Interview with Gordon J. Stanley on 12 August 1981

Sullivan:  00:01

Gordon Stanley on 12th of August 1981 at the URSI meeting in Washington DC. Well, could you tell me, before we get to radio astronomy itself, what your educational background was and then how you first came into contact with radio astronomy?

Stanley:  00:17

Okay. Well, I think I told you this before, but I'll go over it again. And as I said to you before we started recording, some of my chronology of the earliest part is possibly incorrect because I wasn't that interested. But I'm sure you have plenty of [inaudible] to check. I'll tell you where I'm more certain of what happened. I came out of Sydney Technical College, like a lot of others at Radiophysics, with a degree in electrical engineering. And the first job at-- well, I won't go into a lengthy discussion of why I went to Radiophysics. But it's sufficient to say that it was a rather bad emotional time for me. And it was something that stuck with me for about five years. It was the death of my mother that dragged on a long time and things like that. And it just happened that Radiophysics was close to home and that made it easy. I had no particular conviction about going for radio work and certainly not into astronomy.

Sullivan:  01:21

I see.  Now what year was that?

Stanley:  01:22

We're talking just after the War. I'd come out of the Army. I think I went to Radiophysics in March. And it must have been March of 1945.

Sullivan:  01:35

That's even before the end of the--

Stanley:  01:37

Just before the end of the War, I was discharged.

Sullivan:  01:39

And did you do any radio work during the War?

Stanley:  01:42

No. None. None at all. I was in the infantry.

Sullivan:  01:45

In the infantry.

Stanley:  01:48

I had no connection with radio whatsoever, no ambition to be in the radio area. I hadn't even thought of it. I had ambitions to go back into heavy power engineering and that sort of thing. So anyhow, I was assigned to [inaudible], whose name is probably not important in radio astronomy. He was a very fine guy. He was a modulator designer at Radiophysics. But I'll say who was there, people that you know who came after that time. Radio astronomy, as you probably know by now, really was started in a group called, I think, Group D, which was the receiver group in Radiophysics. Lindsay McCready was the head of that. And the people in the group were [Ross Trahan?], who did a little bit in radio astronomy. He was a very fine man.

Sullivan:  02:44

What was his name again?

Stanley:  02:45

[Ross Trahan?]. His father was Director of Music in New South Wales School. He was well known. He was a very fine man. Ruby Payne-Scott. [Don Orchardt?], who plays a part in radio astronomy. Ted [McCarthy?]. I'll tell you a little bit about this.

Sullivan:  03:03

You're telling me some names I've never heard of.

Stanley:  03:05

Well, this is the start. I'm telling you where this starts. The technicians in the group were Charlie [Fryer?]. This is the receiver group. This was the essential one. Charlie [Fryer?] and Alec Little to some extent. And I came in sort of just about on the same level as Alec Little. How I got into the group was that-- I said to you once-- I remember in the last-- this is what reminded me of our last conversation. I said I'm a sort of an independent type. I don't regard that as a great virtue, really, but it's just a fault in my character. But [inaudible] most people like that, or most people say the same thing. It's not that I feel that I had any particular credit from being independent. I was just built that way. Well, anyhow, I went into the receiver group under the patronage, I suppose of Lindsay McCready who-- Lindsay, have you talked to Lindsay?

Sullivan:  04:03

Oh, he's dead.

Stanley:  04:05

That's what I thought. It's unfortunate.

Sullivan:  04:06

Yes. That was a long time ago.

Stanley:  04:08

I thought, it's a pity. He had a lot of the keys to what went on.

Sullivan:  04:11

Well, tell me something about him.

Stanley:  04:13

Lindsay was a very esteemed man. He was sort of very hard to get near. Terribly nervous man, too. Sort of uptight, thick, dark, very Scottish look about the man, rather on the thick, going on towards the thick set side. But he took a sort of-- for reasons I didn't understand at the time, he sort of took a somewhat [inaudible] interest in me and put up with my ignorance and helped me over a number of months.

Sullivan:  04:46

What was his particular technical expertise?

Stanley:  04:49

Receivers, as far as I know. I'm not even sure what his education was. I think he came out with a degree in engineering in Sydney.

Sullivan:  04:58

And he had been at Radiophysics during the War, I assume.

Stanley:  05:01

He had been there at the War. Now Frank Kerr, of course, was there, but he was not in that. He was doing super refraction work. Alec Little had been with Radiophysics since he was a boy practically. He'd come early in the War. Frank had come early in the War. Don Yabsley was there. He had some connection with the receiver group but not a strong connection with the receiver group. Who else?

Sullivan:  05:22

All these people I've talked to that you're naming.

Stanley:  05:24

Sure. They were all there. I'm just trying get you to set the scene so it sets the framework for my attitudes as well and helps me to calibrate trying [crosstalk].

Sullivan:  05:33

Right. Now, how do you relate Pawsey to McCready? Was Pawsey McCready's boss, or?

Stanley:  05:38

Pawsey was McCready's boss. The boss of the Lab when I came there was John Briton who went back-- they had all sorts of people. Briton was a good guy, but he went back to the Australian tobacco company WB in their [inaudible], I think at the end of the War, and Taffy took over, but it wasn't clearly resolved. I mean, I think they would have offered the job to Joe but Joe didn't want to be involved in that sort of administration. He sort of wanted to float around as a scientific type in the organization. And I think that sort of-- I don't know the right word, but that sort of sloppiness in Joe, in a way, was the cause of, or part of the cause, anyhow, of the terrible eruption that occurs somewhat down the road. Anyhow, I was attached to Lindsay. And Lindsay sort of was a little easy about the [inaudible]. He also didn't control people very well, and the first thing I did was a 200 MHz radar, which I didn't know how to do, but I did it and it worked. A little one which they were doing, I think--

Sullivan:  06:40

This has nothing to do with astronomy.

Stanley:  06:41

It was for [ionosphere?] for super refractive work when [inaudible] for those. Being a very junior member of the group, I wasn't privy to what the decisions were, so I don't know anything about why they really decided to look at the Sun. When I came into it, some of the observations of the Sun-- well, the basis for the observations of the Sun were the reports from the radar observation. It was called the Norfolk Island Effect at Radiophysics. While we acknowledge the fact that they were in the secret files, there were reports from English radar operators that the same thing had happened. And I wasn't conscious of Bruce Slee's letter, which I heard of years after--

Sullivan:  07:22

Which I was able, actually, to find in the archives three years ago.

Stanley:  07:24

Yeah. Well, I was not conscious of that at that time. And Bruce didn't appear for some way down the line. The people who weren't there who were important, of course, Paul [Wild] wasn't there, John [Bolton] wasn't there, Chris [Christiansen] wasn't there. And they came after a period when we thought people were going to be cut down. Well, anyhow, I was there at the crucial point of decision. I remember Taffy had a meeting, and he said, "Well, we've got to find other things to do. Radar's not out, but we're going to drop out unless we've got to find other things." People suggested crazy things like us going to TV and things like that. But anyhow, they had to cut back and quite a few people left the Lab. I don't think they really had to lay anybody off directly, but just people left because they thought there was no future in it. And these observations were being done by McCready and--

Sullivan:  08:17

And Ruby Payne-Scott?

Stanley:  08:18

And Ruby Payne-Scott. There were others involved for a while before I got there doing the observations, before they were collated, but I was sort of attached as the fourth member of that group, to sort of help them with things, and so I had no real part. I did some of the observations on that first paper, but I had no really significant part except--

Sullivan:  08:42

At Collaroy was that--?

Stanley:  08:44

That was at Collaroy, yes. Most of that stuff was done at Collaroy, and when that first paper was in the works, the decision was made to sort of make Dover into a station to do future work. And I was sort of put in charge with what little equipment design and things like that have to be done out of Dover.

Sullivan:  09:04

Can you remember, I mean, as you saw it at that time, why the radio astronomy was chosen?

Stanley:  09:11

There was no particular-- I don't think there was any real depth of thought about that, quite frankly, if you want me to be honest, but as I said I was not privy to that [crosstalk].

Sullivan:  09:21

Well, that's what I mean. But something may have been told you anyway, but you don't remember even anything--?

