The Perfect Machine (63 page)

The terms of the original grant called for Caltech to raise an endowment suitable to pay the operating expenses of the observatory. Henry Robinson, the chairman of the Caltech board of trustees and the member most enthusiastic about a telescope, had pledged $3 million when the grant was first received, fulfilling the Rockefeller Foundation requirement and obviating the need to search for endowment funds. Robinson hadn’t lost his enthusiasm, but the stock market crash had decimated his portfolio. Aside from an interest in the Bolsa Chica Club, which he had purchased almost by accident before oil was discovered on the property, he had nothing to offer the observatory. As of 1938 no portion of the endowment was in hand, and with the depression still vitally affecting business and philanthropy, there seemed little prospect of raising it.

The obvious partnership, which the public assumed already existed, was between Caltech and the Mount Wilson Observatories. Mount Wilson, a department of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, had a long record of experience with large telescopes; offices conveniently in Pasadena; and a substantial staff of opticians, engineers, electricians, and trained night assistants. The Mount Wilson staff astronomers, men like Walter Baade and Edwin Hubble, were experienced observers with unparalleled experience on large telescopes. The Mount Wilson optics lab had done work on the early quartz and glass disks, correcting lenses, and other instrumentation for Palomar; portions of the telescope instrumentation and optics had been tested on Mount Wilson telescopes; and Mount Wilson staff members, including Sinclair Smith, Francis Pease, and John Anderson, had for many years worked half-time on the Palomar telescope, with that portion of their salaries paid by Caltech from the telescope budget. Mount Wilson staff had been accustomed to attending colloquiums and symposia at Caltech and had worked with Caltech faculty in physics and geology.

However sensible the relationship between the two institutions might have seemed to an outsider, the Observatory Council and John Merriam, the president of the Carnegie Institution, had long memories. After the roadblocks Merriam had erected in 1928, when he tried to sabotage the grant, and again in 1934, when he appointed his special committee, the Observatory Council and the staff and trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation thought it best to soft-pedal any talk of cooperation, because of the “personal difficulties which sometimes surround the activities of J. C. Merriam.”

Merriam occasionally tried to court the project. In 1936 an exhibit on the two-hundred-inch telescope was included in the annual Carnegie Institution Christmas display in Washington. Early the next year Walter Adams asked Max Mason if he would consider appointment as an associate of the Carnegie Institution. Mason said he would be honored, but John Merriam apparently changed his mind. The appointment never came through.

The mistrust went both ways. Merriam wasn’t popular, even among the Carnegie Institution staff and trustees. But he wasn’t the only one at the Carnegie Institution who felt that Hale, as an officer and an employee of the Carnegie Institution had been openly disloyal when he worked out the original plans for the telescope. It was no secret that Hale had used his personal friendships with some trustees and Elihu Root to sidetrack Merriam’s initial obstruction of the grant.

Underlying the resentment of the grant and Hale’s actions, there was also a deep-seated Carnegie dislike of Robert Millikan and Caltech. The Carnegie Board was made up of conservative men, mostly easterners with strong ties to the Ivy League and quietly contemptuous of Millikan’s aggressive fund-raising, faculty-stealing, and penchant for publicity. After the stir his comments on religion had made in the 1920s, Millikan followed up in the 1930s with strong public positions against federal support of science, all the while arguing that increased scientific research—meaning the kind of research he had raised funds to support at Caltech, rather than economic tinkering—would create jobs and end the depression. Even Carnegie trustees who agreed with Millikan’s opposition to the New Deal resented the publicity he drew to Caltech, often at the expense of Carnegie departments like the Mount Wilson Observatory.

Still, to many a marriage between the two institutions seemed inevitable. Frederick Keppel, a trustee of the Carnegie Institution, was at Max Mason’s retirement party, given by John D. Rockefeller. He drew Mason aside to say that the Carnegie Institution was “vitally interested” in the two-hundred-inch telescope and wanted to discuss the possibilities “as soon as Merriam was out.”

