About: Sam Bass Warner

Sam Bass Warner (1889–1979) was the fourth Register of Copyrights in the United States Copyright Office. Born Sam Perkins Fiske in Chicago, Illinois, May 27, 1889, he was the first son of Asian art collector and female museum specialist Gertrude Bass Warner and George F. Fiske. Following their divorce and his mother's marriage to Murray Warner, Warner would take his stepfather's surname and, like Murray, attended Phillips Exeter Academy. Warner traveled extensively throughout Asian with his parents and, as an amateur photographer, he took many of the turn-of-the-century lantern slide photographs now housed in the University of Oregon Knight Library Special Collections & University Archives. Later, Warner attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Prior to entering the Copyright Offic