub-
sequently took the children to Tacoma, ant! later to Long
Beach, for their primary schooling. The elder Fisk was a sales
manager in the canning industry; and when the mother-a
beautiful lady and talentect violinist ctied as the children
were nearing high school age, he contemplatecl going to
Alaska for better business opportunities. At this point the
maternal grandparents, the George Tilclen Browns of Prov-
iclence, urged that the children be placed in their care for
their high school years. lucid Brown had retired as presiding
justice of the Superior Court of Rhocle Island. Becky writes
that his whole life thereafter was devoted to his three grand-
children and their education. "They spoiled us and at the
same time were very strict.... He would quiz us in the eve-
nings after study time.... Gramp's greatest delight was
seeing good grades on our report cards. limes were always the
best and required the least effort." The boys were sent far
across town to Providence Technical High School in prefer-
ence to nearby public or private schools.
James entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1927, when he was barely seventeen years old. It was in
January of that year that telephone service had been estab-
lished across the Atlantic. For the first time it was possible to
place a telephone call to London or Paris. It was not (lone by
cable; the cable was nearly thirty years in the future. The
medium was high-power, long-wave ractio, the wave being
transmitted from tall towers at Rocky Point, Long IslancI.
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94
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
Two of the key people involved, Mervin J. Kelly and Ralph
Bown Kelly in the fabrication of powerful radio tubes,
Bown in the painstaking study of wave propagation over the
great circle route would one day be Fisk's mentors at Bell
Laboratories. They were physicist-engineers, and he would
succeed both of them.
But even more glamorous, in May of that year, was an-
other conquest of the Atlantic, the solo flight of Charles Lind-
bergh from New York to Paris. On his return the young avia-
tor was acclaimed in many parades. One of these-which ~
witnessed, and Fisk was probably there-was from Boston
through Cambridge along Massachusetts Avenue, passing
MIT, which already had a vigorous program in aeronautical
engineering, boasting an advanced design of wind tunnel.
This was the field that appealed most to Fisk, and he pursued
it enthusiastically, graduating with high marks in 1931.
The senior album of the MIT class of 1931 depicts Fisk
as very active in extracurricular affairs, from smokers, proms,
and field days through ROTC and varsity athletics (track and
cross-country). A member of Kappa Sigma fraternity (as his
brother George was to be, following him by three years), Fisk
made Tau Beta Pi and was secretary of his class for five years
following graduation. "Jim had a quiet dignity," writes a cIass-
mate, "that brought him many assignments, always dis-
charged 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 spe-
cializing in aircraft instrumentation. In their work in the en-
gine laboratory Draper became impressed with Fisk's astute-
ness and depth and urged him to become more involved in
pure physics; in a postgraduate year as a research assistant
in aeronautics Fisk did develop a strong interest in atomic
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JAMES BROWN FISK
95
physics, which lect to a RecIfielct Proctor Travelling Fellowship
for stucly in EnglancI. Rectfielct Proctor, MIT '02, former gov-
ernor of Vermont, anc! long-time member of the MIT Cor-
poration, had establishecI these fellowships in the interest of
promoting international student exchange.
Fisk's grant was for the year 1932-33 at Cambridge, with
residence at Trinity College. This was a time of great excite-
ment in British physics. It was in 1932 that Chadwick cliscov-
erec! the elusive neutron. Ant! with the reputation of the Cav-
endish Laboratory for Experimental Physics-where Sir I. I.
Thomson in ~ 897 and "cliscovered" the electron (that is, mea-
surect the charge-to-mass ratio e/m) and of its director, Sir
Ernest Rutherford, hailecI as "the greatest experimentalist
since Faraday," who had in 1910-~1 established the minute-
ness of the atomic nucleus there could not have been a
more felicitous assignment for a lively anc! personable young
American. Fisk appears to have relishes! it. He requested, and
was granted, an extension of the fellowship into a second
year. Among the friends made in Englanct during that pe-
riocI, besicles Rutherforc! (who diect in 1937), I remember
John Cockroft, who was lecturing in physics. Sir John re-
mainect in close touch with Fisk for many years.