Stanley:  09:25

No, no. Nothing. The people were looking around to protect their job. The sort of things that you see here in this country with large laboratories now like what will we do with JPL [inaudible] transport problems and things like that, but I think the biggest mistake you can usually make is to try and retread a laboratory which has been-- or a large laboratory which has been specifically organized to solve another problem. It usually doesn't work. In this case, it just happened that it came off, so it was just one of those things. And maybe you can say Joe had great insight in doing it, or maybe you can say it was like-- I don't really have an opinion on it and I can't judge.

Sullivan:  10:05

So you did help with some of those very first solar observations?

Stanley:  10:09

Right. But there was four of us, and then I had the responsibility after that. And then things started to sort of-- well, Joe was always like this. He left people alone - you've heard this a lot of the time - so there was no specific assignment and that suited me because I have this tendency to withdraw and wanting to work by myself. And I was sort of left out at Dover with no particular supervision at all. And then the report of Hey, Parsons, and Phillips came up, of course, and Lindsay McCready and Don Yabsley went out to try and make the first observations.

Sullivan:  10:48

Of Cygnus A, yeah.

Stanley:  10:49

Of Cygnus A, and they tried for about three months and didn't get anything, and then they went away.

Sullivan:  10:56

Now, what were they using to--?

Stanley:  10:58

They used one of the receivers we commonly used with the old gun lane, what we called the English [gun lane?] 75 megahertz receivers, and they were using-- I can't remember the antenna that they used. As a matter of fact, they worked in the hut behind me. They came out, really-- I think they spent about two or three nights in one spasm, and then they came back and spent about another four nights and said there was nothing to it. And then it was dropped and forgotten, and I was left more and more alone except I was doing routine solar observations and I think in that series I saw some of the first polarized bursts and things like that, but I can't remember chronologically exact details [crosstalk]--

Sullivan:  11:40

But you never published anything?

Stanley:  11:41

And that stuff was not published, so it's not really significant in the story, so forget it.

Sullivan:  11:45

Well, no, that's not true. I mean, I'm trying to find out things that are not on the written record. But were you doing this just by yourself [crosstalk]--?

Stanley:  11:54

Yes, I was more or less left by myself. So then I thought one day well-- by the way, the story that D.F. Martyn suggested looking at Cygnus, I can't really confirm that or deny it. I really don't know. It seemed the reasonable thing to do, but it has been suggested that he was out looking at Dover and suggested that we have another look at Cygnus. I don't honestly know if we did or not, but I know I looked at it again by myself. I was like, "Well, I'll have another look and see," and lo and behold, I got interference patterns.

Sullivan:  12:24

Is that the same technique that Yabsley--

Stanley:  12:25

It was a Lloyd's mirror. It was a Lloyd mirror. Yeah. Exactly the same one.

Sullivan:  12:29

-- that they were trying to use?

Stanley:  12:30

Well, I worked over the receivers and got the sensitivity up and built a new Yagi and things like that.

Sullivan:  12:36

So that was a different [crosstalk].

Stanley:  12:38

Yeah. I was left that much alone. So I got interference patterns. And it was a cranky business at that time. It was, I suppose, another week before I got them again. And Joe decided at that time that I shouldn't be left alone and I should have some more senior help. And that included John, and John came in. Well, I have no resentment or feeling about that. I like John, and I work well with him, and it was actually a necessary decision. And so that's how it started again.

Sullivan:  13:10

Right. Okay. Now let me just ask, so the technique to find the source in the very beginning was to look for fringes rather than to look for fluctuations. I mean, well, because of the way that it had been found.

Stanley:  13:20

Well, the point was to look for fringes [across?] the whole thing. The whole argument was-- the whole argument in essence was, "Hey, Parsons, and Phillips saw a [inaudible]. It must be something very small. Okay. We have a device for seeing things which are very small."

Sullivan:  13:37

But in fact, of course, as soon as you had fringes, it was a very interesting result that you had confirmed it.

Stanley:  13:42

Right. It was an extremely exciting result. The whole thing, to the people, to all of us concerned, I think it was just unbelievable that we had fringes.

Sullivan:  13:53

Right. But in fact, I don't believe that you did send off any letter to Nature saying--

Stanley:  13:57

No.

Sullivan:  13:59

Why is that? Why not?

Stanley:  14:01

I really don't know. I think that paper we published-- again, there was this business about which journal. It was published in the Australian Journal of Physics. It was decided, "Let's make a big splash and get the Australian Journal of Physics off to a big start." It was published in the first issue of the Australian Journal of Physics.

Sullivan:  14:19

That's the 1948 article, which was [crosstalk].

Stanley:  14:21

Yes. Right. Right. Right. Right. It took a long time.

Sullivan:  14:25

It took a long time.

Stanley:  14:26

It took long time to tie it down. See, I'd been at Radiophysics, let's see, it must've been-- always remember if you want to pin the date down exactly, you can do it this way. Ryle started six months after us. That was--

Sullivan:  14:46

Looking at the radio sources.

Stanley:  14:47

Right. Right. Right. That was always the sore point. It seemed important at the time. It seems quite trivial now. And he got excited about it.

Sullivan:  14:55

I think that was late '47 when he began, something like that.

Stanley:  14:58

Right. It was middle of '47. And because it means that the fringes were seen towards the end of '46. Then I--

Sullivan:  15:06

Yeah. Because Ryle and Smith and Cas A is '48 Nature. So that must've been very soon after they began.

Stanley:  15:11

Right. It was a six-month span between when he actually started. So it was at the end of '46, which ties in with my chronology roughly of what I [inaudible].

Sullivan:  15:20

But it still seems curious to me because the Radiophysics group was not immune to sending off things to Nature about interesting new discoveries.

Stanley:  15:30

Well, one reason was my position. Don't forget that.

Sullivan:  15:32

But you were--

Stanley:  15:33

Don't forget that. My position was I was a very junior one and that there was some degree of disbelief that this thing had actually occurred. And for example, after John came, this occurred. It was still after John joined me, which was only a few months after I'd seen it the first time. We had an expedition up to that headland behind [Barenjoey?]. I can't think of it, which is in the middle of the Hawkesbury [River?], but again, we were still looking, John-- that was John's idea that we should have a northward-looking site. So that we can get a better angle on Cygnus just to see it rise and--

Sullivan:  16:08

Right?

Stanley:  16:09

But he didn't realize at the time that the land was too close on the other side. But we still saw fringes, there. But we had an expedition out there, gasoline generator, and a Yagi, a receiver. And got the thing going, and Joe made a special trip up about 10:00 o’clock at night, Cygnus was raising late at night, so you can work out what the load was for it. And the thing didn't work. No fringes came up, and Joe went to bed with a flu for about a week after, so. Or two weeks after.

Sullivan:  16:39

Yeah.

Stanley:  16:41

But it was, I suppose, one record in three, one record in four, one try in four, you might see the thing. So it was sort of a very shaky sort of thing. But as it got--

Sullivan:  16:56

Must have been early summer, by the way.

Stanley:  16:57

Yeah, right, right.

Sullivan:  16:59

More like early winter in Australia.

Stanley:  17:00

As the thing got better and better established, of course, John and I sort of went and did a somewhat friendly thing, a competition about what we-- who saw what first. We hadn't started to work out how we calculated, we could work out right ascension pretty accurately. Not too accurately, because we had the problem of refraction over the ocean.

Sullivan:  17:21

Right. But more accurately than dec anyway, yeah.

Stanley:  17:24

Well, we didn't know how to work out of dec.

Sullivan:  17:26

Yeah.

Stanley:  17:26

We spent about three months arguing between the [inaudible] about exactly how you solve the darn equations. And John, of course, came up with the final correct answer on how things were done. But neither of us knew any astronomy.

Sullivan:  17:41

Yeah. Well, in fact, do I have it correct? I remember John Bolton saying that on this New Zealand expedition, or maybe it was in Dover Heights, he just read ApJ? Years and years of ApJ?

Stanley:  17:52

He probably did. He was like that. John was originally trained as a mathematician.

Sullivan:  17:57

Yeah. How did you learn your astronomy?

Stanley:  18:00

I just picked it up along the way the same as he did.

Sullivan:  18:05

[inaudible]-- listen, John was not a pro.

Stanley:  18:08

He did exaggerate sometimes. Now I come to think of it, I really can't believe he read years and years of ApJ.

