The Perfect Machine (81 page)

Woodbury: Anderson to David Woodbury:, 2 March 1938, CIT/Anderson 2.2. Adams to Woodbury, 3 January 1939, 19 January 1939; Edward Dodd to Adams, 16 January 1939; Adams to Dodd, 23 January 1939; Huntington/Adams 72.1300. Warren Weaver diary, 4 March 1939, RF. Warren Weaver to Shapley, 17 February 1939, RF. “Comments on Draft of The Glass Giant of Palomar” [undated], CIT/Anderson 2.2.

29. Almost

Completion dates: AMJ interview with FBH re Pasadena trip, 1–18 April 1940, GEB. Merriam: Warren Weaver diary, 31 January 1937, GEB. Warren Weaver diary, 7 April 1937, GEB. Bush: Vannevar Bush to Warren Weaver, 20 March 1939; Warren Weaver to Fosdick, 24 March 1939, GEB. Warren Weaver diary, 17 March 1939, GEB. Warren Weaver diary, May 8/9, 1939, GEB.

Corning: Decker to Houghton, 26 January 1937; Turbett to Decker, 28 April 1938; Sullivan to Decker, 16 March 1939, Corning.

Millikan: Warren Weaver diary, 12 February 1941, GEB. Warren Weaver diary, 21 March 1940, GEB.

The big Schmidt: R. B. Fosdick to Max Mason, 21 May 1937; Warren Weaver diary, 4 March 1938, GEB.

30. Impossible Circumstances

Optics: John Anderson, “Optics of the 200-Inch Telescope,” 23 June 1948, CIT/Anderson.

Gears: Bruce Rule, “Engineering Aspects of the 200-Inch Telescope,” June 1948, CIT. McDowell, “Final Report,” p. 6.

Shops: “Shops at Caltech,”
Engineering & Science,
June 1948, p. 13. War at Caltech, John H. Rubel, “The Committee,”
Engineering & Science,
Summer 1992, pp. 29–35. Samuel W. Fernberger, Technical Aide, D-2, to Warren Weaver, 28 September 1942, RF. Paul Wild, “Fritz Zwicky,” p. 394. Mason to R. B. Fosdick, 22 December 1942, RF.

Mount Wilson during the war: Minkowski, “The Crab Nebula,”
Astrophysical Journal
96 (1942), pp. 199–213. Baade, “The Resolution of Messier 32, NGC 205, and the Central Region of the Andromeda Nebula,”
Astrophysical Journal
100 (1944), p. 137. “NGC 147 and NGC 185: Two New Members of the Local Group of Galaxies,”
Astrophysical Journal
100 (1944), p. 147. Allan Sandage, “The Population Concept, Globular Clusters, Subdwarfs, Ages, and the Collapse of the Galaxy,”
Ann. Rev. Astron. Astrophys.
24 (1986), pp. 425–28.

31. Endless, Damnable War

Shapley: Bush to Adams, 23 October 1944; Adams to Bush, 28 October 1944, Huntington/Adams 61.1084. Hubble: “Confidential Report of Adams to Merriam,” July 1936, Huntington/Adams. Adams to Bush, 9 January 1945. Huntington/Adams 68.120. Bush to Herbert Hoover, 14 June 1945, Huntington/Adams. Hubble to Bowen, 16 October 1945, Huntington/Hubble 408. Greenstein is quoted in Heinz R. Pagels,
Perfect Symmetry
(Bantam, 1986), p. 98.

32. Starting Anew

Starting again: Warren Weaver to Max Mason, 26 September 1945, RF. Anderson to Dr. E. D. Tillyer, 21 October 1946, CIT/Anderson 1.23. Finishing the disk: Max Mason to R. B. Fosdick, 15 June 1947, RF. Max Mason to Warren Weaver, 1 October 1947, RF.

33. Delicate Cargoes

Moving the mirror to Palomar: Byron Hill to Rule, 3 September 1947; Rule to Jack Belyea, 22 September 1947, CIT/Rule 9.4. Rule to Jack Belyea, 3 November 1947, CIT/Anderson 4.10. Robert S. Richardson, “The 200-Inch Mirror Goes to Palomar Mountain” (unpublished ms., Astrophysics Library, Caltech).

34. Finishing Touches

Hubble and the reporters:
Time, 9
February 1948, pp. 56–65. “The 200-inch Telescope and Some Problems It May Solve,”
Alexander F. Morrison Lecture
(Pasadena, 8 April 1947), Huntington/Hubble 66. Adams to Bowen [undated], Huntington/Bowen 1.1. A handwritten note identifies the date as [c. 1946], but the letter was almost certainly written in late 1947 or early 1948.

