The Perfect Machine (15 page)

Rose answered Hale within the week, in the imperial first person plural reserved for royalty and foundation presidents: “It is a matter that interests us. We shall be very glad to discuss it with you.”

Rose had already scheduled a trip to Pasadena, to visit the California Institute of Technology, when he received Hale’s letter. The distinguished faculty of the new institution comprised just the sort of men Rose favored with his fellowships. A visit to Mount Wilson and the Pasadena offices of the Mount Wilson Observatory was easily added to the trip.

H. J. Thorkelson, Rose’s colleague at the GEB, had previously visited the observatory on a foundation scouting trip, in October 1926. He was given the standard VIP reception, met Hubble and van Maanen, ate dinner with the astronomers at the Monastery, saw Jupiter through the sixty-inch telescope, and was escorted into the dome of the one-hundred-inch telescope while it was busy on a multi-night exposure. After the tour Francis Pease showed Thorkelson his tentative drawings of a twenty-five-foot (three-hundred-inch) reflecting telescope, with a probable cost of some $8 million. Pease admitted that there were no real plans for construction or for securing the necessary funds. Thorkelson was impressed that much of the manufacturing work on the big instruments at Mount Wilson had been done by the staff at a saving of about “one-half the estimates submitted by manufacturing concerns.”

Hale had another meeting with Rose in mid-March, before Rose’s trip to California. The whole process seemed to be moving quickly, so Hale tried to get in touch with John C. Merriam, the president of the Carnegie Institution. Although the observatory functioned independently, with its own director, the Mount Wilson Observatory was a
branch of the Carnegie Institution. Merriam was in Mexico and could not be reached before Rose and Thorkelson left for Pasadena and Mount Wilson.

The seeing was poor the night Rose and Thorkelson were on the mountain, but they were able to view the moon, Neptune, a double star, a nebula in Orion, and a star cluster through the one-hundred-inch telescope. The rest of the evening they talked with Walter Adams, Henry Norris Russell, and other astronomers who were at the observatory.

Pease again described his plans for a three-hundred-inch telescope. Rose asked what it would cost. Pease estimated the cost at $12 million, $4 million more than two years before. Pease explained that while a plate-glass disk could be impossible, “this disc could easily be made of Pyrex with very distinct advantages over glass,” or of fused quartz, which would be better still.

Later that evening the group settled into a long discussion of what institution should run a very large telescope, if one were to be built. The astronomers favored an independent director and trustees who would administer an endowment and secure additional funds from time to time, with an advisory committee of astronomers—an administrative structure not very different from the organization of the Mount Wilson Observatory. They also argued strongly that one very large telescope would do more for science than additional telescopes the size of the one-hundred-inch telescope.

Rose disagreed with their suggestions for administration, arguing that a university was the right institution to run a big telescope. Walter Adams, who reported the discussions to Hale in New York, had the feeling Rose was talking about the California Institute of Technology. Adams was astonished: At the time the fledgling institution had no astronomy facilities and no astronomers or astrophysicists on its faculty.

On his return to New York, Rose met again with Hale, who had stayed at the University Club in New York during Rose’s trip to California. Rose told Hale that he had been impressed by the facilities and research program at Mount Wilson, but that he had strong reservations about the administration of the institution. The observatory, he suggested, should be a separately endowed institution and not dependent on the Carnegie Institution of Washington for funds. Hale assumed that Rose had the Rockefeller Medical Institute, which he had administered for many years, in mind as an example.

As they talked that afternoon, Rose made no comments about the mechanical or optical plans for the telescope. From his trips to Europe and his hobnobbing with famous scientists, he had developed a style of his own, leaving the actual science to the scientists. His experience was as an administrator, and he considered himself an expert on issues of scientific administration. Hale was wise enough not to argue with Rose’s institutional preferences, although he did point out that it
would be difficult to build a large telescope without the advice and assistance of the staff of the Mount Wilson Observatory and their laboratories in Pasadena.

