formidable recommendations from Henry Norris Russell would be a capable observer and astronomer; what he needed to ascertain was whether the man was the right sort of fellow, whether he could function well in the atmosphere of close collegiality that Mount Wilson required. The young astronomer was Harlow Shapley, who would soon be using the sixty-inch telescope for his research on globular clusters.
Through sheer force of will, Hale fought back the horrible symptoms often enough to carry on, recruiting a steady stream of first-rate astronomers for the observatory and dealing with the institutional and administrative problems of a major research institution. When the components of the huge new telescope proved too heavy to go up the mountain on mules, special trucks were bought for the treks up the mountain. The daily trips of the one- and three-ton trucks tore up the road and required regular labor teams to keep the crude path passable. Crisis after crisis came up, and with World War I beginning to draw on American resources, Hale could not turn down the invitation of the National Academy of Sciences that he assist in the organization of a National Research Council, which took over many of the laboratories and facilities at Mount Wilson for war-related research.
George Ritchey, though relieved as optician in charge of the grinding of the mirrors and other optics for the one-hundred-inch telescope, remained at the observatory, and other astronomers still chafed at his sanctimonious and sometimes sadistic attitude. His perfectionism was more than mildly annoying, not only in the time he would spend on the big telescopes, taking one perfect exposure (and, as often as not, forgetting to note the parameters that would make the plate useful for scientific purposes), but in his procrastination of any writing, so that collaborations involving him fell impossibly behind schedule. One night he helped a visiting French astronomer, Henri Chrétien, use the sixty-inch telescope for the first time. Ritchey loaded the telescope’s plate holder and Chrétien spent several hours guiding the telescope, perched precariously at the eyepiece, in freezing temperatures, pushing buttons on a paddle to hold a star image steady in the crosshairs. When the exposure was done, Chrétien knew he had done a good job and was eager to develop this, his first plate on the famed telescope. Then Ritchey told him that it was a blank, that he had not been willing to risk a good photographic plate on a novice. *
Other astronomers, especially Walter Adams, who served as actingdirector of the observatory during Hale’s absences, were outraged by Ritchey’s sadistic and authoritarian manner. By the middle of the war, Ritchey, who was in charge of war production at the optical shop, began signing his correspondence “Commanding Officer, Mount Wilson Observatory.”
He rarely passed up an opportunity to give the staff of the optical laboratory or visitors to the observatory his views on the one-hundred-inch-telescope project. He had spent long enough with the disk, he said, to know that it changed shape with even slight changes in position, and that the layers of air bubbles from the three separate pours had fatally weakened the glass. Ritchey’s success in figuring the mirror for the sixty-inch telescope weighted his predictions. Doubts about the new telescope were widespread.
5
First Light
Their hundred inch reflector, the clear pool,
The polished flawless pool that it must be
To hold the perfect image of a star.
And, even now, some secret flaw—none knew
Until to-morrow’s test—might waste it all.
Where was the gambler that would stake so much,—
Time, patience, treasure, on a single throw?
The cost of it,—they’d not find that again,
Either in gold or life-stuff! All their youth
Was fuel to the flame of this one work.
One in a lifetime to the man of science,
Despite what fools believe his ice-cooled blood,
There comes this drama.
If
Through sheer force of will, Hale fought back the horrible symptoms often enough to carry on, recruiting a steady stream of first-rate astronomers for the observatory and dealing with the institutional and administrative problems of a major research institution. When the components of the huge new telescope proved too heavy to go up the mountain on mules, special trucks were bought for the treks up the mountain. The daily trips of the one- and three-ton trucks tore up the road and required regular labor teams to keep the crude path passable. Crisis after crisis came up, and with World War I beginning to draw on American resources, Hale could not turn down the invitation of the National Academy of Sciences that he assist in the organization of a National Research Council, which took over many of the laboratories and facilities at Mount Wilson for war-related research.
George Ritchey, though relieved as optician in charge of the grinding of the mirrors and other optics for the one-hundred-inch telescope, remained at the observatory, and other astronomers still chafed at his sanctimonious and sometimes sadistic attitude. His perfectionism was more than mildly annoying, not only in the time he would spend on the big telescopes, taking one perfect exposure (and, as often as not, forgetting to note the parameters that would make the plate useful for scientific purposes), but in his procrastination of any writing, so that collaborations involving him fell impossibly behind schedule. One night he helped a visiting French astronomer, Henri Chrétien, use the sixty-inch telescope for the first time. Ritchey loaded the telescope’s plate holder and Chrétien spent several hours guiding the telescope, perched precariously at the eyepiece, in freezing temperatures, pushing buttons on a paddle to hold a star image steady in the crosshairs. When the exposure was done, Chrétien knew he had done a good job and was eager to develop this, his first plate on the famed telescope. Then Ritchey told him that it was a blank, that he had not been willing to risk a good photographic plate on a novice. *
Other astronomers, especially Walter Adams, who served as actingdirector of the observatory during Hale’s absences, were outraged by Ritchey’s sadistic and authoritarian manner. By the middle of the war, Ritchey, who was in charge of war production at the optical shop, began signing his correspondence “Commanding Officer, Mount Wilson Observatory.”
He rarely passed up an opportunity to give the staff of the optical laboratory or visitors to the observatory his views on the one-hundred-inch-telescope project. He had spent long enough with the disk, he said, to know that it changed shape with even slight changes in position, and that the layers of air bubbles from the three separate pours had fatally weakened the glass. Ritchey’s success in figuring the mirror for the sixty-inch telescope weighted his predictions. Doubts about the new telescope were widespread.
5
First Light
Their hundred inch reflector, the clear pool,
The polished flawless pool that it must be
To hold the perfect image of a star.
And, even now, some secret flaw—none knew
Until to-morrow’s test—might waste it all.
Where was the gambler that would stake so much,—
Time, patience, treasure, on a single throw?
The cost of it,—they’d not find that again,
Either in gold or life-stuff! All their youth
Was fuel to the flame of this one work.
One in a lifetime to the man of science,
Despite what fools believe his ice-cooled blood,
There comes this drama.
If
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