After completing his seconct year (1934), (luring which he
published two Royal Society papers (one with a coauthor)
relating to the conversion coefficients of gamma rays, Fisk
returned to the States to work at MIT for his Ph.D., which
he received in 1935. The subject of his dissertation was "The
Scattering of Electrons from Molecules," a topic suggesters by
Professor Philip Morse, who took a constant interest in the
study.
.
Quantum theory had already accounted for most of the
phenomena observed in experimental studies of the "colli-
s~on cross-section" of atomic gases when bombardec! by
beams of electrons. In Fisk's thesis the theory was extenclect
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96
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
to the case of diatomic molecules, and the results compared
with experimental observations on H2, N2, and O2. The re-
sults were in reasonable accord, considering the rough as-
sumptions that had to be made concerning the molecular
potential fields; the most noticeable departures were attrib-
utable to inelastic collisions clue to the low energy of excita-
tion in H2.
Following an acictitional year at MIT as a teaching fellow
in physics, Fisk received an appointment as a junior fellow at
Harvard. The Society of Fellows had been established
through a gift from President Lowell. It inclucled a small
group of young men and women of exceptional ability, orig-
inality, and resourcefulness who were given residence, plus a
stipend, with no specific requirements as to what they shouIc!
study or teach. 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. To acid to the enjoyment of his first year, 1936 was
the tricentennial year of Harvarcl's foundling, a colorful year
climaxed by ceremonies in September attencled by many
noted scholars and Nobel prize winners (including Edding-
ton) from foreign countries. The University of Cambridge
(the mother of Harvard) sent representatives from Fisk's
Trinity College, from Kings, and from Emmanuel (John
Harvard had been an Emmanuel man).
A hundred years before, at the bicentennial, Emerson had
written:
. . . Cambridge at any time is full of ghosts; but on that day the anointed
eye saw the crowd of spirits that mingled with the procession in the vacant
spaces, year by year, as the classes proceeded; and then the far longer train
of ghosts that followed the company, of the men that wore before us the
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~ A M E S B RO W N F I S K
97
college honors and the laurels of the State- the long, winding train reach-
ing back into eternity.
Thus Fisk became, in spirit, a Harvard man as well as an
MIT man ancT a University of Cambridge man. As we came
to know him a few years later, he was all of these-quietly,
unostentatiously, but always generously.
A friend from MIT days, Ivan A. Getting, had become a
Harvard junior fellow a year earlier. As an MIT freshman,
Getting hac! had Fisk as his ROTC platoon commander.
When Fisk, as a graduate student, had switched his interest
to theoretical physics, which was Getting's fielct, the two hac!
worked out problems together. Getting had then, after grad-
uation, been awarder! a Rhodes scholarship and stuctiecI
physics at Oxford, receiving his Dr. Phil. in 1935.
Fisk brought with him to Harvard some of the designs for
Van de Graaff electrostatic generators as evolved at MIT, ant!
he and Getting proceeded to built! an improver! ant! compact
machine for accelerating protons and deuterons up to
500,000 volts. The generator was not entirely completed
when Fisk left the Society of Fellows two years later, anti Get-
ting 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.
Fisk's departure in June 193X coinciclec! with the termi-
nation of his celibate life. Shortly after his return from En-
glancI in 1934 he had met Cynthia Hoar, a Concord (Massa-
chusetts) girl whose family, like his, had a long New England
background. They hack met at Saint-Sauveur, P.Q., on a week
enct of skiing, a sport relished by both; ant! their mutual
interests, to be shared for nearly forty-seven years, inclucled
music. Cynthia was a pianist, and after Concorc! Academy
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98
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
she had attendect the New England Conservatory and had
studied for a year in Germany. dim, Cynthia tells me, was a
clarinetist (since high school days), and a good one. In later
years at Bell Laboratories, characteristically, he never allowed!
us to suspect this endowment. Hammond Hayes had been
like that: self-effacing, not seeking the limelight; a scholar
talented in more ways than anyone knew.
