Pauper and Prince: Ritchey, Hale, and Big American Telescopes by Donald E. Osterbrock

Abstract

876 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Unfortunately, the telling suffers from a pervasive structural flaw. Brittain has chosen to relate Alexanderson’s life and career largely by serially summarizing and paraphrasing letters, articles, technical mate­ rials, and other documents. Too often he presents items from those documents without sufficient context, analysis, or indication of where they came from or what they led to. The one-sidedness of the account results in tremendous frustration for the reader, who is left with a continuous series of unanswered questions. What does it mean that the Radio Engineering Department spent $108,680 in 1919, and what came ofAlexanderson’s suggestion for the transmitting station at New Bruns­ wick, New Jersey? What was the upshot of Alexanderson’s 1939 memo about cooperative education? Did GE, RCA, and Westinghouse convene the radio research luncheons he proposed? Perhaps the range of his subject’s activities prevented Brittain’s chasing down the answers to all the open questions, but, whatever the cause, the biography is very open-ended, a substantial research undigested. Robert Rosenberg Dr. Rosenberg is the managing editor of the book edition of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University. Pauper and Prince: Ritchey, Hale, and BigAmerican Telescopes. By Donald E. Osterbrock. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993. Pp. xv+359; illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $45.00. George Ellery Hale and George Willis Ritchey were astronomers active during the last decade of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th centuries. Every historian of American science is familiar with Hale, because Hale did solar research, as well as designing and building great scientific institutions such as Yerkes Observatory and Mount Wilson Observatory. He was also active in the National Academy ofSciences and post-World War I international organization. In contrast, only a few specialists fully appreciate the extent of Ritchey’s significance. Ritchey, Hale’s subordinate at Yerkes and Mount Wilson, was responsible for the 24-inch reflector at Yerkes and the 60-inch reflector and 100-inch mirror at Mount Wilson. He also made superb astronomical photographs. Astronomers know of his name because of the RitcheyChr étien system, which has become the standard configuration for modern large reflecting telescopes. Part of the explanation for Ritchey’s relative anonymity was that Hale sought to relegate Ritchey to ob­ scurity. As the most powerful observatory director of his day, Hale was able to limit contemporary recognition of Ritchey’s contributions and eventually temporarily blackballed Ritchey from employment in American astronomy. Another part of the explanation is that Ritchey designed and built telescopes, and historians of science have been more interested in scientific researchers and institution builders than technologyand culture Book Reviews 877 those who built the apparatuses in those institutions for the use of the researchers. Donald Osterbrock, the former director of Lick Observatory, who has published extensively on the history ofAmerican astronomy, provides a joint biography of the two men. Because they spent most of their professional lives at the same institutions, the biography is also a history of the early years of Yerkes and of Mount Wilson. It illuminates the bitterness and backbiting that seemed to characterize life at Mount Wilson around the time of World War I. Hale became unhappy with Ritchey around 1910 because of the latter’s criticism of the design of the 100-inch telescope. Ritchey, the technological visionary, wanted to build the largest telescope in the world in the yet-untested Ritchey-Chretien configuration. Hale was not about to endorse such an experiment. Simply scaling up to the 100-inch was sufficient technological challenge for him. Perhaps worse, Ritchey had gone direcdy to John D. Hooker, the patron of the 100-inch, with his idea, coming between Hale and his source of funding. In many ways more fascinating than the two tide characters is Walter S. Adams, Hale’s deputy at Mount Wilson. At first, Adams appears only in a minor supporting role. By the end of the book, Adams has become the third player in a three-cornered game. If Hale was the “archetype of all [observatory] directors” and Ritchey the “archetype of all telescope makers,” then Adams was the “archetype of all astronomers” (p. 283). Hale...