The endowing individual still had enormous influence in the new system, and Hale’s success within it was in no small part due to Carnegie’s personal interest in astronomy—an interest that Hale made sure to encourage and cultivate. Carnegie had come to his own appreciation of astronomy at least as early as 1900, when his famous “The Gospel of Wealth” singled out astronomy as one of the “Best Fields of Philanthropy” and noted the recent works of Lick and Thaw as being especially worthy of commendation:
If any millionaire be interested in the ennobling study of astronomy,—and there should be and would be if they but gave the subject the slightest attention,—here is an example which could be well followed, for the progress made in astronomical instruments and appliances is so great and continuous that every few years a new telescope might be judiciously given to one of the observatories upon this continent, the last being always the largest and the best, and certain to carry further and further the knowledge of the universe and of our relation to it here upon the earth.107
Corresponding to its founder’s views, the Carnegie Institution had allocated to astronomy $21,000 in its first awarding of grants, more money than to any other department of science.108 Hale further cultivated Carnegie’s interest in astronomy, sending him high-quality transparencies of Ritchey’s nebulae photographs and corresponding with him on scientific subjects. The result was an enthusiastic supporter who strongly influenced his foundation’s decision to support the growth and development of Hale’s ambitions at Mount Wilson.
Although the Carnegie Institution would provide the majority of the funding required for Hale’s third large telescope, the one-hundred-inch reflector, it would be the personal support of two wealthy individuals that would create the conditions for that support. Within a year of receiving the Carnegie Institution’s support for the sixty-inch reflector, and before it was mounted in its observatory, Hale was already thinking about his next big telescope. Hale and Ritchey had developed a relationship with John. D. Hooker—a wealthy hardware-supply-company owner, oil-well investor, and an amateur astronomer in Los Angeles—and they convinced him to fund the development of their new scheme for a hundred-inch reflector. As with the sixty-inch, Hale sought first to secure the mirror, and the prestige-conscious Hooker agreed to provide for it with $45,000, to be paid in $5,000 increments starting in 1906, provided that it bore his name.109 It was Carnegie himself, however, who enabled the project to reach fruition. In 1910, at the age of seventy-five, the retired steel baron personally visited the observatory and came away with a renewed enthusiasm for astronomy. On Carnegie’s return to New York, he gave the Carnegie Institution another $10 million and made clear his desire that the funds be used to support the construction of an observatory for the hundred-inch telescope.110 The new project would cost the Carnegie Institution over $570,000, bringing the Institution’s total capital expenditure on Mount Wilson, not including salaries, to over $1.4 million.111 While it was ultimately the trustees of the Carnegie Institution that authorized the project, it was Carnegie’s influence that ensured the trustees’ approval, and it was Hooker’s willingness to fund the hundred-inch mirror that helped encourage Carnegie. Even in the era of the foundation observatory, individual wealthy philanthropists often still played a deciding role.
Hale’s correspondence with Carnegie reveals how he developed the relationships with his patrons as friends and colleagues in research. His letters back and forth to Carnegie are filled with invitations from Hale to visit Mount Wilson, invitations from Carnegie to visit Skibo Castle in Scotland, and books exchanged between the both of them—in one instance, a book about cooperation on solar research from Hale and a book on the life of James Watt from Carnegie in return.112 Gift giving was an important part of Hale’s relationship building, including presenting Carnegie with the honor of having an asteroid named after him—671 Carnegia.113 Hale picked up on Carnegie’s appreciation of astronomical lantern slides early and repeatedly sent Carnegie cabinets with new slides that included not only astronomical photographs from the observatory but also attractive photographs of the stunningly situated Mount Wilson Observatory.114 In addition to the prestige conferred on Carnegie, these would become the principal physical currency of the relationship, as one of Carnegie’s glowing letters indicates:
Dear Friend,
We hear of some wonderful new slides since you sent us the tresured [sic] case with what you had then. We pray for the others—do send them to us. These have been enjoyed by many distinguisht [sic] people. Lloyd George was held in a trance one nite, and after the display closed and the lites [sic] were turned up he still in a trance as it were slowly said “Never in all my life have I been so entranced.” We owe you much.
Kindest regard to wife and dauter [sic], Very truly yours, Andrew115
Although their relationship soured when Hale pushed hard on Carnegie to fund a building for the National Academy of Sciences, Hale had fastidiously developed a friendly and collegial relationship with his first philanthropic patron, and it paid off handsomely.
Hale had also maintained a strong relationship with Carnegie’s wife, Louise, including after the death of her husband—giving her gifts of books and noting in one of his letters to her that “we at Mount Wilson appreciate increasingly the unequalled opportunity [Mr. Carnegie] gave us to extend our research into the depths of space.”116 Although Mrs. Carnegie was an old family friend by this time, an undated newspaper clipping that Hale kept suggests there may have been other considerations:
LAW REDUCES RESIDUARY BEQUEST TO CARNEGIE CORPORATION TO LESS THAN $11,000,000—WIDOW’S SHARE $11,338,847117
Ever the careful strategic planner, Hale’s incredible correspondence regime—one diary entry from 1922 shows a week with twenty letters written every day—and the relationships he built and maintained through it, was one of the critical success factors in his astronomical entrepreneurship.