Sullivan:  18:16

I think that in fact-- my memory may be wrong.

Stanley:  18:18

It's a classic mistake you know? In Cygnus's paper. Again, the difficulty in getting it published, here we were doing proper astronomy, now.

Sullivan:  18:29

Yes.

Stanley:  18:30

Radiophysics didn't know how to handle it.

Sullivan:  18:31

Right.

Stanley:  18:33

Who read it? Arthur Higgs read it, and he was great. Because he did have an astronomy background. And Arthur-- You talked to Arthur, of course?

Sullivan:  18:39

Well, no, I never did talk to him. But I've heard about--

Stanley:  18:42

He died too, didn't he?

Sullivan:  18:43

Well, no, I just never got over to talk to him.

Stanley:  18:46

Okay.

Sullivan:  18:47

I should've.

Stanley:  18:47

You should have. Because Arthur was one of the most objective people. Chris comes close to being as objective as Arthur, although Chris gets emotional too, at times. But Arthur was objective, he was one of the greatest strengths to the early radio astronomy group because he had the ability to-- he had the ability to constructively criticize papers.

Sullivan:  19:11

Hold on.

Stanley:  19:11

That's a difficult asset you know? Difficult to acquire. Because most people tend to read a paper and think, "Well, gee, I'm supposed to be smart. I'm reading this paper, I've got to pick on something."

Sullivan:  19:22

Yes.

Stanley:  19:23

Show that I'm smart.

Sullivan:  19:24

Right.

Stanley:  19:24

And so, they read one page or something like that, and criticize it to bits, and send it back. Arthur was not like that, Arthur was great. He was I think, in my opinion, he was responsible for the quality of a lot of the early stuff. Everything went through Arthur's hand.

Sullivan:  19:37

Didn't it also go through Pawsey?

Stanley:  19:40

Joe would not-- Joe was more inspirational in that sort of thing. And so, Joe would look at it. And Joe was not as good as Arthur.

Sullivan:  19:48

As far as that goes, Bowen also. I have found in the archives all kinds of correspondence back and forth. About this paper's got to be rewritten, and it bounces back and forth. And see how it was coming from Pawsey and Bowen, much more than Higgs in what I saw.

Stanley:  20:03

Well, Higgs probably didn't like the comments, but Higgs read everything.

Sullivan:  20:07

Yeah.

Stanley:  20:07

Read just about everything. I don't know about--

Sullivan:  20:09

He may have written those memos for all you know it.

Stanley:  20:11

I would guess that that's very likely, in my knowledge of the operation of the place.

Sullivan:  20:15

Well, you know more about it than I do--

Stanley:  20:18

I was going to say, the final kicker on this is that in mistaking it, they decided to send it to Harvey Wood. He was an astronomer.

Sullivan:  20:26

Right.

Stanley:  20:27

New South Wales. And he looked at it, and said, "Have you allowed for precession?" Well, we'd never heard of precession at the time [laughter]. So it didn't really matter, because it wasn't very accurate.

Sullivan:  20:42

But that got caught before it was published?

Stanley:  20:44

Yeah.

Sullivan:  20:46

Yeah, right.

Stanley:  20:47

Well, there's one other little bit in history, which I should trace my steps back a little bit. Because it occurred with Lindsay, I probably made the first contact with Stromlo, this is before the CW Arm business. I went up with Lindsay to Stromlo, I drove up because it was then, of course, the Commonwealth Solar Observatory.

Sullivan:  21:09

Right.

Stanley:  21:10

And that week, we did talk about installing something up there, but my memory does not-- if it was installed, I didn't do it.

Sullivan:  21:18

You talked with whom?

Stanley:  21:20

We talked with Woolley. Looked. Well, no, he didn't dispute, of course, it was radio waves from the Sun.

Sullivan:  21:29

Yeah.

Stanley:  21:30

He was quite excited about that. But whether it was done or not, I don't know. The only thing I clearly remember is the installation of the 4 Yagi array of 200 megahertz at Stromlo. Now, the guy, I've been trying to think of the man I worked with on that. He was a young guy, and he was a very beautiful guy, and he helped me a heck of a lot in my early microwave stuff. But I did some experiments with him out of North Head at the Army station out there. Using the old TPS3 antenna. I remember those distinctly because somebody wanted to give a talk about-- short talk on radio astronomy, or the discovery on [inaudible] and he was excited. And I said, "When you sweep an antenna to the Sun for us and get us the sound as you go through the Sun?" Well, of course, you can't hear very much when you go through the Sun. So we had one of those old wire recorders. I said, "To heck with it, they don't know the difference." So I just turned up the gain and--

Sullivan:  22:28

Right? Turn up the gain.

Stanley:  22:30

[laughter] I can't think of that man's name, because I went up, as I said, to him, with him to Stromlo when we installed the CWL antennas. But Ted McCarthy, I mentioned Ted McCarthy and John Urquart. And really, the first expansion of the group, I'm backtracking again. Don Yabsley just came in for a little while at that time when they experimented to take Cygnus A, although why he was brought in by Lindsay I don't know at that time, it was just done expressly, just for something like that. But Ted McCarthy and Don Yabsley—

End tape 146A

Begin tape 146B

Sullivan: 00:00

Gordon Stanley on 12th August, 1981.

Sullivan: 00:04

You were saying Ted McCarthy and Don Urquart. Could you spell Don's last name?

Stanley: 00:09

U-R-Q-U-A-R-T.

Sullivan: 00:11

Okay. And what about them?

Stanley: 00:13

They went to the National Institute or something like that. It was a branch of the government and he had a surveying for oil in Western Australia and other places. Don I saw him again some years after that. He had a bad case of poliomylitis. I knew that he was crippled for, I don't know, for life, for a long time.

Sullivan: 00:32

But they never published anything.

Stanley: 00:33

They never published anything.

Sullivan: 00:35

What did they do?

Stanley: 00:36

Well, they helped with the observation and the setting up of-- Radiophysics was a highly structured organization, although it wasn't some ways, as I said, it was very loose too. I can't remember specifically what their duties were, but they definitely helped quite a lot with the earlier [inaudible]. And the other guy I'm mentioning, the guy I worked with at North Head and also on [inaudible], I wish I could remember his name, I remember something about him. Alex Shain was a beautiful guy and this guy as well was in some ways like Alec, he used to go down to the beaches on Sundays and conduct prayer meetings, but that's as much as I can remember except that he caught up the tech for a little while after that.

Sullivan: 01:21

But what did this fellow do? He was the same kind of-- he never published anything, but.

Stanley: 01:26

He never published anything. The observations I was doing at North Head, I started to move. It's funny, it's hard to recall, there were so many observations I did on the Sun those days. I said there was a polarization measurement, the Great Easter Sunspot, I think it was of 1946. When was the Great Easter Sunspot? If you remember that.

Sullivan: 01:52

I've never heard that term before.

Stanley: 01:53

Well, we call it the Great Easter Sunspot.

Sullivan: 01:55

February '46 was the huge area that was in the McCready, Pawsey, and Payne-Scott paper.

Stanley: 02:03

This was after that? Mostly in '47.

Sullivan: 02:07

[inaudible].

Stanley: 02:09

So, as I say, my chronology is and then I will not go further into, we wanted to cover the business of the sources anyhow before I cut off this business of history, the first four sources, I think.

Sullivan: 02:22

Oh, yeah, right, we coming on that. But let me just say that I was mixing up the names of Arthur Higgs and Harley Wood. Higgs I did interview, but Harley Wood I did not, so get Higgs.

Sullivan: 02:38

Well, let's go back then to, you say you had these fringes with difficulty on Cygnus A. John Bolton was called in to join you, and then what was your operational procedure? How did you go about trying to see whether there are other sources or--?

Stanley: 02:56

Well, John and I worked very well together. We were good friends, we supplemented each other very well, with John's background and mine. So what we did I mean, in those days I can remember operating as much as much as three days almost straight without any rest at all, just observing, to see what we could see. I mean, we just covered the sky as well as--

Sullivan: 03:26

Moving in azimuth in different positions and just studying the sky?

