Bart Cox started his education at San Jose State and finished at Stanford in communications engineering. Between the two was a small interruption—World War II—when Bart served as a glider crew member in the US Army in Europe. He was one of the engineers to join SRI in early 1951 and was assigned to the ERMA project shortly thereafter. ERMA was the conceptual design and implementation of a new computer system for the Bank of America. Bart's job was designing hardware systems.
When Bart Cox took on the job of Division Director for Information Sciences and Engineering (ISE), there were 7 laboratories of about 40 people each. Bart saw his job as one of nurturing his lab directors so as to make them successful. It was under Bart Cox's supervision that Doug Engelbart established the Augmentation Research Center, leading to a greatly increased reputation for SRI and its work. It was under Bart Cox's supervision that Charlie Rosen established the Applied Physics Lab which, through its pioneering work on neural networks by Ted Brain and, later, Nils Nilsson, evolved into the very highly regarded Artificial Intelligence Center.
Many labs grew and flourished under Bart's guidance and leadership. The bioengineering activity was launched around professionals like Hewitt Crane, James Bliss, and Phil Green. Kamphoefner's Control Systems Lab grew and thrived under Cox's direction. Likewise Jack Goldberg's Computer Science Lab. SRI today still shows the ongoing success of the groups that grew as a result of the seeds planted by Bart Cox.
In the 1980s Bart was asked to take SRI-wide responsibility for the technology management aspects of the Patents and Licensing operations. Here he worked with scientists and engineers to strengthen SRI's patent activities. He negotiated many technology and patent licenses with client companies. Recently SRI received a judgment for $37 million based on a complicated patent licensing case that Cox negotiated.
Bart Cox was a gentle and encouraging leader. He was inspiring to all who had the privilege of working with him during his long stay at SRI.