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 Acacl-
emy 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. But after one academic year,
the long arm of Mervin J. Kelly, director of research at Bell
Laboratories, reached out and brought Fisk into the depart-
ment Kelly had recently hea(le(l, now run by J. R. "Ray" Wil-
son, director of electronics research. Kelly, urgently seeking
to build up the staff in modern physics, ha(1 heard about Fisk
from William Shockley, who had joined Bell Laboratories
after collaborating with Fisk at MIT in 1935-36.
Wilson, an alumnus of Reed College, Cal Tech, and Co-
lumbia, was a superb administrator. For all the shabbiness of
their headquarters-a former biscuit factory in downtown
New York his and Kelly's men had produced some remark-
able electron tubes. Their crevices ranged from the worId's
tiniest (for the first electronic hearing aicis) to a 250-kilowatt
water-cooled monster-the worict's largest triode, seven feet
high-for super-power broadcasting. They had also fur-
nished high-power tubes to I. R. Dunning at Columbia Uni-
versity for his first cyclotron.
Fisk's first supervisor was physicist }. B. Johnson, soft-
spoken and gentlemanly, developer of the first practical
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JAMES BROWN FISK
99
cathode-ray oscilloscope tube, and famous for his analysis of
electron noise in vacuum tubes and his identification of the
Warmee~ekt in electrical conductors, which became known as
Johnson noise.
But the emphasis in Wilson's laboratory in the mid-thirties
had been shifting toward the high radio frequencies, partly
in support of new communications ideas and partly as our
awareness of Churchill's "gathering storm" in Europe sug
r a . ~. ~ ~ ~r A
.
gested new uses ot radio that could be ot military Importance.
One of these, the detection and tracking of ships and air-
planes by means of pulsed radio beams-not yet called ra-
dar was already being pushed in Army and Navy labora-
tories in the United States and Britain. In 193X a program
sponsored by AT&T, but at government request, was begun
in secret in the radio laboratory of Bell Labs at Whippany,
New jersey.
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 an-
gular precision and resolving power. We were encouraged by
the work of Witson's very clever physicist-engineers on high-
frequency tubes and by the expertise in microwaves being
developed for forward-Iooking Bell purposes by radio re-
search engineers at our Holmde! laboratory under HaraId T.
Friis.
This is where Fisk came in. There was a crucial need for
more transmitted power to increase range. At 700 MHz we
could not get more than a kilowatt from any existing tube,
even on a "pulsed" basis. We were being pressed by the Navy
to go to even higher frequencies for still narrower beams,
and by the Signal Corps to undertake a project called "bomb-
ing through overcast" that would require scanning the ter-
rain or ocean from the air with the narrowest possible beam.
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
On October 6, 1940, Wilson and Fisk, accompanied by Kelly,
were at our Whippany laboratory to witness tests on a new
invention brought over in secrecy from England, the multi-
cavity magnetron.2 We tract been alerted, anct my colleague
Russell Newhouse, coinventor of the first radio altimeter, was
prepares! with a test setup that incluclect a powerful electro-
magnet. He tract built this to test an experimental 3,000-MHz
(10-cm) oscillator (levise(1 by another of Wilson's ingenious
tube men, A. L. Samuel.
.
The results with the British magnetron were astonishing.
An outwardly simple crevice, it delivered bursts of 10-cm
power roughly estimated at 10 kilowatts.