Stanley: 03:30

Yes, to some extent it was random because, of course, we didn't have the time. We could get those later papers which you have listed there where we had 104 sources and things like that, took time to come back. But I think it's a bit like discovering oil, you hit the big one first. In retrospect, I think it's very easy to see how we [inaudible] in NGC 5128 and Taurus, both quite large and quite strong. And of course, Cygnus had already discovered. But there was sort of competition between us, I suppose, like that. I mean, we go out and say, Well, I think I got the first one, but I really can't swear to that. And I think it was Taurus. And then John sort of tried to play it down, so. Okay. I know John saw Virgo first because it was [mighty weak?] and for the life of me, I can't remember on Centaurus. But we certainly didn't look in the star catalog or anything like that. [crosstalk] And we picked up the four, we picked up the four you were probably most likely, they were the four strongest one.

Sullivan: 04:43

When you say you didn't look at the star catalog you didn't look in there and say, Crab Nebula, let's look extra hard.

Stanley: 04:49

No, it came as a shock, actually, the identification which really, we didn't think in terms of identifying. Didn't think what they were. I suppose the most remarkable thing, NGC 5128 was a real surprise, of course. That was supposed to be a breakthrough. We had extragalactic sources. Something very odd going on.

Sullivan: 05:11

Although in that first paper there was an indication that there was even some controversy amongst optical astronomers as to whether this thing was extragalactic.

Stanley: 05:20

Oh, yeah, sure. Sure there was, nobody but

Sullivan: 05:25

Virgo. No doubt about that.

Stanley: 05:27

There was great doubt about Virgo. There was a lot more doubt about that, about Virgo, because Centaurus is an obvious galaxy. It's obvious it's a large galaxy. But Virgo, I think that was the more remarkable thing. John should take full credit for that. I mean, it was his work to do the identification on that. It's nothing particularly remarkable about it except that it's got a jet on it. The jet was one of those things, as I found when I got to Pasadena, that astronomers were not that het up about them galaxy and they really didn't-- I don't think the jet was really noticed very much.

Sullivan: 06:09

No, just by chance, there happened to be this short exposure photograph from 1918 or something, but no one had ever remarked on it ever since.

Stanley: 06:16

Right.

Sullivan: 06:16

But I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't saying that these identifications were, the extragalactic nature. I mean, Centaurus was argued about, but Virgo you couldn't argue about. I mean, everyone agreed it was [inaudible] galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, I think.

Stanley: 06:31

I never heard that argument that Centaurus or NGC 5128 was not extragalactic. I can't say, looking at the photographs, they ran it rather hard. I don't know. There it is. It's a very normal-looking galaxy with a dark skewing band across the center. [crosstalk]

Sullivan: 06:48

Yeah, that's a very abnormal skewing band. I think probably-- But in your original Nature paper - sorry, I don't have it here - there is this reference that it's just not clear if it's extragalactic. And you cite someone who thought it would be a weird planetary nebula.

Stanley: 07:03

Well, I think you better put that remark down. I don't recall it.

Sullivan: 07:08

But you don't recall any doubt?

Stanley: 07:10

I don't recall-- Well, sure, I had a doubt. Let me put that in perspective. I had a doubt that any of them were extragalactic, quite frankly. I didn't really believe John's identification. I believe Taurus later. But really, I mean here were two out of the blue. What reason did we have? Synchrotron radiation had not been accepted at that time. We had the old problem with free-free emission, I mean, how far can you see? These numbers have been brought up before. Even Jansky was not really believed somebody to think up simple thermal processes to explain Jansky. So you've taken other step forward. This is the disbelief amongst people like Woolley and they said they don't exist. Or D.F. Martyn who said they're comets on hyperbolic orbits.

Sullivan: 07:56

Were you bothered by the fact, for instance, that the Magellanic Clouds were giving you a strong source? Why should these nebulae which are so much further away do it and nothing in the Magellanic Clouds or nothing in other large near galaxies, so.

Stanley: 08:09

I think the answer to that is we just didn't know enough astronomy to get that esoteric about [crosstalk], yeah. But I'm giving you my own personal view.

Sullivan: 08:20

Well, that's what I want.

Stanley: 08:21

My own personal view is that I was only 50% convinced that, indeed-- I mean, here we had two identifications, and then there was a later paper, as you saw, with Kevin Westfold, and that was partly an argument between me and John because they said they don't believe most even-- indeed, most of the identifications that were wrong.

Sullivan: 08:43

In the paper with Westfold?

Stanley: 08:45

I didn't use the Magellanic Clouds, but I use Cygnus. I mean, here is the strongest source in the sky, and we can't see any darn thing there at all. I mean, there's a field published in that paper in the Australian physical journal [Australian Journal of Physics]. There's an airplane track going across [inaudible] up the other night that was taken. That was the night I went to the-- well, the night I went to the [inaudible] dinner with D.F. Martyn but--

Sullivan: 09:08

When that photograph was taken, I think that's actually the first overlay that ever was published in radio astronomy.

Stanley: 09:12

Right.

Sullivan: 09:13

You had this plastic sheet.

Stanley: 09:14

It was only to protect the photos. There's nothing on the other side. There’s is a position on it, isn’t there?

Sullivan: 09:19

Well, as I remember, there's a wax paper type sheet that goes over it with a little box on it or something.

Stanley: 09:25

Oh, yeah, there's a box on it, right. Right. Well, I said there's nothing on that. I didn't have to go, so I didn't have to be as esoteric as Magellanic Clouds. I mean, I said, here we are. We have so many other sources. And I said I probably believe NGC 5128, but I said, Virgo is really stretching it.

Sullivan: 09:43

Right. Who took that photography? Now, I can't remember.

Stanley: 09:45

Gottlieb?

Sullivan: 09:48

Gottlieb?

Stanley: 09:49

Gottlieb, yeah. Gottlieb. He's a little Austrian guy--

Sullivan: 09:56

But now let's go back [crosstalk] the identifications.

Stanley: 09:57

--who lived in fear and trembling of D.F. Martyn. I remember that.

Sullivan: 10:00

These identifications, how did it come up? I mean, the idea to try identifications, and then how did the specific identifications-- how were they made, as you recall it?

Stanley: 10:14

Okay. The way it was done, in effect, was the [inaudible] identification is obvious, of course. Okay, we've got something which is extremely small. It can be either stellar or it can be extragalactic. The most likely explanation is although even [inaudible] the theory can't even support this is that it's stellar. I mean, there was a big argument, absolutely. This argument went on for years, even after I’d gone on to Pasadena. I mean, everybody had their pet idea of what the radio sources were, red giants, you name it, magnetic stars, that had kicked around until the '60s I think, and things like that until I think it was Baade bet Minkowski a case of Scotch on who discovered the first radio star.

Sullivan: 11:04

And colliding galaxies became [crosstalk]--

Stanley: 11:05

They were both dead before that, but first radio star turned up. Well, the colliding galaxies bought us into the extragalactic argument. But most of the arguments were the stellar type, I think, so--

Sullivan: 11:19

But let's go back now to [crosstalk] 1948, '49. Let's not get too much ahead. I'm asking then about--

Stanley: 11:25

Well, that came up immediately, the business on odd objects. I mean, nobody knew anything much about astronomy, so everybody went with their book. Gamow was the most popular, The Birth and Death of the Sun, and we started on that. And Gamow, of course, talked a little bit about cosmology as well. And he talked about types of stars, and we were biased by working on the Sun. So I guess most of the arguments were for stellar type objects, so. However, as I said, it was a small type, small object and the chances were there was an odd chance that it could indeed be extragalactic. And I, this is why I said to John the other day that, somewhat of a personal experience I can't put in words, of sort of exhilaration I felt about things at that time. It didn't really seem to be very important what the rest of the world thought about it, if you knew what had happened yourself. It's not a resentment really, but I don't really care that much. But you sometimes feel that people really didn't realize, or people really haven't really woken up to what happened in those three or four years, of what the impact of the things were. There's a line in Shklovsky's book which I can't remember. I think Shklovsky is a very sensitive man who put it rather well. I can't remember it well. If I can, I'll dig it up. But we had no reason that-- synchrotron radiation, as I said, was not accepted at that time. Nobody had a real-- we had to grasp for what we thought was the most likely. And the proponents of the opinion was that if they were real, they had to be stellar?]. And then we'd think about the mechanism made. The theoreticians could fight over the mechanism for the next 10 years--

Sullivan: 13:14

What did you actually look at to find out these tentative identifications, anyway?

