Robert A. Brooks
| Robert Alan Brooks | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 10, 1932 Boston |
| Died | August 1, 2000, aged 68 St. Louis |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Northeastern University |
| Occupation | Telecommunications entrepreneur |
| Organization | Cencom Cable Associates, Brooks Telecommunications, several others |
| Spouse(s) | JoAnne |
| Children | Robert, Marguerite, Patricia, Deborah, Maureen, Mary Catherine, Michael, and John |
Robert Alan "Bob" Brooks (May 10, 1932 – August 1, 2000) was an American telecommunications entrepreneur in St. Louis, Missouri who founded several companies and was listed by Red Herring magazine as one of the Top Ten Entrepreneurs of 1999. His two best-known companies were Cencom Cable Associates and Brooks Fiber Properties. Cencom was sold to Hallmark Cards for $1 billion, and Brooks Fiber Properties was sold to WorldCom for $3 billion. His companies were responsible for building hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber-optic and cable television wiring across the United States.
A native of the Boston area, Brooks attended Boston Latin High and then Boston English High, from which he graduated in 1949. He enrolled at Northeastern University but dropped out the following year to join the United States Navy, where he gained familiarity with radio and radar equipment while serving during the Korean War. Upon leaving the military he returned to Northeastern University, receiving a degree in electrical engineering in 1958.
While still in school, Brooks worked two part-time jobs, one as a local police officer, and one as an electrical engineer. With his knowledge of radar from the Navy, Brooks obtained a job in 1954 at Spencer-Kennedy Laboratories in Boston, focusing on the expansion of cable networks. Upon graduating from Northeastern, Brooks resigned as a police officer to pursue a full-time career at SKL. By 1964 he was promoted to Chief Systems Engineer, though he had become frustrated with Spencer-Kennedy's lack of technological innovation. Brooks believed that the future was in transistorized equipment, but SKL was still focused on vacuum tube technology. So in 1965 he left SKL to become Chief Engineer at the Anaconda Wire and Cable Company, based in Sycamore, Illinois. SKL's fortunes faltered, and by 1967 the company was in serious financial trouble, so out of loyalty, Brooks returned to the company as vice-president to try to help salvage things. His efforts were unsuccessful, the company was taken over by the bank, and Brooks resigned in 1969. In 1970 he began consulting for a St. Louis-based company that was doing work in Vermont, J.C. Barnard & Associates.
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