The radar picture changed overnight, ant! Fisk was com-
m~ssioned immediately by Wilson and Kelly to set up a group
to hand-produce 10-cm magnetrons as quickly as possible for
use in planning new radars; to find out how to "scale" the
magnetron to the 40-cm range so that it conic! be used im-
mediately to beef up the radars aIreacly clesignect and being
built in Western Electric factories for use on battleships,
cruisers, and destroyers; and to solve the many fabrication
problems associated with a crevice so radically new anct not
yet completely unclerstood.
Within two months of the demonstration, but with Pear}
Harbor still a year away, sample magnetrons had been made.
As the months passed, under great pressure from the radar
2 The body of the magnetron was a copper block the anode having a central
hole with a cylindrical (indirectly heated) cathode located axially, plus six or eight
surrounding holes connected to the central hole by narrow slots. The holes (plus
slots) being essentially quarter-wave resonators, the iterative structure would sup-
port a wave traveling circumferentially, provided it could be reinforced by a circum-
ferential movement of electrons at the right speed. This was accomplished by em-
ploying a strong transverse magnetic field so that the electrons emitted from the
cylindrical cathode, instead of moving radially toward the anode, would be forced
to follow a spiral path. The circumferential component of this motion (modified by
its interaction with the fields at the successive slots) was then the source of microwave
power.
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JAMES BROWN FISK
107
In the equally important area of telephone switching, it
hac! seemed to Kelly that the ultimate wouIc! be attainer! when
the hundrects of millions of electromechanical contacts of the
newest switching system, known as crossbar, coulc! give way
to electronic crosspoints. This, Kelly thought, would be a
crowning achievement of solic] state physics. It was not to
come out that way. From over another horizon came the con-
cept of "storer! program control" the idea of employing
vast memories, with instant access thereto, whereby a great
variety of new optional services, changeable on clemancl,
could be proviclec! to the telephone subscriber with no need
for physical changes in the central office. This was the huge
development program known as ESS (electronic switching
systems); it was implemented in the 1960s and 1970s in thou-
sancis of central offices, using crosspoints that were still elec-
tromechanical, though miniaturized ant! highly refined. The
ideal solicI-state crosspoint, because of very severe requ~re-
ments, die! not appear until the 19SOs.
In a mission-orientecI laboratory of thousands of trained
scientists ant! engineers, many of them with clecacles of ex-
perience, the prime requirement of a top executive is not
inventiveness but leadership, a leaclership that will bring out
the best through inspiration ant! encouragement. It was for
this job that Kelly wanted Fisk, and it provect to be Fisk's
special genius. A problem he tackler! early and "head-on"
(his favorite adverb-was to cIevelop a much-neecled uncIer-
stancting amongst professional personnel of the company's
policy on merit and rewards. At Kelly's behest Fisk and Frank
Leamer, seasoned director of personnel uncler two aciminis-
trations, 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
. . . .
copies . In many organizations.
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
Fisk was also strong on environment, the need for an at-
mosphere that encourages each scientist and engineer to use
his talents to the utmost. "It takes an environment of stimu-
lating associates, some of them patient, some impatient, some
who sparkle brilliantly and some quietly persistent; inclivid-
uals painstakingly selected over the years to insure mutual
respect and establish a balance in their integrated skills." This
statement was made in a 1966 address at the Southern Re-
search Institute in Birmingham. And on a clifferent point,
moments later:
Scientific advance comes, in large part, from interchange of knowledge
with the world outside, with the academic world and with scientists and
engineers of attainment and stature who are hammering at problems re-
lated to one's own. It is impossible to retain gifted men unless they are
given freedom to discuss their work with others of renown in the scientific
community, and the pass-key to that community is one's own prestige,
attained through publication of results. Accordingly, it is short-sighted pol-
icy 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 Laboratories-
or perhaps anywhere held these views more strongly than
James Fisk, or was more unswerving in their implementation.