Stanley: 13:19

Well, we had very-- some of them we took photographs on. People at Stromlo collaborated. I don't think that they’re equally acknowledged on how that was done. NGC 5128 was easy. Mostly we looked up star catalogs. We learned about precession by then, so we have precession with the right date.

Sullivan: 13:40

All right.

Stanley: 13:42

So mostly we just looked up star catalogs. With these, I think Rudolph Minkowski in particular at Caltech was becoming interested. And then Rudolph, of course, when it came to the Crab was-- we did the Crab without him, but of course, after that, he was deeply into [inaudible].

Sullivan: 14:04

Yes, because he was working on it too.

Stanley: 14:06

Right, right.

Sullivan: 14:07

Long beforehand.

Stanley: 14:08

Right. Yeah.

Sullivan: 14:09

Okay.

Stanley: 14:09

I think the Crab-- we didn't realize it at the time, but the Crab provided us with the essential clue because it was [inaudible] identifying and we had enough [inaudible] with the synchrotron mechanism in the [inaudible] or the knowledge of the synchrotron mechanism existed, then I think we would have been able to put the pieces together.

Sullivan: 14:31

Well, that's easy to say in retrospect.

Stanley: 14:33

Sure. Well, I can tell you what I thought about the theory when it first came out. I thought, gee, this is a very convenient mechanism to explain anything.

Sullivan: 14:40

Yeah. Well, in fact, it does turn out that it seems to or [inaudible]. That's the best we've been able to come up with even today. Okay. So you had these first few identifications, but you were doing other work besides just identifications. I mean, for instance, in 1950 you published on spectra of other sources. Now, did this involve completely different aerials?

Stanley: 15:03

No. Well, I built the-- by that time, the first work was done with single Yagis mounted on an old sort of rotating tables that we used to look at-- we used to take antenna patterns with. And then what I decided was that we had this old matrix array, which was a 200 megahertz, and we didn't particularly want to work at 200 megahertz, although I did use it for a little while. So we both had somewhat the cavalier attitude, although John was somewhat braver than I was on things. He said, let's cut it down one day. And it was a huge thing. It was about 16 by 18 and built like a battleship. So we cut the thing down. We got a guy, cut it into pieces and left it by the side of the cliff. And then a little while later, John says, "Well, it doesn't look too tidy. Let's get rid of it". So we push it out [laughter]. We had some irate fishermen come up and see us some months after. What's going on up there? We just got missed by-- Anyhow, I redesigned the backup structure and built this nine Yagi array, which was used in all our subsequent papers when the 104 sources were detected. So we did all the obvious things. I mean, okay, you've got something you've got to find out a mechanism. So what do you do first? You do the spectra. [crosstalk] You look for more sources.

Sullivan: 16:29

What did you make of it when you had these spectra now?

Stanley: 16:31

Well, we were tricked by the Crab. Now I can't-- my chronology goes haywire again, because it wasn't too long after the spectra were published, it was before synchrotron radiation started to come to the fore. And at least in the cases outside the Crab, it was said that it was consistent with synchrotron radiation. I didn't have any great faith in the explanation. I remember that. But exactly what the chronology was, whether it was two years or six months after that, it didn't seem a very long time.

Sullivan: 17:07

But the Crab spectrum, of course, was much flatter.

Stanley: 17:09

Yes. And it's the only one which remains. Of those four spectra that were published, it’s the only one [inaudible]. Well, it reasonably accurately foretold, it said something unusual about [inaudible], I don't think the others, sure, it was necessary to publish spectra at that time. So they're not completely crazy. I suppose they're important in that respect.

Sullivan: 17:42

Yeah. Well,

Stanley: 17:43

It was a step you had to go through.

Sullivan: 17:45

Well now, another thing that had to be sorted out, it would seem to me, was the whole business of the fluctuations. Tell me that right from the beginning, did you experience them right from the start, or?

Stanley: 17:57

Yes, we did a lot of, we experienced fluctuations right from the start, and we did a heck-- It wasted an awful lot of time and seemed to me, did we publish, or didn't we publish—I’ve forgotten? But we did tie down where they were coming from, and we knew what part of the ionosphere and things like that. It was tedious work, and we had the data there. I mean, we worked with the people. There was the era of [ionospheric?] recorders and were piles and piles of data, and we found to our disappointment-- It was a tedious job because we found, here were these girls who've been sitting on these machines, looking at little rolls of film for God knows how long, and taken, because they've been told to take off certain types of data, they’ve taken it off, and they hadn't taken off the data we wanted. And so we had rooms full of photographic film if we wanted to dig back into this data.

Sullivan: 18:44

Did you?

Stanley: 18:46

We found it was unnecessary, really. We got round, and to our own satisfaction decided where the fluctuation coming from. I was 100% convinced very early that it was [inaudible]. Bruce was not. Bruce Slee. And Bruce published an early paper it's unlucky for him, in a way. He published an early paper saying the variations were real, but they can't have been real in the source that he was looking at.

Sullivan: 19:15

Well, you mean the [inaudible] source.

Stanley: 19:17

[inaudible] it to the source, because that was even--there have been so many unbelievable things. You can't file too many coincidences one on top of the other. I mean the next coincidence [that said the source is varied?] just broke the camel’s back as far as I was concerned, and we all knew that the galaxies were [inaudible] impossible things which are much more than that.

Sullivan: 19:41

So you were definitely thinking of the radiation coming from the entire galaxy? You had no evidence for that really but it just made more sense.

Stanley: 19:49

Yes it did. I don't think the real-- just before I came to this country I was starting to get the feel, which I'm surprised to hear everybody's coming back on this one now, because I think it was Baade told me this, certainly when I got to Pasadena, that all galaxies had a [core?] which you couldn't, a [stellar core?], which you couldn't easily see. I think he did actually see it in the case of the Andromeda and those wartime observations of his. That was sort of looked at and forgotten at the time. But I had a feeling, my own intuition said there's an order to everything from the supernova remnants out to the galaxies, and that seems to me to be the way that it's worked out. The phenomena, there's something similar between the phenomena that occur in all cases.

Sullivan: 20:45

You mean an explosion type thing with a central.

Stanley: 20:49

But a very small central object.

Sullivan: 20:51

But you just said though that you were using the argument that the galaxies were large things and therefore they couldn't be varying very fast.

Stanley: 20:57

I said at the time, I didn't believe the variations until-- well actually Alan Moffett saw the dark variations before Ken Kellermann, but he didn't have faith enough to publish them either. You're talking about when, I'm getting way ahead here.

Sullivan: 21:15

Intrinsic variations.

Stanley: 21:18

But there was another dichotomy there, this is the case at the time scale. Again, I said before I came to this country I was starting to believe--

Sullivan: 21:25

Oh, I see.

Stanley: 21:26

I was starting to believe that you had this situation because I started--

Sullivan: 21:31

Mid '50s you're talking about.

Stanley: 21:32

Right, right the mid '50s, I was starting to feel a little bit that way. The reason was I started to, felt that we were over eager. There were so many things that happened that we bypassed a lot of the dog work that had to be done. It was not simple to classify the radio sources into the classes we had. I felt that there were intrinsically large diameter sources like NGC 5128, and I thought we'd find more and more of that sort of structure, they may indeed be a class of source all by themselves, and then there was what I would have called the normal galaxies. Of course, Hanbury Brown published quite a lot of this line too, and my thoughts were only philosophical.

Sullivan: 22:18

Is it fair to say that-- you may remember in 1950 there were these two papers by Little and Lovell and by Graham Smith, with results from Jodrell and Cambridge. Is it fair to say that long before they came out, the Australian side was convinced of the ionospheric, just knowing but hadn't published it.

Stanley: 22:41

Well, everybody-- the Australian groups were running a different way. I have to come back to Joe on that. I said that's my personal opinion. I think the only one in Sydney who thought that there might be a possibility that the variation from [were intrinsic?] to the source was Bruce Slee. I think that's a fair statement.

Stanley: 23:00

All right. But then why do you bring up Joe Pawsey's name?