Through his correspondence, Hale showed a canny capacity to cultivate the personal astronomical interests of individual philanthropists. This did not, however, necessarily mean a cultivation of scientific interest in astronomy. The description of Mount Wilson in Carnegie’s autobiography displays an amateur’s exuberance for the subject but also a somewhat limited understanding of the state of contemporary astronomy, which Hale had done little to correct:
There is but one Mount Wilson. From a depth seventy-two feet down in the earth photographs have been taken of new stars. On the first of these plates many new worlds—I believe sixteen—were discovered. On the second I think it was sixty new worlds which had come into our ken, and on the third plate there were estimated to be more than a hundred—several of them said to be twenty times the size of our sun. Some of them were so distant as to require eight years for their light to reach us, which inclines us to bow our heads whispering to ourselves, “All we know is as nothing to the unknown.” When the monster new glass, three times larger than any existing, is in operation, what revelations are to come! I am assured if a race inhabits the moon they will be clearly seen.118
Although Carnegie’s endowment of the Carnegie Institution of Washington had undoubtedly been in part motivated by the prestige and legacy concerns of the unpopular steel magnate, his support for astronomy seems to have been driven by genuine philanthropy and intrinsic motivations: it is telling that neither Carnegie nor his foundation ever asked that the Carnegie name be attached to the observatory or telescope.119 It was Carnegie’s personal stamp of approval that drove the funding of the hundred-inch telescope, even if it was the trustees of his foundation that executed the project. The source of support for Hale’s final and largest telescope, the two-hundred-inch telescope at Palomar Mountain, would also be a philanthropic foundation—this time, however, the motivating force would come not from the founder, but directly from an individual within the official foundation bureaucracy.
The two-hundred-inch telescope makes a fitting end point in this study of U.S. observatories—not only because it is the last lar
ge optical telescope to be built in America before the Cold War but also because it marks a turning point in the development of professional science bureaucracies. The role of the patron was beginning to fade into the background, eclipsed by that of professional decision-makers working independently with significant discretion. In the case of the two-hundred-inch telescope, although it was John D. Rockefeller who established the Rockefeller Foundation funding body, he played, at most, a peripheral role in approving the project. The impetus and support within the foundation came instead from Wickliffe Rose, the president of the foundation’s General Education Board, a man who had no technical training but nonetheless saw himself as a new type of professional—a science administrator. In 1923, Rose convinced the Rockefeller Foundation trustees to provide $28 million for an International Education Board that would support the development of science.120 In contrast to Carnegie’s more intimate involvement with his foundation’s philanthropy, Rockefeller took a largely hands-off approach that gave Rose, as the head of the new board, almost complete control over the disbursal of the funds. This delegation of authority to the professional science manager would emerge again in the more circumscribed, but nonetheless meaningful, control that senior managers at NASA and other government science agencies would have to pursue and fund projects with significant personal discretion.
Although the control of resources for astronomy was shifting to professional research managers like Wickliffe Rose, the challenge for a project entrepreneur like Hale was still largely the same—to convince an individual or a small group of individuals to provide the financing for an ambitious project. After the success of the hundred-inch Hooker reflector, Hale’s thoughts had turned to even larger mirrors and, along with Mount Wilson astronomer Francis Pease, he began to sketch out a design for a mammoth three-hundred-inch reflector. When H. J. Thorkelson of the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation visited Pasadena in October 1926, Hale made sure that he received a tour of the Mount Wilson facilities and was shown the designs for the new telescope, knowing full well that Thorkelson would mention the plans in his report back to the foundation. When the editor of Harper’s Magazine asked him for an article on an astronomical topic, Hale was ready. His article, “The Possibilities of Large Telescopes,” published in early 1928, was part romance to the heavens, part primer on large reflecting telescopes, and all part of the pitch for his next observatory. He had a preprint copy of the article sent to Rose and wrote him a long letter expanding on the topic. Hale concluded his letter by asking if the General Education Board might be able to provide a small amount of funding to study the feasibility of casting the types of large mirrors that he had outlined in his article. The result was an invitation from Rose to discuss the matter with him in New York, and within a month, Hale had met with Rose and enlisted his enthusiastic support for the construction of the new largest telescope in the world.