They were the views Hammond Hayes held sixty years be-
fore: that the research support for a science-based industry
must have the best people obtainable, must have its goals (in
broad terms) clearly understoocI, and must provide an envi-
ronment that will motivate anct inspire toward their achieve-
ment. A part of this last was the recognition that there are
some scientists who will do their best work when not con-
strained by rigid rules. A part of it was the deliberate briclg-
ing of departmental barriers, to promote collaboration be-
tween the disciplines (example: the solar battery, invented! by
a physicist, a chemist, and an engineer). Fisk was eloquent on
this: "To achieve this necessary interaction it is not enough
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JAMES BROWN FISK
109
to rely on thermal diffusion, so to speak, across the interfaces.
It must be worked at; it must be cultivatect."
This concern was evident in his almost daily appearances
in one department or another ant! his genuine friencIliness
toward people down the line, which continucct after he as-
sumec! the presidency, succeeding Kelly, in 1959. In 1964, as
plans were being made to acid new "branch laboratories" lo-
catec! at Western Electric manufacturing plants several of
these having been highly successful-Fisk was gravely con-
cernec! lest this "decentralization" might be carried too far.
He enjoined his colleagues to preserve at all costs, as he ex-
pressed 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 to-
gether and act as one Bell Laboratories."
Unsparing of himself in the interest of his government,
in micI-1958 Fisk accepted an appointment by President Ei-
senhower to heacI a delegation of scientists to go to Geneva
to lay the technical groundwork for a nuclear test ban treaty
with the Soviets. It was something new in international ne-
gotiations for scientists to finct themselves in such a role,
knowing that the final decisions wouIct be in the hands of the
diplomats. Fisk earned high praise for the rare combination
of skill, firmness, and tact with which he dealt with the Rus-
sians anc! their Moscow-dictated intransigence. The principal
issue was the problem of verification, wherein it was neces-
sary to agree on an adequate number of test stations to mon-
itor noncompliance. In a second conference in late 1959,
where Fisk and his partners presented indisputable evidence
that far more test stations would be required than the Soviets
would agree to, the clelegates came virtually to a dead anti.
"It is quite impossible," wrote Frank Press,6 then a professor
6 Frank Press, "Scientific Aspects of the Nuclear Test Ban," Engineering and Science
(December 1960):26-36.
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110
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
at Cal Tech ant] a member of the delegation, "to fee! secure
with a treaty that allows too few inspections."
During the fourteen years of his presidency, while he con-
tinucct 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 spectacu-
lar 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 Labora-
tory. And in the closing minutes of 1961, even as the big
balloon made its 6,232nd orbit arounc! the earth and sailect
on into 1962, an advanced type of electronically equipped
satellite, Telstar, complete with receiver, transmitter, anc! solar
batteries, was receiving ground tests at Bell Laboratories for
testing in space. It was still too early in the space vehicle art
for geo-stationary orbits at 22,300 miles; and there were
some worries about such an orbit, including the concern
about the time delay (a half-seconct on each round trip),
which could cause two fast talkers to become entrapped in
their own rudeness. "If we cannot in the near future increase
the velocity of light," quipped Fisk, "can we with some subtle
attachment, not seen by the impatient user, soothe his im-
petuosity for those few minutes till he finishes his call.... so
that communication by satellite may be smooth and uninter-
rupted not only for the chivalrous and gently brecl, but for
the rest of us as well?"
Intercontinental telephony by satellite, as is well known,
passed from the hands of the Bell System to the Communi-
cations Satellite Corporation, organized by the government,
and overseas telephone traffic has been sharer! between Com-
sat's facilities and AT&T's deep-sea telephone cables. The
first of these (with thirty-six voice channels) had gone into
service in 1956, using oceanbottom amplifiers ("repeaters" in
telephone engineeringjargon) every forty miles. Under Fisk's
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JA M E S B RO W N F I S K
111
leadership the capacity of these systems, using transistors,
increased to 800 channels, with a new 4,000-channe! system
envisages! before he retired.
