But it was Fun The First Forty years of Radio Astronomy at Green Bank Second Printing, with corrections. Edited by Felix J. Lockman, Frank D. Ghigo, and Dana S. Balser Second printing published by the Green Bank Observatory, 2016. i Front cover: The 140 Foot Telescope and admirers at its dedication, October 1965. Title Page: The Tatel telescope under construction, 1958. Back cover, clockwise from lower left: Grote Reber in the Bean Patch in Green Bank, 1959; Employee group photo, 1960; site view of 300 Foot and Interferometer, 1971; the 140 Foot in September 1965; the 140 Foot at night; the Tatel Telescope under construction, 1958; the Tatel telescope, ca. 1980, view towards the west; the 300 Foot Telescope, 1964; aerial view of the 100 Meter Green Bank Telescope and the 140 Foot Telescope when the GBT was nearing completion, summer 2000. Cover design by Bill Saxton Copyright °c 2007, by National Radio Astronomy Observatory Second printing copyright °c 2016, by the Green Bank Observatory ISBN 0-9700411-2-8 Printed by The West Virginia Book Company, Charleston WV. The Green Bank Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. ii Table of Contents Preface ............................................................ v Acknowledgements ................................................. vii Historical Introduction ............................................. viii Part I. Building an Observatory ................................ 1 1. Need for a National Observatory ............................... 3 2. Finding Green Bank ........................................... 7 3. First Steps: 1956-7; Groundbreaking ........................... 19 4. Equipment Plans .............................................. 23 5. Getting Started: 1958 .......................................... 25 6. The First Telescope ............................................ 31 7. A Working Observatory ........................................ 47 Little Big Horn ................................................ 66 The 1960 Staff Photo .......................................... 68 8. Towards a Very Large Antenna ................................ 71 The 40 Foot Telescope ......................................... 90 Part II. The 300 Foot Telescope ................................ 95 1. Chronology of the 300 Foot ..................................... 97 2. The 25th Birthday Symposium .................................119 McClain: A View from the Outside ........................... 121 Tape: How the 300 Foot Affected AUI ........................ 127 Heeschen: The 300 Foot and the National Center Concept ..... 133 Findlay: A Telescope in 700 Days ............................. 145 Kerr: Extragalactic Hydrogen on Transit Telescopes ........... 159 Condon: Continuum Surveys ..................................165 Gregory: Galactic Plane Radio Patrol ......................... 181 Backer : A Pulsar in CTB 80 ................................. 195 Verschuur: How the 300 Foot Changed My Life ............... 203 3. Science Highlights ............................................. 209 First Users .................................................... 214 4. Green Bank Staff in 1987 ...................................... 218 5. Recollections and Stories .......................................223 6. The Collapse .................................................. 237 Part III. The 140 Foot Telescope ............................... 263 1. Heeschen: The First Ten Years 1955-1965 ...................... 265 2. Chronology of the 140 Foot .................................... 284 iii 3. The 30th Birthday Symposium . ................................305 Van Horn: Origins of NRAO ... Viewed from NSF .............. 307 VonHoerner: The 140 Foot: A Good Old Friend ................ 315 Baars: Thirty Years of Development ............................ 321 Mezger: Discovery of Radio Recombination Lines ............... 333 Wilson: Recombination Line Survey ............................ 343 Palmer: Early Days at the 140 Foot ............................ 353 Snyder: Beginning of Astronomical Spectroscopy ................361 Turner: Early Discoveries in Molecular Spectroscopy ............ 375 Bania: The Saga of 3-Helium ................................... 385 Verschuur: The 21cm Zeeman Experiment ...................... 397 Shaffer: The Early Days of VLBI ............................... 403 Moran: Early Spectral Line VLBI .............................. 407 Taylor: Lunar Occultation Measurements ....................... 427 Nice: Pulsar Observations with the GBT ....................... 435 Condon: Continuum Observations with the GBT ............... 441 4. Death and Resurrection ........................................449 Rood: An Old Dog’s Last Hunt .................................451 Langston: Bi-Static Radar ......................................455 5. Symposium Appendices ........................................ 457 Summary of Scientific Highlights ............................... 457 Selected PhD Dissertations ..................................... 462 The First Observers ............................................ 463 Group Photos .................................................. 465 Part IV. A Valley Full of Telescopes ........................... 471 1. The First Green Bank Workshop ............................... 473 2. Project OZMA ................................................ 481 3. Grote Reber in Green Bank .................................... 489 4. First Millimeter Telescopes .....................................507 5. The Green Bank Interferometer ................................ 513 6. The Search for the “Mad Ann” Meteorites ..................... 527 7. Exodus to Charlottesville ...................................... 529 8. Tourists ....................................................... 531 9. Kellermann: First VLBI with the Soviets .......................541 10. Clark: Travels with Charlie .................................... 563 Epilogue ............................................................571 Index ............................................................... 575 iv Preface This is a scrapbook of material from the first 40 years of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia. The book has had a curious history. In 1987, George Seielstad, Director of the Green Bank Observa- tory, organized a symposium in honor of the 300 Foot Telescope, on the occasion of its 25th birthday. The attendees were an extraordinary bunch, in many cases the very scientists who established radio astronomy as a scientific discipline in the United States and got the NRAO going as a national laboratory. The talks were quite interesting and had been recorded, so in the following months, they were gradually transcribed with the idea of putting them into a book. Fourteen months later, however, the 300 Foot experienced the major structural reconfiguration that is described in some detail in Part II. Almost overnight, the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope (GBT) project sprang into being and took every- one’s attention and energy. The partial transcripts from the 300 Foot symposium were put aside in a closet. Eight years later, in 1995, there was a new Green Bank Site Director and the 140 Foot Telescope celebrated its 30th birthday with an accompanying party and symposium to honor that instrument and anticipate the day when it would be succeeded by the GBT, which was then rising on the horizon. Again the at- tendees were an extraordinary bunch and included many who were instrumental in the breakthroughs in interstellar studies and very long baseline interferometry that moved radio astronomy into the mainstream of modern astrophysics. This time contributions were solicited and participants responded with everything from memoirs to research papers. Over the next year, as the 140 Foot Birthday Workshop Proceedings were being sorted and edited, several events occurred that conspired both to delay the “140 Foot Book” and to replace it with the volume you now hold in your hands. For one, we received a call from Mark Popovich, a resident of Massillon, Ohio, who had purchased a box of miscellany at an auction and in it discovered hitherto unknown photographs of the 140 Foot Telescope under fabrication in the E. W. Bliss Company plant in Canton, Ohio. The difficulties that the 140 Foot Telescope experienced in its construction almost sank the fledgling NRAO and drove the Green Bank staff to design and construct the 300 Foot Telescope. The Popovich photographs document a key moment in the history of Green Bank and the NRAO; he generously drove to Green Bank and gave them to us. We had to include some of them in this book. Then, a bit later and out of the blue, a cardboard box with material from the 300 Foot Symposium appeared, and we realized that this material was now of more than passing interest and also deserved publication. Finally, in the course of changes in the Green Bank physical plant, a number of old documents surfaced whose interest and importance likewise seemed deserving of a wide audience. The Monthly Reports from 1959 to 1962 paint a picture of v an institution struggling on all fronts at once—discovering the need for computers, reporting the modest income gained from leasing the Observatory fields to local farmers, bemoaning the meager housing available for visiting astronomers, and try- ing to establish the concepts and practices of a national visitor facility. We also found material from some of the many interesting