There is a peculiar, tentative choreography to the early discussions between a foundation and an applicant. Though both parties know they are discussing a potential grant, they dance around the notion of a formal application, wary lest they force a premature decision. Hale, from his experience with Yerkes, Hooker, Carnegie, and others, knew the quagmires in the way of any grant of funds. Donors, whether they speak for their own money or as officers of a foundation, have strong personal preferences that cannot be ignored. A slip of the tongue, a single reference to an un favored concept, could kill the chances of the proposal. Yet Hale couldn’t afford to be too cautious. The early rumors of Rose’s retirement were now public, and the word among foundation watchers had it that when he was replaced, the boards would return to their previous funding priorities, which did not favor science. If a grant was to be secured, it had to be soon.

For hours that afternoon, as they sat in comfortable wing chairs at the University Club, Hale enthusiastically described the fused-quartz research that had been going on in the General Electric laboratory of the famed scientist and inventor Elihu Thomson, in West Lynn, Massachusetts, and the new Pyrex borosilicate glass that had been developed at the Corning Glass Works in upstate New York. Neither material had been tried in an astronomical mirror, but Hale assured Rose that both materials would be suitable for a very large telescope and that there were no technical problems in the use of either material for a mirror. The work would proceed in stages, Hale explained, working gradually up to a two-hundred-inch mirror, and perhaps to a mirror large enough for the three-hundred-inch telescope that Pease had designed. Hale was persuasive when he spoke about a pet project, and Rose was willing to be persuaded by a distinguished scientist with a reputation as expansive as Hale’s.

Rose asked about a budget. They had only been discussing the possibility of a grant to explore the building of a large telescope mirror, but Hale had prepared for a budget question by getting figures from Gano Dunn, his friend and the president of the J. G. White Engineering Company, contractors for major projects worldwide. Building a series of mirrors up to two hundred inches in diameter, Hale said, would cost approximately half a million dollars. Building a two-hundred-inch telescope would cost in the neighborhood of $6 million. Endowing it with operating funds would require another $2 million.

“What about a three-hundred-inch telescope?” Rose asked.

Hale said that his estimates for a telescope that large were still vague, but the figure would be somewhere around $15 million.

“Well,” Rose suddenly asked. “Do you want a two-hundred-inch or a three-hundred-inch?”

Hale was astonished. Until then they had only discussed the possibility of a grant to explore whether a large mirror
could
be built for a telescope. Rose’s calm, unsurprised reaction to the budget figures was the first indication that his foundation might be ready to commit the funds to actually build a telescope. Neither of them had to say that a grant on the scale of Hale’s proposed budget would be, by a substantial margin, the largest award ever made in support of a scientific project. Fellow club members could leave much unsaid.

Rose’s question wasn’t easy to answer. Hale knew the next telescope would be the last one he would shepherd into existence. The nervous breakdowns and the visits of tormenting demons were now coming so frequently that he had begun to husband the moments of clarity and peace, carefully dividing his energies between his own scientific research and the projects he held dear, like this one. He didn’t have time to make mistakes.

The size of what the astronomers called the big telescope wasn’t a virgin question. At Mount Wilson and in the library on Santa Barbara Street the astronomers had talked incessantly about the big telescope. Hale and his colleagues had spent countless hours going over Pease’s sketch and model for a three-hundred-inch telescope. Still Hale was wary. It was one thing to write optimistically in
Harper’s
for a general audience, or even in a preliminary feeler to a foundation. Now that the bait had been nibbled, how big a fish could they actually land?

Hale had spent years struggling with partially completed telescopes, fending off anxious donors who wanted to know why progress on the telescope that was to bear their name was stalled. Each leap in size, from the Yerkes forty-inch refractor to the sixty- and then the one-hundred-inch reflectors at Mount Wilson, had involved far more problems than anyone ever anticipated, and the new proposal entailed a leap in magnitude greater than any of the previous jumps. Much of the technology that had been extended and modified for each of the earlier telescopes couldn’t be stretched any farther.