Merriam retired on schedule in 1938. His replacement was a surprise—Vannevar Bush from MIT. Although Bush had advised Sandy McDowell on a number of questions, found Edward Poitras to replace Sinclair Smith on the control-system work, and suggested people and firms to work on the project, no one at Caltech really knew him.

Bush took over the Carnegie Institution by storm, appointing special committees to review every area of operations and personally investigating large projects. He recruited the most famous of California engineers, former president Herbert Hoover, a trustee of the Carnegie Institution since 1921, to head a special subcommittee on astronomy. After leaving the White House, Hoover had become an
active California booster. He visited Palomar before construction work on the observatory began, eating dinner with Colonel Brett in his cabin. Over the years Hoover followed the progress of the telescope, and even before Bush came to the Carnegie Institution, Hoover tried to raise money in Southern California to bring the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories together under a single organization, independent of both the Carnegie Institution and Caltech.

Hoover’s plan was that the Carnegie Institution turn over the Mount Wilson Observatory and $6 million of endowment to the new organization. Caltech would turn over the Palomar telescope. Bush liked the plan, with one exception: He thought that the Mount Wilson Observatory and the Carnegie Institution expertise was a sufficient contribution
without
an additional $6 million for operating endowment. What Bush liked about Hoover’s plan was the centralization of authority. Millikan and others at Caltech had suggested that a group of scientists from Caltech and a group of astronomers from Mount Wilson could work together at Palomar under a joint committee. Bush thought running an observatory by committee an unworkable idea.

Bush went to Warren Weaver, the head of science programs at the Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation, he told Weaver, had made a serious mistake in letting Caltech go so far with the two-hundred-inch telescope. Caltech didn’t have the funds to endow the operation of the telescope, and they didn’t have the technical or astronomical staff to operate the facility. Lacking the resources to embark on their own astronomical program, they should stick to physics and leave astronomy to the Carnegie Institution. Two departments would not only be wasteful, but would inevitably lead to competition. Even if Caltech didn’t try to start a separate astronomy department, if the Rockefeller Foundation was not effectively to lose the funds they had put into the project, Bush warned, they would have to be prepared to face the necessity of committing between $1 and $2 million in additional grants to support the maintenance and operation of the telescope, and be prepared “actively to enter the situation and manipulate the plans for the operation of the telescope.”

Bush’s warning struck sensitive chords. Any foundation officer dreads two possibilities: the need to commit more funds to “rescue” a project, and the need actively to enter the management or control of a funded project. Warren Weaver urged Raymond Fosdick, the new president of the Rockefeller Foundation, to stay out of the fray and not to make any move that could be construed as an offer of additional funds, even though “back of all this theorizing there remains one hard and disagreeable fact. It is true, and of inescapable significance, that the Rockefeller boards will have a very heavy investment in this Observatory. It is true that it would be intolerable and unthinkable that the Observatory not be properly utilized.” For the present, at least, he was reluctant to consider the possibility that the Rockefeller Foundation
might have to add $1 or $2 million to their commitment “rather than see the former investment invalidated.”

Bush told Weaver that the only reasonable administration for the new telescope was for a member of the Mount Wilson staff to be appointed director of the Palomar Observatory, and for the astronomical staff to be Carnegie Institution employees. When Weaver asked whether the Carnegie staff didn’t already have their hands full at Mount Wilson, Bush assured him that the present staff of Mount Wilson was fully capable of utilizing the facilities of both observatories. Under Bush’s plan Caltech would own Palomar and furnish a minimal thirty thousand dollars per year for basic maintenance. Caltech scientists would be
allowed
to work at Palomar, with the understanding that their interests would be in physics rather than astronomy. All publications from the observatory would give full credit to Caltech, and an advisory board from both institutions would recommend research programs and allocation of observation time. Bush, convinced that publicity was the real objective of Caltech, even offered to structure any agreement to save face and provide maximum publicity for Caltech. The crucial point for Bush was that final authority would rest with the director of the observatory, who would be a Carnegie man.