Coating experiments: Anderson to Robert G. Aitkey, Lick Observatory, 3 August 1933, CIT/Anderson 3.14. Pease on mirrorite, quoted in Edward G. Pendray,
Men, Mirrors and Stars
(Funk & Wagnalls, 1935), p. 276. Strong: Hale to Mason, 25 March 1935, RF. John Strong to J. A. Anderson, 6 March 1947, CIT/Anderson 1.21. Strong on getting it dirty first: quoted in Richard Preston,
First Light
(New York, 1987), p. 46. John Strong, “The Evaporation Process and Its Application to the Aluminizing of Large Telescope Mirrors,”
Astrophysical Journal
83:5 (June 1936).

Mirroring trials: Byron Hill’s notebook, 11 October 1949, Thicksten Papers, Palomar. Bolt snap, quoted in Preston,
First Light,
p. 47. Mason to Weaver, 30 December 1947, RF.

Budget poetry: Warren Weaver to R. B. Fosdick, 12 December 1947, RF.

Brown’s plans: Brown to Bruce Rule, 4 March 1950, CIT/CIT 1.

Endowment: Max Mason to Sherman, Steely, and Wright, 6 March 1946, CIT/Observatory Council Minutes.

Vibration: Max Mason to Warren Weaver, 8 January 1947, RF. I. S. Bowen, “The 200-Inch Hale Telescope,”
Telescopes,
ed. Gerald P. Kuiper and Barbara M. Middlehurst (Chicago University Press, 1966), p. 2.

Tuning the mirror: Byron Hill notebook, 21 December 1947, Thicksten Papers, Palomar. Mason to Warren Weaver, 28 June 1948, from Nantucket, RF.

Lever supports: Bruce Rule, “Lever Support Systems,” Paper delivered at a symposium on Support and Testing of Large Astronomical Mirrors, Tucson, 4–6 December 1966 (KPNO and University of Arizona Press, 1968), p. 93.

Final budgets: Max Mason to Warren Weaver, 26 November 1948, RF. Warren Weaver diary, 8–9 January 1949, RF.

Dedication: Lee DuBridge to R. B. Fosdick, 1 March 1948; Max Mason to R. B. Fosdick [undated, probably May 1948], RF.

Second
First Light:
Hubble, “First Photographs with the 200-Inch Hale Reflector” [unpublished] (14 May 1949), Huntington/Hubble. Later published in
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
61: 360. Jane Dietrich, “First Lights,”
Engineering & Science
54:2 (Winter 1991), p. 9. Hubble, “First Photographs with the 200-inch Hale Reflector” [unpublished], Huntington.

Final polishing: Caltech press release, 22 October 1949, RF. I. S. Bowen, “Final Adjustments and Tests of the Hale Telescope.”

Weinberg is quoted in Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer,
Origins: the Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists
(Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 452.

Hubble on the sky survey: Handwritten memo [undated, ca. 1947], Huntington/Hubble 14.

Final touches: Byron Hill notebook, 24 February 1949, Thicksten Papers, Palomar.

35. Palomar Nights

Baade and the distance scale: “A Revision of the Extra-Galactic Distance Scale,”
Transactions of the International Astronomical Union
8 (1952), pp. 397–98.

Support mechanism: I. S. Bowen, “Optical Tests and Adjustments of the 200-inch Hale telescope,”
Support and Testing of Large Astronomical Mirrors,
Svmposium, Tucson, 4–6 December 1966 (KPNO and University of Arizona Press, 1968), p. 101.

Index

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Abbot, Charles G., 3, 4, 5, 6, 109

Adams, Walter, 60, 91, 106, 111, 123, 129, 153, 158, 161, 227, 230, 231, 275, 297, 306, 322, 334, 336, 358, 362, 387, 393, 400

Corning Pyrex disk manufacturing and, 200, 202, 205, 208

description of, 360

GE disk experiments and, 147, 155, 157, 167

Hooker telescope project and, 47, 48, 50-51, 55, 56

joint observatories directorship and, 359, 360, 361

media and, 101-102, 381

Mount Wilson-Caltech relations and, 217, 218, 219

Palomar grant and, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 84

project direction questioned by, 329

publicity slant disliked by, 381

retirement of, 358

site selection and, 209, 210

Woodbury’s book and, 329, 330

Aitken, Robert, 109

Allegheny Observatory, 122, 158

Allzerican, The, 240

American Association for the Advancement of Science (MAS), 63

American Astronomical Society (AAS), 63, 99, 115, 138, 166, 167

American Bridge Company, 233, 263

American Ceramic Society, 196-197

Anlos ‘n’ Andy, 197, 219

Anderson, John, 92, 121, 123, 150, 152, 178, 208, 215, 217, 218, 228, 230, 259, 275, 291, 328, 334, 335, 401