Stanley: 23:04

Well, the reason I bring up Joe Pawsey’s name is because Joe-- You know how Cambridge is [running?]. And I remembered you were talking about the Paris meeting, you thought that was fascinating because that was the side of the frontal confrontation between Bernie [Mills] and Martin [Ryle]. And I was sitting-- did you go to Paris, or do you know?

Sullivan: 23:21

I don't go back quite that far. But I've had many requests [crosstalk] [inaudible].

Stanley: 23:24

A [inaudible] was in a hot, it was in a sort of almost a dungeon in the basement, and he was sitting there sweltering. And I remember on that day that discussion, I was sitting directly behind Martin Ryle and all the way to the left of Martin were his people. They were all in the one row. They were all there, you see. And he didn't answer Bernie himself. Peter Scheuer was sent up to answer Bernie. Peter stood up there, and every time a point would come up, I would see Martin scribble something that would be passed along the row and then out of the front. It was very rigid control. It was the whole point with the Cambridge group. You had to have an exceptional guy like Martin to be able to do that sort of thing. Joe didn't run the group in that way. I mean, he sort of, whether by plan or by accident, I really don't know, it just floated. And you could find two people working on exactly the same thing. That occurred very frequently and quite a lot of money being expended in those cases. It was a very inefficient organization.

Sullivan: 24:32

As a business organization.

Stanley: 24:32

In that sense, it was inefficient, and maybe it's the right way. I haven't decided to--

Sullivan: 24:37

Well, Radiophysics also had this science--

Stanley: 24:39

So you've got a wider spectrum of opinions. I find that any of our scientific organizations-- I've noticed this even at Caltech, that there is a tendency to monolithic conformity in certain areas. I sometimes think it delays science a lot. For example, the cosmological question, again, is a case in point. [inaudible] at Caltech, still to some extent by himself, although I doubt this.

Sullivan: 25:03

Well, also at Radiophysics, you have this situation very different from Cambridge, where there were these field sites scattered all over. And I'd be interested in your comment on, do you see them as a result of the fact that you had these independently-minded people? Or was this simply the result of a very loose direction from Pawsey and Bowen? Or was this a purposeful plan? I mean.

Stanley: 25:25

No. It was very loose direction. It was very loose direction. I don't think Taffy was exactly loose in his direction, but Joe was quite loose. I forgot to mention Bernie, of course, was one of the important people at the Lab when I came, trying to set up the chronology and things. He was there.

Sullivan: 25:43

But not in radio astronomy.

Stanley: 25:44

No.

Sullivan: 25:44

He was not in radio astronomy.

Stanley: 25:46

Yes, he was in the solar. And then he was working when I first came there on video circuits, and then he became very ill. He had tuberculosis, and he was off ill for 18 months. And when he came back, we were well established. There was some unhappiness in the lab then because John and I sort of were getting all the kudos and then everything was going beautifully for us. And some of the other people were feeling a little bit-- when people are not really moving, they start to get a little bit upset. So it was suggested that Bernie actually come out to Dover and work with us. He made sort of answers is where I think you probably got your impression that everybody says the same as I'm doing, but it's a psychological problem really. He said no he said I want to have my own operation. And that's when Alec came back into radio astronomy. Alec worked for a very short time with [inaudible] a bit of the sun work and then he went back into whatever he was doing and then came back again when Bernie came back and worked with Bernie.

Sullivan: 26:54

But why was there never set up some kind of a central location and everyone could still have their own field? At least have the fields next to each other.

Stanley: 27:02

It's just that it is a very loose-- was a very loose organization. I mean, why should they tolerate somebody like me, who was in a very junior position who was tied to nobody and just did more or less what he'd done [inaudible] looking back a little bit in horror because the way I run a group is--

Sullivan: 27:23

You would never let yourself do that.

Stanley: 27:25

I wouldn't let myself do it. No.

Sullivan: 27:28

Okay. Back to--

Stanley: 27:29

But it worked. [inaudible] work.

Sullivan: 27:30

The proof is in the pudding. I mean, it came off very well.

Stanley: 27:35

But I'm sure it was no plan.

Sullivan: 27:39

The fluctuations in Cygnus A, therefore, most of you were convinced from early on. But nevertheless, you did a lot of work to establish--

Stanley: 27:47

[inaudible] seemed like a lot of waste of time. I felt it was going to come out that way, and I never really felt much doubt it was going to work out that way.

Sullivan: 27:56

But this was largely Bruce Slee that wanted to see all of this work be done, to establish it.

Stanley: 28:02

Well, he’d put so much of his own-- later, he kept it up and he put so much-- I often think the mark of a good scientist is that he's not objective, though he's often very subjective and stubbornly choose an idea which is past its time and get something out of it. I think Martin Ryle felt that way.

Sullivan: 28:21

Okay. The next publication I come upon is in this series of papers on 104 radio sources with-- Westfold has now joined the team, it looks like also. But now is this with this same array that you built?

Stanley: 28:41

Yes. The reason for Kevin coming into the group is interesting. John had a distrust in strictly theoretical people and he said they all have to do some manual work, some experimental work. And Kevin really disliked Joe because of this, and he sort of was told he had to go and do this sort of thing. We had a mathematics group and Tom Piercey and Kevin was part of that. Kevin's background, he wrote a book on the fast transforms.

Sullivan: 29:20

Right. He worked with Smerd and all of that theoretical [crosstalk].

Stanley: 29:23

Right, right. So Kevin was added to the group and it was a very valuable addition.

Sullivan: 29:30

What was the value?

Stanley: 29:34

Well, on our mathematical and theoretical problems, he was very useful.

Sullivan: 29:39

But what were those problems? In the interpretation of what the sources were, or?

Stanley: 29:42

No. Kevin had no, he used to come to me even when I was [inaudible] at Caltech, he was a type of mathematician - I'm sure you've seen them - that doesn't have any sort of physical insight. He asked me crazy questions on the physics of certain things. But on mathematical theory, he was great.

Sullivan: 30:11

Right. So this was actually in the reduction of the data that was [crosstalk].

Stanley: 30:14

Right, right, in the reduction of the data was essentially some of the early confusion problems and things like that. He was very, very valuable in that sort of thing. And he's a very disciplined man. I know he was one of the men who said to me that if didn't practice my mathematics every day, I know that if I left it alone for a week or two weeks, it would be very difficult to go back to. That's the type of person you want.

Sullivan: 30:39

There's a question by the side. There's a picture of a dish of about 15 foot diameter, Dover Heights.

Stanley: 30:49

I designed it.

Sullivan: 30:50

Where does that come in?

Stanley: 30:52

Okay. Well, maybe I'm trying to keep the story continuous so it keeps flowing. I had the feeling-- I didn't get the depth of depression John did. But I do get a feeling about things like I had about the Owens Valley and I had it about this. I knew that about 1951 we were sort of past the peak on this instrument and we had to get something else. And so I thought, well, the best way-- this is another thing, I just took off and have no control over me at all. And in fact, I just took off on my own and said, "Okay, I'm going to design the largest dish that's ever been built." And I talked to Keith McAllister a little bit about it, and Keith gave me some ideas. But essentially what I did, I sat down and threw the thing up myself. The idea being that we could get to shorter wavelengths, and that we wouldn't have the restrictions, like people use paraboloids now. We wouldn't be tied down to--  the Yagi array was a nice way to get started, but now we were building our own receivers. We weren't relying on old radar receivers and things like that. And there was an obvious need to push our frequencies up as far as we could.

Stanley: 32:04

I set that up to 200 megahertz and by the time it got going, really got going I think, John was starting to have trouble with Joe. Joe was trying to make a decision on where we should be-- he was now trying to control things, and trying to control all these rebellious people that he had, and say, "We've got to get a lot more money, and we can't go on these six months experiments, and we've got to make a decision where our major instrument would be." And he decided for Bernie’s cross with Alec. But there is a little bit of history in that because John and I had concocted a two element interferometer, which I decided would be not as the Owens Valley was built but in [inaudible] type paraboloids.

Sullivan: 32:53

[inaudible] paraboloids.

Stanley: 32:55

Right. We didn't have the financial resources down there that we had in the United States department, but I thought I could build them cheaply, and we would be able to get that through. But--

Sullivan: 33:11

Roughly what size are you thinking of?

Stanley: 33:13

About the size we finally built in the Owens Valley, 90 feet.