Although the personal correspondence and private discussions of Hale and Rose were crucial in establishing the financial support for the new telescope, it was Hale’s Harper’s article that framed the public perception of the need for a new large reflecting telescope and that, in turn, influenced the eagerness of Rose and the Rockefeller Foundation to support the initiative. The rhetoric that Hale employed in the article provides insight into the themes he thought would be effective in eliciting financial support for the project. The direct connection that Hale drew, not only between astronomical observatories and the rich and powerful, but also between astronomy and exploration, is illustrative of the grand narrative that Hale wove into his observatory fund-raising efforts. The opening lines of his article are rife with allusions to legend and legacy and references to the themes and objects of exploration:
Like buried treasures, the outposts of the universe have beckoned to the adventurous from immemorial times. Princes and potentates, political or industrial, equally with men of science, have felt the lure of the uncharted seas of space, and through their provision of instrumental means the sphere of exploration has rapidly widened. If the cost of gathering celestial treasure exceeds that of searching for the buried chests of a Morgan or a Flint, the expectation of rich return is surely greater and the route not less attractive. Long before the advent of the telescope, pharaohs and sultans, princes and caliphs built larger and larger observatories, one of them said to be comparable in height with the vaults of Santa Sophia. In later times kings of Spain and of France, of Denmark and of England took their turn, and more recently the initiative seems to have passed chiefly to American leaders of industry. Each expedition into remoter space has made new discoveries and brought back permanent additions to our knowledge of the heavens. The latest explorers have worked beyond the boundaries of the Milky Way in the realm of spiral “island universes,” the first of which lies a million light-years from the earth while the farthest is immeasurably remote.121
Hale made explicit the opportunity for wealthy individuals to become one of the “adventurous” that explored “the outposts of the universe.” Although he carefully situated his narrative within the context of the legacies of the rich and powerful figures of history, he deftly makes his most direct appeal to personal curiosity: “Lick, Yerkes, Hooker, and Carnegie have passed on, but the opportunity remains for some other donor to advance knowledge and to satisfy his own curiosity regarding the nature of the universe and the problems of its unexplored depths.”122 Hale makes clear the ability of observatories to create lasting legacies, but he also appeals directly to, and looks to cultivate, a personal interest and exhilaration in the wonders of the universe. He emphasized that scientists were but one element involved in the exploration of the heavens; politicians and captains of industry were also part of the fellowship and critical to its success. With the tone of the narrative set, Hale proceeds with an explanation of his accomplishments to date, the discoveries in stellar evolution, spiral nebulae, and fundamental physics that awaited larger telescopes, and detailed descriptions of the technologies and instrumentation required to properly build a two-hundred- or three-hundred-inch reflecting telescope. In a short eight-page article, in a magazine for the general reader, Hale laid out his plans for his next great observatory within a narrative of cosmic exploration. He made apparent the opportunities for legacy, knowledge, and adventure that were open to anyone with sufficient resources to partake. It was with this groundwork in place that Hale met with Rose to solicit his support for what would become the Palomar Observatory.
Through his position at the Rockefeller Foundation, Wickliffe Rose controlled the resources required to participate in the explorations that Hale had described so enticingly in his article. Hale’s article had also struck the right chords in relation to Rose’s desire for legacy. Hale records that Rose was immediately taken with the project, wanting nothing but the largest and most remarkable telescope, encouraging Hale to consider the three-hundred-inch option and suggesting that as much as $15 million could be spent on the project.123 Hale and Rose soon settled on $6 million for the more conservative two-hundred-inch, although with the inevitable cost overrun the final cost was over $6.55 million.124 In a letter to a friend, Hale described his surprise at the stunning success which his article had generated: “An article of mine on large telescopes, shot like an arrow into the blue, seems to have hit a 200” [-inch] reflector, and I have been forced to take to the air myself and try to parachute it to earth.”125 The tones of historic adventure that Hale had set in his article had clearly resonated with Rose; his letters to Hale expressed his belief that the project “was a thrilling adventure” and that it “was a privilege to live in an age where such a thing can be done.”126
The support for the project within the Rockefeller Foundation emanated almost entirely from Rose. Rockefeller was cognizant and supportive of the project but had only a limited interest in the subject, sending Hale only a single perfunctory letter of commendation and commenting publicly: “I have no competence in the field of astronomy. Six million dollars is a large
sum of money, but I have complete confidence in Mr. Rose and the trustees, and if after careful investigation they decided that it is the wise thing to do, there certainly will never be any criticism from me.”127 Rose’s eagerness and the unprecedented large size of the grant seem to have been in part due to Rose’s impending retirement and his corresponding desire to use the remaining, uncommitted funds of the International Education Board to support the type of scientific research that he most valued, anticipating that his successor might favor other areas of sponsorship.128 That an individual administrator would be able to make such a large commitment speaks to the changing dynamics of philanthropy in the early twentieth century. As the century developed, powerful science and technology administrators—whose appointments gave them control over significant resources, albeit often only for a limited time—would play an increasingly important role in the funding of the explorations of the heavens. While the Palomar Observatory represents the increasing bureaucratization of science funding in America, it is important to recognize that the decision to fund the project was still largely the result of Hale engaging the interest and ego of one man.
The signaling value of the Palomar Observatory was also keenly appreciated, as evidenced in the near collapse of the project due to the difficulties of cooperation between the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation. With the notorious personal rivalries between Carnegie and Rockefeller, there was no chance that the Rockefeller Foundation would directly fund a project under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution’s Mount Wilson Observatory. On the Carnegie side, the institution’s president, John Campbell Merriam, objected strongly to the notion that the Rockefeller Foundation might build a new world’s largest telescope with the direct assistance of the honorary director and staff of his institution’s own observatory. It took famed international diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elihu Root to negotiate an arrangement whereby the two funding institutions could work together on the development of the new observatory and share in its signaling value.
The Long Space Age Page 12