The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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Chapter 2
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James G. Baker
The first success in designing very-high-acuity lenses came in
the mid- I940s, when James G. Baker of Harvard and Richard S.
Perkin of the Perkin-Elmer (P-E) Company of Norwalk, Connecticut,
collaborated on a design for an ex.perimental camera for the Army Air
Force. They developed a 48-inch focal-length scanning camera that
was mounted in a modified B-36 bomber. When tested over Fort
Worth, Texas, at 34,000 feet, the new camera produced photographs
in which two golf balls on a putting green could be distinguished (in
reality. however, the "golf balls··· were 3 inches in diameter). These
photographs demonstrated the high acuity of Baker's lens, but the
camera weighed more than a ton and was much too large to be carried
aloft in an aircraft as small as the U-2.
Realizing that size and weiglht were the major restraining factors
in developing a camera for the U--2. James Baker began working on a
radically new system in October 1954, even before the CIA adopted
the Lockheed proposal. Baker quickly recognized, however, that he
would need almost a year to produce a working model of such a com­
plex camera. Since Kelly Johnson had promised to have a U-2 in the
air within eight months, Baker needed to find an existing camera that
could be used until the new came:ra was ready. After consulting with
his friend and colleague Richard Perkin. Baker decided to adapt for
the U-2 an Air Force camera krnown as the K-38. a 24-inch aerial
framing camera built by the Hycon Manufacturing Company of
Pasadena, California.
Perkin suggested modifying several standard K-38 cameras in
order to reduce their weight to the U-2's 450-pound payload limit. At
the same time, Baker would ma:ke critical adj ustments to existing
K-38 lenses to improve their acuiity. Baker was able to do this in a
few weeks, so several modified K-38s, now known as A-1 cameras,
were ready when the first "Angel" aircraft took to the air in
mid-1955.
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CIA awarded Hycon a contract for the modified K-38 cameras,
and Hycon, in tum. subcontracte:d to Perkin-Elmer to provide new
lenses and to make other modifications to the cameras in order to
make them less bulky. In its tum, Perkin-Elmer subcontracted to
Baker to rework the existing K-38 lenses and later design an im­
proved lens system. To keep his liens-designing efforts separate from
" Ibid.
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