astigmatism corrected by, 325-327, 341

committee chairmanships of, 120, 186, 209

Corning Pyrex disk manufacturing and, 177, 244, 273, 274

disk shipment and, 247, 248, 269

earthquake feared by, 269

end to polishing declared by, 367

and final trials and adjustments, 387

first light and, 386

GE disk experiments and, 119, 127, 128, 129, 132, 135-136, 140, 141, 142, 146, ]57, 158, 163

growing role of, 186-187

illness of, 350

and two-hundred-inch disk fractures, 274, 277, 279, 283, 298

McDowell’s style disliked by, 295, 296, 297

mirror coating and, 382, 383

and mirror grinding and polishing, 182, 227, 242, 243, 270, 271, 272, 274, 277, 300, 324, 329, 341, 344-345, 350, 352, 369, 386

mirror memorandum of, 97

in mirror move, 374

mounting design and, 125, 214, 216, 229, 370, 412

optical testing done by, 324-325, 344-345, 350, 365, 367, 390

Porter hiring and, 94-95

site selection and, 105, 107, 108, 209, 210, 211, 212

Woodbury’s book and, 329, 330, 331

in World War 11, 351-352

Andromeda (M31), 20, 22, 62, 63, 67, 258, 302, 304, 305, 353, 354-355, 392, 397, 403-404

Angell, James Rowland, 109

Arnett, Trevor, 105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 153, 166

Associated Press, 225

astronomy, 352-355

age of universe in, 302-303, 305, 406

astrophysics as successor to, 361-362

distance in, 5-23, 61-69, 302-303, 403, 406

Palomar’s contribution to, 403-407

stellar evolution in, 305, 360

units of measure in, 63n

velocity in, 66-69, 148-149, 151-152, 302-303, 308, 360, 405

Astrophysical Journal, 94, 355

Atlas of Galaxies (Hubble), 397

atom research, 72, 215

Baade, Walter, 150, 258, 259, 304-305, 306, 309, 322, 334, 335, 352-355, 359, 362, 403-404, 406

Babcock, Harold, 43

Babcock & Wilcox, 263, 296, 297

Bailey, Solon I., 15

Barrows, Phil, 250

Basich Brothers, 230

Bateman, Harry, 178, 214

Baum, William, 403-404

Bausch & Lomb, 68

Beard, George, 45

Beech, Kenneth, 211

Beech, Mrs. William, 180, 210

Beech, William, 180, 210, 211, 229, 230

Bell Telephone Labs, 226, 408

Belyea, Jack, 374

Belyea Truck Co., 253, 269, 374, 376, 379

Benchley, Robert, 45, 240, 279, 299, 366

Bethe, Hans, 305

Bethlehem Shipbuilding, 64, 229, 262

Bethlehem Steel, 53, 190, 289

Big Bear Solar Observatory, 418

Blakeslee, Howard, 225

Bohr, Niels, 72, 148

Born, Max, 72, 148

Bowen, Ira, 129n, 152-153, 334, 362, 367, 374, 386, 393, 401

appointed joint observatories director, 360-361

background and personality of, 152-153, 361

and final trials and adjustments, 387, 389, 391, 392n, 394, 395, 396, 397-398, 412

Brashear, John, 30, 32

Breasted, James, 47

Brett, M. L., 229, 230, 255, 256, 257, 315, 337

Briggs, Lyman, 202, 357

Brown, Marcus “Brownie,” 253, 269, 270, 271, 274, 277, 278, 283, 299, 301, 323, 324, 326, 327, 329, 344, 345, 346, 347, 350, 352, 363, 365, 367, 369, 393

background of, 242-243

ending project difficult for, 367, 368, 389

at first light, 386

leg problems of, 350, 364, 368, 389

in mirror move, 374-375

mirror signed by, 375

optical testing done by, 324-325, 365

in Woodbury’s book, 329, 331

in World War II, 350, 352, 364

Brune I, Isambard Kingdom, 41

Buckingham, Earle, 346

Burbidge, Margaret, 306n

Bureau of Standards, U.S., 95-96, 128, 132, t 39, 159, 357

Burlington Route, 252

Burnham, Sherburne Wesley, 26, 29

Burrell, E. P., 123-124, 225

Bush, Vannevar, 229, 310, 320, 334, 347, 357, 385, 393

joint observatories director appointed by, 358-361

Palomar endowment assured by, 336-340

Butler, Nicholas, 36

Buwalda, J. P., 209

Caldwell, Cy, 197-198

California:

in Great Depression, 159-160

in 1920s, 112-113

in post-World War II era, 372

California, University of, 366

California Highway Patrol, 376

California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 59, 90, 92, 112, 120, 125, 161, 214

antisubmarine bomb research at, 352