41
Now that we had the pups, we had to start the experiments. The two of us were in
charge of physiology and we had brought cases of equipment, including a Tektronix 503
oscilloscope and a Tektronix preamplifi er and power supply (Fig. 5 , bottom). We got
very frustrated over the fi rst few days because the preamplifi er and power supply would
not work. We saw the whole study “going down the tubes” and fi nally wound up calling
(by ham radio) our friend Howard Gillary who was coming the next week and asked
him to bring working equipment. We feared that we had lost at least a week of work!
Out of frustration, we decided to test the equipment one more time. By chance,
we fi rst tried the equipment in the air-conditioned lab room and, to our amazement,
all worked fi ne. We then took the equipment outside to the aquarium area and it
worked! We were thrilled, and we had a sudden revelation. Eniwetok is very humid.
Up until then, we had taken the equipment from the air-conditioned room to the
outside and turned it on. This was in the days when much of the equipment used
vacuum tubes and what was happening is that the moisture in the air was condensing
on the cold connections in the preamplifi er and power supply, shorting out the circuits
when the power was applied. But, by fi rst turning on and heating up the equipment
in the lab, water did not condense and we were able to continue our work.
5 Books
A few years ago, while the Poppers were visiting the Fays on Cape Cod, we had a
conversation about our scientifi c “legacy”. We both realized that although we had
published (what we like to think) good research papers that made substantial contributions to our discipline, the life of research papers is relatively short. Sure, some of
our papers will still be cited 5, maybe 10, years from now, but the likelihood of their
being used 15 or 20 years from now is low; just look at the outstanding papers by
many other notable people in our fi eld like Sven Dijkgraaf, Karl von Frisch, and
William Tavolga.
What we also realized was that perhaps our real legacy is the books we have edited
over the years. This is particularly the case for our Springer Handbook of Auditory
Research (SHAR) series (discussed below). But, SHAR was not our fi rst book.
In fact, the origin of our fi rst book, Comparative Vertebrate Hearing , arose by
chance (Popper and Fay 1980 ). We had agreed to organize a symposium at the 1979
meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in Honolulu and invited a number of people, including Ted Bullock (who, until then, neither of us had ever met), to
speak. Right before the ASA meeting, Art was at the Society for Neuroscience meeting and while wandering the exhibit halls got into a conversation with Dr. Mark
Licker, an editor at Springer-Verlag (now just Springer), a major international scientifi c publisher. We don’t recall the details of the conversation, but one thing led to
another and the conversation turned to the ASA symposium and the idea of publishing it as a book. Our colleagues at the symposium agreed to write papers for the
book. Thus, Mark became our fi rst editor at Springer, and he was also our “tutor” in
how to put together a book. Mark ultimately left Springer and became Vice President
of Von Nostrand. He is now retired, but we continue to be in touch with him.
It Started in Hawai’i Kai: Reminiscences of 43 Years (and Counting)…
Now that we had the pups, we had to start the experiments. The two of us were in
charge of physiology and we had brought cases of equipment, including a Tektronix 503
oscilloscope and a Tektronix preamplifi er and power supply (Fig. 5 , bottom). We got
very frustrated over the fi rst few days because the preamplifi er and power supply would
not work. We saw the whole study “going down the tubes” and fi nally wound up calling
(by ham radio) our friend Howard Gillary who was coming the next week and asked
him to bring working equipment. We feared that we had lost at least a week of work!
Out of frustration, we decided to test the equipment one more time. By chance,
we fi rst tried the equipment in the air-conditioned lab room and, to our amazement,
all worked fi ne. We then took the equipment outside to the aquarium area and it
worked! We were thrilled, and we had a sudden revelation. Eniwetok is very humid.
Up until then, we had taken the equipment from the air-conditioned room to the
outside and turned it on. This was in the days when much of the equipment used
vacuum tubes and what was happening is that the moisture in the air was condensing
on the cold connections in the preamplifi er and power supply, shorting out the circuits
when the power was applied. But, by fi rst turning on and heating up the equipment
in the lab, water did not condense and we were able to continue our work.
5 Books
A few years ago, while the Poppers were visiting the Fays on Cape Cod, we had a
conversation about our scientifi c “legacy”. We both realized that although we had
published (what we like to think) good research papers that made substantial contributions to our discipline, the life of research papers is relatively short. Sure, some of
our papers will still be cited 5, maybe 10, years from now, but the likelihood of their
being used 15 or 20 years from now is low; just look at the outstanding papers by
many other notable people in our fi eld like Sven Dijkgraaf, Karl von Frisch, and
William Tavolga.
What we also realized was that perhaps our real legacy is the books we have edited
over the years. This is particularly the case for our Springer Handbook of Auditory
Research (SHAR) series (discussed below). But, SHAR was not our fi rst book.
In fact, the origin of our fi rst book, Comparative Vertebrate Hearing , arose by
chance (Popper and Fay 1980 ). We had agreed to organize a symposium at the 1979
meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in Honolulu and invited a number of people, including Ted Bullock (who, until then, neither of us had ever met), to
speak. Right before the ASA meeting, Art was at the Society for Neuroscience meeting and while wandering the exhibit halls got into a conversation with Dr. Mark
Licker, an editor at Springer-Verlag (now just Springer), a major international scientifi c publisher. We don’t recall the details of the conversation, but one thing led to
another and the conversation turned to the ASA symposium and the idea of publishing it as a book. Our colleagues at the symposium agreed to write papers for the
book. Thus, Mark became our fi rst editor at Springer, and he was also our “tutor” in
how to put together a book. Mark ultimately left Springer and became Vice President
of Von Nostrand. He is now retired, but we continue to be in touch with him.
It Started in Hawai’i Kai: Reminiscences of 43 Years (and Counting)…