The Fisk home in those years was a rambling farmhouse
in New Vernon, New Jersey, with five acres for inclulgence in
a hobby Jim called "farming in miniature." One could drop
by on a Saturday and find him riding jauntily over the fur-
rows or adjusting a newly sharpened sickle bar on his tractor,
but ready for a plunge with a guest in the Fisk pool, followecl
with a round of cigars. 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 lar-
gesse, couIct sometimes prevail upon Cynthia for a brief mu-
sicale. Many engineers are music lovers; ~ think telephone
engineers especially, perhaps because through the science of
sounds we know what music is "made of."
Fisk chose to retire from the presidency in 1973 at age
sixty-two, remaining as boarc! chairman for another year. His
successor as president, Princetonian William O. Baker, a re-
nowned physical chemist, PriestIey mecialist, and Perkin
medalist, had joiner! Bell Laboratories in 1939, the same year
as Fisk. Baker's contributions to the sciences of physical ma-
terials assured that the intricate bandings of atoms and mol-
ecules being eluci~latecl by physicists in collaboration with
chemists and metallurgists wouIc! bring into practical use new
materials of scarcely hopecl-for properties of benefit to com-
munications ant! to industry at large.
In ~ 975 a signal honor and lasting tribute was paid to Fisk
by the establishment of the Tames B. Fisk Merit Scholarship.
Presented annually to outstanding boys and girls who are
children of employees, the scholarship recognizes academic
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112
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
excellence, high character, and leaclership, qualities Fisk re-
spected anct encouraged.
Fisk's retirement years saw continued advances under
Baker and his successor, Ian M. Ross, English-born, from the
University of Cambridge. Most dramatic were the micro-
miniaturizing of complex circuitry (the new era of "chips")
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 satis-
faction, was the continued emphasis by Baker anct Ross on a
program Fisk tract initiated, the application of computer-
basec! systems to the complex operating problems of the tele-
phone companies, with huge savings in manpower and ex-
pense.
Before the recently enacted clivestiture, Harvard Dean
Harvey Brooks wrote that "The Bell System represents the
best example of a highly integrated technical structure in
a high-technology industry and is widely regardecl as the
most successful anc! innovative technical organization in the
worIct."7 Although the System is now broken up, Ross is cle-
termined that the scientific quality anct the innovativeness
that his predecessors sponsored - as recognized in two more
Nobel awards under the Baker and Ross regimes- shall re-
main uncliminished.
The Fisks, while retaining their New Jersey home after
retirement, were able to spend more time at Keene Valley in
their beloved Aclironciacks. To them the Adirondacks were
what New Hampshire was to poet Robert Frost: not a place
on the map but a region of the mind. Anti each year there
was a trip to Europe to see friends, visit the universities, and
7 Harvey Brooks, "Knowledge and Action: The Dilemma of Science in the 70's,"
Daedalus (Spring 1973): 125-43.
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JAMES BROWN FISK
113
talk with representatives of companies on whose boards Jim
served.
~ last saw Jim Fisk in New York at the Harvarc! Club to
both of us, at our age, a place of refuge in a perilous city. We
had {unchecI with some Japanese guests who hac! been gra-
cious to us in Tokyo. In parting we talkect about another get-
together to discuss some speculations of Harvard's late Percy
Bricigman on the Second Law. But this was not to happen.
After visiting Spain in the spring of 1981, Jim and Cynthia
were vacationing in August in the AcTironciacks when he suf-
ferect, unexpectecIly, an aneurysm in the abclominal aorta
that he was not able to survive. 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 Congrega-
tional church, paid a warm tribute shared by all Bell people.
Speaking of Jim Fisk as not only a distinguishes! scientist but
a great humanitarian in his quiet, unassuming, and moclest
way, he recalled that Tim was also "a great nature lover and
outdoor man. We often sharer! experiences in the wilderness
and seldom-trod areas. He used to bushwhack to the moun-
tain tops instead of following the beaten path."