Sullivan: 33:16

But [inaudible] [crosstalk]--

Stanley: 33:18

[crosstalk]--

Sullivan: 33:19

--only north-south movable?

Stanley: 33:19

Right, right, on tracks.

Sullivan: 33:22

I think I do remember--

Stanley: 33:26

This is part of the story of how Dapto was established. It's an essential part of it.

Sullivan: 33:30

Okay. How does that tie in?

Stanley: 33:32

Well, we're starting to get off. Let's come back to it in a minute, but I was saying that I had the feeling about this stage when we got to the point of that 104 sources paper and the three [inaudible] papers and the three [were sort of the ultimate?] papers on what the radio sources were. And yet I felt they weren't the ultimate papers. They felt we were showboating a little bit as a matter of fact at that stage. I knew something else had to be done on the instrumentation. And so I started the 18-foot parabola. And when John also at that time [could see?] the idea for the hole in the ground, but the parabola was built first. John was still in radio astronomy at that time, and I did quite a few observations at 200 megahertz, which I don't think I ever published--

Sullivan: 34:21

Of radio sources?

Stanley: 34:22

Of radio sources. In fact, sorry, it must have been earlier than that. My chronology must be wrong because the spectrum paper came out of that darn dish. That's where the spectrum came from.

Sullivan: 34:35

Oh, I see. So that's before 55.

Stanley: 34:37

[crosstalk] before [inaudible] 55 I was here.

Sullivan: 34:39

You came to the States in '55.

Stanley: 34:40

Right, right.

Sullivan: 34:41

Well, that spectrum paper was published in Nature in '56, but it was also-- well, I'm not sure if it was mentioned, that job [crosstalk].

Stanley: 34:47

Okay. Well, that means my chronology is correct and John was on the wind-down period and I did the spectra, built the dish to do the spectra, and I realized while I was doing it, and I really couldn't milk much more out of the dish in terms of sources, in terms of the receivers that we had available at that time. John, in a last desperate move, did the 90-foot hole in the ground. But at that time, he sort of said to me one day-- John always was making gestures like this. He said to me one day, he said, "I'm going to Joe and have a showdown on the business about whether they build the cross or whether they give us money for the others."

Sullivan: 35:33

For the two cylindrical [inaudible].

Stanley: 35:35

Yes, I can remember distinctly I was in the Lab on that day. I was down in that room downstairs, just inside the main door, and he was up with-- he went into Joe first and then they went into Taffy. I never heard what was said in the meetings, and he came down to me about an hour later and said, "I'm out of radio astronomy."

Sullivan: 35:54

And he went into Radiophysics.

Stanley: 35:55

Right, right. So I was left with Dover Heights again to milk the last of the results out of the 90-foot hole in the ground.

Sullivan: 36:03

That would be what year? '52 or something like that?

Stanley: 36:06

Yeah, about that [crosstalk].

Sullivan: 36:08

Yeah. But now I'm getting a little confused with the chronology. At that point, the hole in the ground hadn't been built, nor the 17-foot dish.

Stanley: 36:16

Hole in the ground was John's dish.

Sullivan: 36:19

But had it been built when he left radio astronomy?

Stanley: 36:21

It had just about been finished when he left radio astronomy. As I say, even my chronology is hard to fit in. You'll have to fool around with this because so many things were happening, this sort of [inaudible]. But I'm just trying to give you the general impression of why these things [crosstalk]. I'll tell you, there's one thing in putting the timing together. John went to England on a trip and that'll be somewhere in your archives, and this is where the Dapto story comes in. And John was not convinced at that time that Joe was not going to build the interferometer, although said, "I don't think he will." And he said, "Go and look for a site along the way." I was talking to Paul, and Paul said, "Well, I want to put up an interferometer someday somewhere else." And he said, "Will you take John Murray and Steve Smerd with you? And Paul as well." I got a blitz ambulance, which was a truck with a Chevy engine under [inaudible] from the Australian Army. They told me it had been rebuilt and I was the only one that could drive, particularly, I think, with a gearbox like that on it. And off we went down the South Coast looking for sites. It was terrible year. I remember that. First night, we finished up in Mittagong. The Razorback had been washed out. We got around somehow. They were piling rocks into the road and around the base of the mountain. We couldn't even go over the mountain. You know the Razorback?

Sullivan: 37:55

No, I don't.

Stanley: 37:56

It's a road going to Melbourne [inaudible] highway [inaudible] everybody knows the Razorback in Australia. You to go over this mountain and then down into Mittagong, which is down in a bit of a valley.

Sullivan: 38:06

That's near where Dapto is now, isn't it?

Stanley: 38:08

No, this is away from there. This was the first night. We barely got there. It's only about 30 or 40 miles from the city.

Stanley: 38:13

Only that far. I see.

Sullivan: 38:14

We finished up in this fleabag of a hotel for the first night and then we went on through Kangaroo Valley. This is going now towards Dapto. And there we were, stuck again, which is a real backwards place. And I remember that night that the-- you could go back and look, you wouldn't find a hotel like this. And we all thought we better have a few drinks before we went to bed, because it turned out that I think there were five of us in the group that was John Murray, Steve, Paul, myself-- so no, John Bolton was in England.

Sullivan: 38:50

Sheridan, maybe?

Stanley: 38:51

No, no, Sheridan wasn't. Sheridan had nothing to do with it.

Sullivan: 38:54

Okay.

Stanley: 38:55

But anyhow, only one of us could have a bed to ourselves, I remember that. So we said we might as well get a bit drunk before we go back. Well, we didn't like the [inaudible] they said they might put everybody in [inaudible]. And Paul. So we said, "We'd better go up to the bedroom and finish this off." And he looked out at the back of the bar, and I don't know if you've seen bars in Australia, what they're like? It's this lineup of five long bottles at the top. There's a couple bottles of champagne up there as well as [inaudible]. A bottle of Scotch or something like that. And Paul said, "Let's have that, and that, and that." And I heard one of these characters turn to his friend behind me. He said, "Christ," he said, "What's this guy thinking? Some bloody Yank?" Buying all this.

Sullivan: 39:36

So you went upstairs and drank it all?

Stanley: 39:39

Yeah. No I was quite [inaudible]--

Sullivan: 39:42

So Dapto, was the idea that perhaps these cylindrical paraboloids would go there?

Stanley: 39:47

No, no, we were [inaudible] going to go in Javus Bay. I picked a side of Jarvus Bay.

Sullivan: 39:53

How do you spell that?

Stanley: 39:54

J-A-V-U-S, it's the Australian Naval Base.

Sullivan: 39:56

Jarvus?

Stanley: 39:57

Jarvus.

Sullivan: 39:57

Right.

Stanley: 39:58

Jarvus Bay, excuse me.

Sullivan: 40:00

And how many of you?

Stanley: 40:01

We went as far down as [inaudible] with John Murray, I left Steve. We had another breakdown in the truck, and that's a long story. So, I wouldn't want to waste your tape on that. So anyhow we came back, John decided Dapto was a reasonable place for the site. And that was confirmed [inaudible] for Paul. Paul had no intention of working where we were.

Sullivan: 40:20

Oh, I see.

Stanley: 40:20

Although there was some rough suggestion that we would.

Sullivan: 40:23

Nice.

Stanley: 40:23

And that's how the Dapto site--

Sullivan: 40:25

So anyway, Jarvus Bay was never used for any radio astronomy?

Stanley: 40:28

No, no.

Sullivan: 40:30

Never had it.

Stanley: 40:30

But that was the last thing. That was not quite the stroll at [inaudible] but it was close to it.

Sullivan: 40:36

Okay, so Bolton then got out of radio astronomy. You have now had this hole in the ground dish, and you were working on the design of the 17- or 18-foot at that time, also, or?

Stanley: 40:49

No, no. The hole in the-- the 18-foot had been built--

Sullivan: 40:52

Well, that came before.

Stanley: 40:53

--Chronology. It came before, yeah.

Sullivan: 40:55

Oh, I see.

Stanley: 40:55

The hole in the ground was the very last thing. At Dover Heights.

Sullivan: 40:58

Right, right.

Stanley: 40:58

John was there when the 18-foot was finished.

Sullivan: 41:01

I see.