Hale didn’t give Rose a direct answer that day. After the meeting he telephoned Walter Adams, the director of the Mount Wilson Observatory since Hale’s retirement, and two other trusted advisers: J. J. Carty, the director of research at American Telephone & Telegraph, and Gano Dunn, the president of J. G. White. Neither Carty nor Dunn was an astronomer or had any special experience with large telescopes, but as the heads of the predecessor of the Bell Labs and of one of the largest engineering firms in the world, they did have experience with large-scale design and construction projects. All three men supported Hale’s instinct to go for a two-hundred-inch telescope.

That night Hale had dinner with John Merriam. Hale repeated Rose’s arguments favoring the California Institute as the body to administer a large telescope. Merriam made no objections. Hale stayed on at the University Club, waiting to hear back from Rose. He
knew that Rose, too, was carrying on delicate negotiations with his colleagues and with selected members of the IEB.

On the morning of April 12, Rose and Hale met again at the club. Arthur Noyes, Hale’s old professor from MIT and the chairman of the chemistry department at Caltech, joined them. Hale reported to Rose on his discussions with Adams, Carty, Dunn, and Millikan of Caltech. They had all supported the decision to go for a two-hundred-inch telescope and agreed that the proposed new observatory should be vested in the California Institute. In his diary Rose noted that even Carty, who was a member of the board of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, supported the decision that the telescope should go to Caltech, rather than to the Carnegie Institution, which ran the Mount Wilson telescopes. The process was suddenly moving quickly.

A few days later Rose sent a note to Hale: “I should appreciate it if you would write me an informal letter about the proposed telescope, in which you make all the essential points concerning the proposal in separate paragraphs as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.”

It was exactly the invitation Hale had awaited. Working in pencil, at the University Club, he drafted a proposal with the numbered paragraphs Rose requested. Most of his proposal was an expansion and rehash of the earlier letter and the
Harper’s
article, but years of fund-raising with men like Yerkes and Hooker, who liked to air their views, had made a good listener out of Hale and versed him in the art of praise. “As you have remarked,” he wrote in the second-to-last paragraph, “the most important requirement in the construction and operation of the telescope is the close cooperation of the Mount Wilson Observatory and the California Institute.”

The proposal included no details of the design of the telescope, because there was no design. Hale was selling an idea and a group of men. The budget in the last paragraph of his proposal was as vague as their talk at the University Club: “The best estimate of total cost I am now in a position to offer is six million dollars, to be expended over a considerable period (probably four to six or more years)…. This estimate, which does not include endowment, is believed to cover the various contingencies necessarily to be reckoned with in a large undertaking of this kind.”

When he finished the draft, Hale penciled in a few minor changes, then had it typed up and delivered downtown to Rose’s office.

Hale had dealt with foundations often enough to know that the written proposal was a formality. The presidents of large foundations are quick to say, “I cannot commit the funds of the foundation to your proposal; only the board of trustees makes that decision.” But foundation presidents do not solicit proposals for extensive and costly projects unless they plan to submit the proposal with their endorsement to the board. Unless the staff is out-of-step with its overseeing board, boards of trustees generally go along with the recommendations of the
staff. The bigger the foundation, the more likely that the distinguished trustees are too busy to second guess the professional staff. And in this instance the grant was a terminal request to the IEB, which had been more or less Rose’s private fund. With Rose’s assurance that they could count on the support of the Rockefeller group, Hale left for Pasadena feeling confident about the proposal.

At the GEB offices, Thorkelson put together the supporting material for the proposal, requesting Mount Wilson photographs of spectra, spiral nebulae, star clusters, and exteriors and interiors of the Santa Barbara Street laboratories and the observatory, to accompany the formal presentation of the telescope proposal to the board. To wrap up the last loose ends, Rose scheduled a meeting at the Cosmos Club in Washington to discuss the project with Arthur Day, a member of the board of the Carnegie Institution and one of the inventors of Pyrex. At Hale’s urging Millikan, Dunn, Adams, and others wrote letters to Rose endorsing the proposal.