ABSTRACT
Project cyclotron. Hands-on experience, however, didn’t grant the degrees he needed
to work as a full-fledged physicist. Dowd needed a job, any job, and he found one as
assistant recording engineer at the Carl Fischer Music Store on West Fifty-seventh
Street. An old-line classical music publishing firm, Fischer maintained the studio for
students at Carnegie Hall across the street to check their progress by listening to them-
selves. Dr. Frederick Oetgen, Dowd’s Swiss boss, wore a monocle and a white coat, and
he liked his recordings as coldly neutral as a laboratory photograph. For Dr. Oetgen,
any blur in the sound caused by signal overload was verboten. Watch the dials, he in-
structed Dowd. Never must the arrows go into the red!