A resolution of the Corporation of MIT, of which Fisk
had been a member for twenty-two years ant! hac! become a
life member, spoke of him as "a princely human being of
uncommon modesty," who was "as much at home in the uni-
versity as he was in the corporate boardroom, laboratory and
the high offices of government." The resolution also laucled
his personal generosity and strong support in major capital
drives ant! his leadership in the selection of three successive
Institute presidents.
Following the passing of her husband, Cynthia Fisk
moved from New {ersey to Boxborough, Massachusetts, a
OCR for page 114
114
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
few miles from her native Concord, purchasing a vilIa-type
house on a hilltop with gardens and play-space for grancl-
children. She continues with her piano in a local chamber
music group. Living in this area she is able to see two of her
sons often-Samuel, out of Brown and the Columbia Busi-
ness School, with overseas experience in the Peace Corps, and
now in psychological counseling, with an office in Cambridge;
and Charles, a graduate of Harvard and of the Yale School
of Music, a concert pianist and teacher of piano, music
theory, and the history of music at Wellesley. Son Zachary,
from Harvard and the University of California, is farther
away, a distinguished young physicist at Los Alamos.
All of the Fisk family know that to tim's associates he was
not only a leader but a warm friend, a blithe spirit moving
amongst us, giving addled life to a dynamic profession; per-
sonifying the spirit of noblesse oblige; one of the noblemen
~ .
at our time.
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. William Wilkinson,
in Laguna Hills, California; and from the aid of an indefatigable
lady at Bell Laboratories, Ruth Stumm, faithful researcher and
transcriber.
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JAMES BROWN FISK
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1934
115
The calculation of internal conversion coefficients of gamma-rays.
Proc. R. Soc. London A, 143:674-78.
With H. M. Taylor. The internal conversion of gamma-rays. Proc.
R. Soc. London A, 146:178-81.
1936
Theory of the scattering of slow electrons by diatomic molecules.
Phys. Rev., 49: 167-73.
With L. I. Schiff and W. Shockley. On the binding of neutrons and
protons (letter to the editor). Phys. Rev., 50~11~: 1090.
With P. M. Morse and F. I. Schiff. Collision of neutron and proton.
Phys. Rev., 50:748-54.
1937
On the cross sections of Cl2 and N2 for slow electrons. Phys. Rev.,
51~1~:25-28.
With P. M. Morse. The elastic scattering of neutrons by protons
(letter to the editor). Phys. Rev., 51~1~:54-55.
With P. M. Morse and L. I. Schiff. Collision of neutron and proton.
II. Phys. Rev., 51:706 - 10.
1938
Disintegration of atomic nuclei by high-energy radiation (paper
presented at National Academy of Sciences meeting, Chapel
Hill, N.C., May 6-71. Science, 88~2289~:439(A).
With I. A. Getting. A compact 750 kv Van de Graaff generator for
high currents (paper presented at American Physical Society
meeting, Washington, D.C.5 April 28-30~.
1939
With I. A. Getting and H. G. Vogt. Some features of an electrostatic
generator and ion source for high voltage research. Phys. Rev.,
56~11~: 1098-1104.
With A. G. Hill, W. W. Bucchner, and }. S. Clark. The emission of
secondary electrons under high energy positive ion bombard-
ment. Phys. Rev., 55:463-70.
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116
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
With W. Maurer. Transformation of B by slow neutrons by emission
of alpha-particles and protons. Z. Phys., 112~7-8~:436.
1946
With H. D. Hagstrum and P. L. Hartman. The magnetron as a
generator of centimeter waves. Bell Syst. Tech. }, 25: 167-348.
1963
Strategy in industrial research. Res. Manage., 6:325-33.
1965
Synthesis and applications of scientific knowledge for human use.
Sci. Endeavor:293-302.
Bell Telephone Laboratories. In: The Organisation of Research Estab-
lishments, ed. i. Cockroft, pp. 197-214. Cambridge, U.K.: Cam-
bridge University Press.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
biographical memoirs
