Crazy Fish May Redefine Computer Industry

In the early 1990s, Fish was 35 and at the peak of a creative period when he abruptly "retired" from the computer business to pursue something more important to him than fame and wealth: his son Tommy, born to an ex-girlfriend.

Fish left California for Texas to be near Tommy, doing consulting when he needed money to fund a bruising custody battle with his ex-girlfriend. There were years when Fish rarely saw his son.

Over the last decade, another legal fight worked its way through federal courts. It turns out Patent #5,809,336, which Fish filed in 1989 for the "Fish Clock," is worth millions.

Another patent could prove the same. He calls it TOMI-VAC, for Thread-Optimized Microprocessor, and claims it will change the world.

This year marked a turning point. With his new wealth Fish has joined an effort started by retired Apple executive Patrick O'Sullivan to build schools for Masai children in Kenya.

"He is a maverick," says O'Sullivan. "He was wired wrong. Russell doesn't think outside the box. He lives outside the box."

How did Fish go from being a potential Silicon Valley hot shot to living a miserly life in a crummy apartment? It's a crazy story fit for a man named Fish.

Racing through the airline terminal with one parachute on his back and another on his chest, Fish passed through a metal detector and—DING, DING, DING—all hell broke loose.

Realizing the metallic badge from the National Security Agency was still on his chest, Fish pulled it off and handed it to the guard, who read it and escorted him onto the plane.

With one semester to go at Georgia Tech in 1973, Fish had been asked by a recruiter from the NSA to apply. "They were interested in me because I was an engineer and had a couple of hundred jumps," Fish says.

After Fish had completed an intense week of psych evals, stress testing and physical challenges, the instructors told him the job: parachuting into Czechoslovakia and running a satellite receiver on top of a mountain. After almost four years at mostly male Georgia Tech with no women, he said no thanks. Fish was running to catch an airplane for a stunt: jumping into a friend's wedding.

In addition to the NSA, the big engineering companies were also recruiting at Georgia Tech. On a partial swimming scholarship, Fish had loaded up on hours as a junior and senior and his grades suffered.

"Well, you don't have the best grades or SAT and during the interview you constantly stepped on your foreskin," the interviewer from Motorola said, "but we're going to give you a job anyway."

While working for Motorola, Fish earned a master's degree in electrical engineering. Brilliant men in their 20s were creating the first generation of microprocessors. It was a heady time.

"I'm present within six months of the birth of the microprocessor," Fish says. "There were probably 100 people in the world who knew anything about microprocessors. I have the memo directing Mike [Wiles] to design a single-chip microprocessor."

The good news was that Fish got laid off from Motorola. Because of that he moved back to Austin and took great-paying consulting jobs for a while. In 1976, after Fish designed a microprocessor for Dresser Industries' computerized gas pump, he ended up on a "Top 100" list of Silicon Valley up-and-comers in Business Week.

By 1978, courtesy of the Business Week mention, Fish had been hired by Fairchild Computers, the micro-electronics giant that created Silicon Valley in the 1960s, as a product manager for microcomputers in the Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) division.

One day, after most people had left, Fish raced up the stairwell and ran into Wilf Corrigan, then company chairman of the board.

"You don't know me," Fish said, "but I need a plane ticket to go to Huntsville, Alabama."

Fish had received a call at 3 p.m. that day from a sales rep named Ralph Laughlin in Alabama. "We have a chance to get the Chrysler trip computer," the rep had told him. At the time, the microprocessor was put in each Chrysler vehicle as a navigation system.

The deal was worth $10 million. Fairchild, which made its reputation making integrated circuits used in military systems, was struggling to figure out how to make money from microprocessors.

Fish grabbed some paper and for three hours drew in pencil. He stamped each page "CONFIDENTIAL" and ran to accounting. The next morning, in the same clothes that he'd worn the day before, Fish "tap-danced" for the decision-makers.

"I said, 'I can't show you all this, but I can give you a glimpse,'" Fish says. "I gave them a vision of the future." Fairchild got the contract, the second million-piece microprocessor deal in the industry's history.

"All of the sudden people wanted to know, 'Who was this kid at MOS?'" Fish says.

The MOS division developed the trip computer, and the project went into production. The project was almost complete when Fish got fired in March 1979. A story ran in the EE Times, an electrical engineering trade journal, headlined "Beached Fish Flips Out Over Firing by Fairchild."