As he explained his idea to a somewhat incredulous Warren Weaver, Bush argued that Caltech was overextended, that Millikan had lost his ability to raise funds and no longer commanded respect from other scientists, that Caltech was not capable of utilizing the Palomar Observatory without the Carnegie Institution, and that the Rockefeller Foundation had no choice but to intervene to protect its investment. At the same time he said he would not present his plan directly to Max Mason or the Observatory Council, because they would instinctively oppose placing the ultimate authority for the observatory in the hands of a Carnegie Institution officer and would only accept the idea if it were forced on them by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Bush was in a powerful position. The Carnegie Institution of Washington not only enjoyed the wealth of its own considerable endowment, but Bush could appeal to the Carnegie Corporation, a separate body, for additional funds. Caltech, which had promised to raise an endowment for the telescope, did not have the funds at hand, and Millikan, who usually had the knack of making Southern Californians think it was a privilege to give money to Caltech, had had no success in raising an endowment for the telescope. The long years of depression didn’t help. Even if the economy had been better, endowment funds are less-glamorous causes than capital construction, and the observatory was so closely associated with George Hale and the Rockefeller Foundation that any potential donors knew they would have little chance of the immortality that Lick, Yerkes, or Hooker had achieved with the telescopes bearing their names.

The negotiations between Bush and Mason went on indirectly.
Max Mason had one advantage. As the former president of the Rockefeller Foundation, he enjoyed enormous respect and support from the foundation. Warren Weaver sent copies of his diary records of meetings with Bush to Mason and made it clear that the Rockefeller Foundation would not intervene in support of Bush’s plan.

When Bush and Mason finally met in May 1939, they were able to split many of their differences. Bush was willing to agree to a joint committee to run the observatory provided its chairman was a member of the Mount Wilson staff and had “reasonable power.” Members of the Mount Wilson staff would have honorary appointments at Caltech, where they could conduct seminars and accept graduate students. Astronomy-minded members of the Caltech faculty would be named associates of the Carnegie Institution—an honor that hadn’t yet been accorded to Mason himself. Bush thought that by consolidating basic services of the two observatories, the Palomar facility could be run from an endowment of $1.5 million. He tentatively agreed to include the sum in his requests for funds from the Carnegie Corporation.

Mason liked the plan. The day after he met with Bush, he met with Weaver and Raymond Fosdick at the Rockefeller Foundation to explain that the plan would require no additional commitment from the Rockefeller Foundation, even though “some individuals might interpret this arrangement to mean that the RF had given an observatory to CIT and that CIT was in effect giving it away to the Carnegie Institution.”

In the offices of the Caltech astrophysics building, named Robinson Hall after the death of Henry Robinson, Caltech physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists had already begun talking about establishing their
own
program in astrophysics to take advantage of the new observational facilities. The Mount Wilson people were quick to proclaim their expertise and experience at running large telescopes, and to point out that Caltech did not have the funds to provide the operating expenses for the telescope. It was hard for many at Caltech to shake the feeling that the Carnegie Institution was trying to steal
their
telescope.

Bush and Millikan were both ambitious men, with great appetites for power and publicity. The control of the most expensive and most famous scientific instrument in the country was a plum that neither was willing to give up easily. Millikan had slowed down—“By actual clocking,” the Pasadena wags reported, “it takes M[illikan] twenty-two minutes to ask whether the R[ockefeller] F[oundation] would object if CIT named the astrophysics building Robinson Hall”—but he was still a fierce defender of Caltech. After a year of talk Mason and Bush were close enough that “less than one sentence stood between them, and they could write out the partial sentence in a way which would be satisfactory to both if they could keep Rob Millikan out of the room while they wrote it.”

In return for having a Mount Wilson man as director, the Carnegie Institution was willing to allocate up to three million dollars of endowment for the telescope, if not in one grant, in a series of maintenance grants and progressive endowments. Bush was convinced that in the end the Rockefeller Foundation would contribute toward the endowment of the telescope. When Mason offered to bet that they wouldn’t, Bush backed down. Carnegie would pay to run the telescope that Caltech built.