Harvey Fletcher

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Harvey Fletcher

| image = File:HarveyFletcher1.jpg

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1884|9|11}}

| birth_place = Provo, Utah, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1981|7|23|1884|9|11}}

| death_place = Provo, Utah, U.S.

| field = Physics

| work_institution = Western Electric
Bell Laboratories
Columbia University

| alma_mater = Brigham Young University
University of Chicago

| doctoral_advisor = Robert A. Millikan

| known_for = Invention of the hearing aid
The father of stereophonic sound
Oil drop experiment measuring the charge of the electron

| prizes = Presidential Citation
Louis E. Levy Medal {{small|(1924)}}
ASA Gold Medal {{small|(1957)}}
Audio Engineering Society Gold Medal Award {{small|(1958)}}
IEEE Founders Medal {{small|(1967)}}
Grammy Award {{small|(2016)}}

}}

Harvey Fletcher (September 11, 1884 – July 23, 1981) was an American physicist.{{cite journal|author=Gardner, Mark B.|title=Obituary: Harvey Fletcher|journal=Physics Today|date=October 1981|volume=34|issue=10|pages=116|doi=10.1063/1.2914315|bibcode=1981PhT....34j.116G|doi-access=free}} Known as the "father of stereophonic sound", he is credited with the invention of the 2-A audiometer{{cite web|last1=Fletcher|first1=Tom|title=In Memory of Harvey Fletcher|url=http://www.et.byu.edu/~tom/family/Harvey_Fletcher/harvey_fletcher.html}} and an early electronic hearing aid.{{cite book |author=William M. Hartmann |title=Signals, Sound, and Sensation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3N72rIoTHiEC&pg=PA72|date=January 9, 1997 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-56396-283-7 |pages=72–}}{{cite web|last1=Fletcher|first1=Stephen H.|title=HARVEY FLETCHER 1884-1981|url=http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/fletcher-harvey.pdf|website=NAS Online|publisher=National Academy of Sciences|access-date=November 20, 2015|date=1992}} He was an investigator into the nature of speech and hearing, and made contributions in acoustics, electrical engineering, speech, medicine, music, atomic physics, sound pictures, and education. Following his death, he was credited with collaborating with his doctoral advisor, Robert Millikan, on the Nobel-prize winning oil drop experiment which first determined the charge of the electron.{{cite journal|title=In defense of Robert Andrews Millikan|url=http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/MillikanII.pdf|author=David Goodstein|journal=American Scientist|volume=89|issue=1|date=January 2001|pages=54–60|bibcode=2001AmSci..89...54G|doi=10.1511/2001.1.54|s2cid=209833984 }}

Early years

Fletcher was born in Provo, Utah. He graduated from Brigham Young High School in 1904. He enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU), graduating in 1907 with a bachelor's degree. He married Lorena Chipman. They were the parents of seven children.{{Citation|last = Stanford| first = Jeremy| title = Harvey Fletcher and the Reinvention of Sound | pages =15–19| newspaper = Frontiers| location = Provo, Utah | date =Fall 2016}} Harvey Fletcher was the father of James C. Fletcher, former president of the University of Utah and NASA Administrator {{cite web|last1=Fletcher|first1=Tom|title=In Memory of Harvey Fletcher|url=http://www.et.byu.edu/~tom/family/Harvey_Fletcher/harvey_fletcher.html|access-date=May 30, 2017}}{{cite news|last1=Fisher|first1=Ian|title=James Fletcher, 72, NASA Chief Who Urged Shuttle Program, Dies|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/24/us/james-fletcher-72-nasa-chief-who-urged-shuttle-program-dies.html|access-date=February 2, 2017|work=The New York Times|date=December 24, 1991}} and of Harvey J. Fletcher, a BYU math professor.

Graduate work

In 1911, Fletcher was the first physics student to earn a PhD summa cum laude from the University of Chicago. His dissertation research was on methods to determine the charge of an electron. This included the oil drop experiment commonly attributed to his advisor and collaborator, Robert Andrews Millikan. Millikan took sole credit, in return for Fletcher claiming full authorship on a related result for his dissertation. Fletcher's contributions were detail-oriented but still contributed to the successful experiment, in which he incorporated, among other things, experience with projection lanterns.{{Cite journal|title=In the Case of Robert Andrews Millikan|url=http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/MillikanII.pdf|author=David Goodstein|journal=American Scientist|date=January–February 2001|pages=54–60}} Millikan went on to win the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics, in part for this work, and Fletcher kept the agreement a secret until his death.{{cite journal | title = My Work with Millikan on the Oil-drop Experiment | author = Harvey Fletcher | journal = Physics Today | date = June 1982 | pages = 43–47 | url = http://www.cce.ufes.br/jair/te1/PhysToday_43_Fletcher_Work_Millikan.pdf | doi = 10.1063/1.2915126 | volume = 35 | issue = 6 | bibcode = 1982PhT....35f..43F | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160128151252/http://www.cce.ufes.br/jair/te1/PhysToday_43_Fletcher_Work_Millikan.pdf | archive-date = January 28, 2016 }}

After completing his doctorate, he returned to BYU, where he became the head of the physics department. He served in this capacity from 1911 until 1916. Fletcher left BYU to work at Western Electric, establishing himself as a researcher. He organized the founding of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in 1929.{{cite web |title=History of the ASA |url=https://asahistory.org/history-of-the-asa/ |publisher=Acoustical Society of America |access-date=31 July 2023}} He joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories' Engineering Staff Research Department where he found great interest in the physics of sound (acoustical science). He worked there from 1933 to 1949, when he became a professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University from 1949 to 1952. He returned to BYU in 1952 to be the director of research. He served in that role as well as being the first dean of the new college of physics and engineering sciences until 1958.L. Tom Perry Special Collections, BYU Library. http://files.lib.byu.edu/ead/XML/MSS1233.xml Retrieved 2014.12.20

Notable contributions

Fletcher's contributions to speech perception are among his best-known work. He showed that speech features are usually spread over a wide frequency range, and developed the articulation index to approximately quantify the quality of a speech channel.{{cite book | title = Articulation And Intelligibility | author = Jont B. Allen | publisher = Morgan & Claypool | isbn = 1-59829-008-8 | year = 2005 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=t6ltHy-o2fIC&q=harvey+fletcher+jont&pg=PA25 }} He also developed the concepts of equal-loudness contours (commonly known as Fletcher–Munson curves), loudness scaling and summation, and the critical band.{{cite book | title = Signals, Sound, and Sensation | author = William Morris Hartmann | isbn = 1-56396-283-7 | year = 1997 | publisher = Springer | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=3N72rIoTHiEC&q=harvey+fletcher+1981&pg=PA72 }}

At Bell Labs, he oversaw research in electrical sound recording, including the first successful stereophonic recordings, the first live stereo sound transmission, and the production of the first vinyl recording. All of this was done with the help of the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, between 1931 and 1932.{{cite web |url=http://www.stokowski.org/Harvey%20Fletcher%20Bell%20Labs%20Recordings.htm |title=Stokowski, Harvey Fletcher, and the Bell Labs Experimental Recordings |last=Huffman |first=Larry |publisher=www.stokowski.org |access-date=February 17, 2014}}William Ander Smith. The Mystery of Leopold Stokowski. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 175. Some of his other accomplishments include the production of the first functional hearing aid, the 2-A audiometer, and the artificial larynx. At Bell Labs, he worked with and was reportedly a tremendous influence on Harold Burris-Meyer, who developed advances in psychoacoustics.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRb_epUIyXg Prof. Gascia Ouzounian, presentation about Harold Burris-Meyer entitled "Psycho-Acoustics: Sound Control, Emotional Control, and Sonic Warfare"], presented by the Samuel C. Williams Library at Stevens Institute of Technology, October 19, 2022

Much of his research is considered to be authoritative, and his books, Speech and Hearing and Speech and Hearing in Communication, are notable treatises on the subject.

Honors

Fletcher was elected an honorary fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 1949, the second person to receive this honor after Thomas Edison, 20 years earlier. He was president of the American Society for Hard of Hearing, an honorary member of the American Otological Society and an honorary member of the Audio Engineering Society. In 1924 he was awarded the Louis E. Levy Medal by the Franklin Institute for physical measurements of audition. He was president of the American Physical Society. He was the first president of Acoustical Society of America (1929–31).{{cite web|last1=Acoustical Society of America|title=Harvey Fletcher, BYU's first physics grad earns posthumous Grammy Award|url=http://acousticalsociety.org/article/harvey-fletcher-byu%E2%80%99s-first-physics-grad-earns-posthumous-grammy-award|website=Acoustical Society of America|access-date=May 30, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161113175719/http://acousticalsociety.org/article/harvey-fletcher-byu%E2%80%99s-first-physics-grad-earns-posthumous-grammy-award|archive-date=November 13, 2016|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|last1=Acoustical Society of America|title=Past and Present Officer and Members of the Executive Council|url=http://acousticalsociety.org/membership/records/officers_and_managers|website=Acoustical Society of America|access-date=May 30, 2017|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170523064739/http://acousticalsociety.org/membership/records/officers_and_managers|archive-date=May 23, 2017}} In 1937 he was elected vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of the National Hearing Division Committee of Medical Sciences. He was given the Progress Medal Award by the American Academy of Motion Pictures, in Hollywood. For eight years he acted as National Councilor for the Ohio State University Research Foundation.

In 2010, Fletcher was honored by BYU as the founding dean of its College of Engineering {{cite web |url=http://news.byu.edu/archive10-sep-fletcher.aspx |title=Harvey Fletcher is Honored Founder for BYU Homecoming 2010 |last=Winters |first=Charlene |publisher=Brigham Young University |date=September 23, 2010 |access-date=February 17, 2014}} (now the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering).

On April 23, 2016, Fletcher was awarded a posthumous technical Grammy Award for his research and inventions related to stereophonic sound.{{cite web|title=Special Merit Awards: Class Of 2016|url=https://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/press-release/ruth-brown-celia-cruz-earth-wind-fire-herbie-hancock-jefferson|website=www.grammy.com|access-date=April 25, 2016}}

Personal life

Fletcher was a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[https://www.et.byu.edu/~tom/family/Harvey_Fletcher/harvey_fletcher.html In Memory of Harvey Fletcher]

He died on July 23, 1981, after a stroke.

References

External links

"[http://www.et.byu.edu/~tom/family/Harvey_Fletcher/harvey_fletcher.html In Memory of Harvey Fletcher]" - a brief biography and collection of links
[https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4535 Oral history interview transcript with Harvey Fletcher on 15 May 1964, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070526172533/http://education.byu.edu/comd/index.html Department of Communication Disorders at BYU] - Audiology department at BYU
[http://www.byhigh.org/History/Fletcher/DrHarvey.html Harvey Fletcher Scientist, Father of Stereophonic Sound, Author]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20101225010922/http://auditorymodels.org/jba/BOOKS_Historical/FletcherVideo/ Fletcher Interview, 1963]
[http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/fletcher-harvey.pdf National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir]
[http://archives.lib.byu.edu/agents/people/3946 Materials related to Harvey Fletcher] at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University