Stanley: 41:03

He was still there. He knew the spectrum was going on. He knew the spectrum work had been done, but then there was this final thing, to try and keep the place alive just a little bit longer. Because I remember, Chris saying to me, he said, you know how Chris is. Cynically he said one day, "Well," he said, "They ought to put a brass plaque on the place now."

Sullivan: 41:20

[laughter] You're referring to the hole in the ground when you say the-- the final fling?

Stanley: 41:24

Yes.

Sullivan: 41:24

To keep it alive, yeah. But now what work did this dish do beside the deuterium search?

Stanley: 41:30

There’s a survey by McGee, you'll find there. And I think I'm on that too. Yeah. 400 megahertz survey, right?

Sullivan: 41:38

Oh, yes. 1955.

Stanley: 41:40

Right. Right.

Sullivan: 41:42

Oh yes, that's right. We came across that one earlier.

Stanley: 41:44

Right.

Sullivan: 41:46

And the deuterium search, those are the main things that you did. What about the hole in the ground? What were its main contributions, would you say?

Stanley: 41:54

Very minor deuterium, deuterium is the most, the really important thing that it did, I think.

Sullivan: 42:03

And you left in '55. So that leaves a bit of a gap in there as to what you were doing during that period? Does it not, or? Were you working at Dover Heights right up until you left?

Stanley: 42:19

I was working at Dover, well, there were several things I was asked to do by Joe. There's one thing I never published, and it concerns strangely the United States. Dave Heeschen, did his thesis, oh what was it? He did his thesis on, oh--

Sullivan: 42:47

The 21 centimeter?

Stanley: 42:48

Yes, yes. But it's an absorption line in an extragalactic--

Sullivan: 42:52

Cygnus--

Stanley: 42:54

Wasn’t Cygnus, no, no, no. Oh, I did the darn thing, I've still got the records at home. Well, he did it, and it was wrong. And Joe was a little suspicious, and he said, "I want you to repeat this, and do it over." And I did and there was nothing there. Well, the only thing I think it was--

Sullivan: 43:15

Wasn’t extragalactic.

Stanley: 43:16

You're right. But there was an absorption line, I can't remember what the importance of the darn thing was now.

Sullivan: 43:22

It's probably something to give a distance of the nebula, probably?

Stanley: 43:28

I wasn't very interested, that shows how interested, where I can't remember. I found--

Sullivan: 43:34

I can't quite remember myself, yeah.

Stanley: 43:35

I found the result was wrong. I never published it. I've got the scans and records at home. And I said to Joe. I said, "Well, I've had one negative result. I don't want to go up to that one getting the business of just shooting people down."

Sullivan: 43:51

Yeah.

Stanley: 43:51

And I remember saying that to Alan Moffett some years later when he wanted to shoot down something else that John Kraus had done.

Sullivan: 44:00

Yeah.

Stanley: 44:01

I said, "The better thing is to write him a letter and tell him."

Sullivan: 44:03

Yeah. [inaudible]--

Stanley: 44:11

But Joe had a number of things. He was keen for me, seeing that John was out of-- or he was keen for me to get into something else. And I did that. And that was the last thing I did before--

Stanley: 44:26

John sort of-- John and I sort of hadn't been in much contact over the period he was in [inaudible]. And he just came up to me, and he said, "I need somebody to go as well." And he said, "Would you like to come," he said, "For six months or a year?" And I didn't say immediately. I said, "Well, I'll think about it." And I thought the transition here was a little-- I could see things were in transition at Radiophysics and I thought, after a little thought anyhow, I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea.

Sullivan: 45:03

Were the first discussions concerning a big instrument coming along, then? Which is going to be the [inaudible] dish?

End tape 146B

Begin tape 147A

Sullivan: 00:00

This is continuing with Gordon Stanley on 12 August 1981 at URSI. We were discussing the fact that you said John Bolton asked you to come with him to Caltech, and the whole business of the Parkes Dish came up. And apparently, that happened even before you left that there was a discussion about what should be the big step. Can you tell me about what you remember?

Stanley: 00:25

Sure. I felt that was another thing that influenced my decision to go to California. Although I really stood outside the whole business as an observer more than anything else. Essentially, this thing had gone on ever since the time when I mentioned earlier in the discussion at the end of the war when Briton left and Joe didn't want the job as head of the Laboratory, and Taffy took over. And there was always that undercurrent, almost animosity, I think, between the two men. There was very little question about the division of loyalties within the Laboratory, though. The Laboratory was almost sort of, yeah, 100% on Joe's side against Taffy. I've always, though, had an admiration, restrained sort of admiration, I suppose. what somebody else called a fearful sort of admiration, for Taffy. And I understand men like that very well. He actually seemed to thrive on that sort of opposition. Stop for a minute.

Stanley: 02:02

There were a number of proposals. Well, essentially, the two groups were divided into those who believed in a large array, not specifically defined, really. And people who believed in a large array, of course, was Joe's side. Although one of the ideas conceived on Joe's side was a Arecibo type. But that, I think, was largely abandoned because of the virtual possibility of finding sites which were geologically stable enough in New South Wales. At least that was the reason given. I find it a little hard to believe now in retrospect because the Arecibo site looks a lot more geologically unstable than anything you'd find in New South Wales. However, the array was probably a Mills Cross type of device, and I think at that time, I would have supported it. But in retrospect, again it’s to show how poor your judgment is, it would have been obvious that we would have been better to have gone the way that we did in California, which was a two-element paraboloid type system. But I only convinced myself of that when I got to California.

Stanley: 03:30

As I said, I had somewhat of an admiration for Taffy because I had very little doubt how the final result would come out, because you never want to-- you'd never want to underestimate Taffy. I always consistently tended to underestimate what he would do myself. And I did say to somebody shortly before I left, I said, "Take a bet that he eliminates every part of that opposition." And that's what he did. And he isolated people one by one, in effect, until Joe was left, in effect, with no effective support. And I don't think it's pertinent for me to go through the people one by one. But he picked really on flaws in their background and character and things like that. I think if anybody planned anything [inaudible] Radiophysics. I think that was I think it was one of the most beautiful pieces of Machavallian politics that I've seen. It was the best I've ever seen. Although the end part of the story didn't come until I was in the United States.  I didn’t talk to Joe about it until he came to stay with us and stayed for a while. And I remember our youngest daughter was very young then. Joe was sick and didn't know about it. The little girl was running around all over the house and he said, “I wish I had that sort of energy left.” He thought he had had mononucleosis or something like that.

Sullivan: 04:58

This was in '61 or something?

Stanley: 05:00

Yeah, yeah. Much later. So the final stages were written after I got here. But I really think also, in retrospect that a large dish was a better decision than the Mills Cross making history has vindicated on that part of it although you probably could have spent the money in a better way.

Sullivan: 05:18

Yep.

Stanley: 05:19

And in some ways I made the same mistake myself when I was on the advisory committee at Green Bank and they were having such terrible trouble with 140 foot because of rather bad financial arrangements. And I said at a committee meeting once that they should abandon the whole project and because for another $2 million they could build a much more effective telescope. I may have been right, but on the other hand, 140 foot proved itself would be a very fine instrument.

Sullivan: 05:51

Yeah. You were thinking something a little different design that alt-az, probably?

Stanley: 05:55

Yes. Larger, less accurate.

Sullivan: 05:58

Yeah. And so really, it does boil down to big dish versus array.

Stanley: 06:06

Yes.

Sullivan: 06:07

Now you're talking now about before you left, even '53--

Stanley: 06:10

Yes, yes, it was--

Sullivan: 06:11

well before-- [crosstalk]

Stanley: 06:13

The decision was part of the decision to go ahead with the initial Mills Cross and then a later extension of the Mills Cross out at Fleurs. I mean, the fact that the interferometer that we would build at Jarvis Bay was abandoned [inaudible] to be funded. It was part of the whole story. So it goes way back as soon as

Sullivan: 06:36

The interferometer was in conflict with Mills first, Mills’ big Cross at Fleurs.

Stanley: 06:42

Yes. In that perspective, you have to say that in fairness now to Joe on these decisions that I said earlier that there didn't seem to be any planning, and there wasn't any planning in the early years. But maybe it was reasonable not to have any planning in because the projects financially are not a great burden. When the field was so young, we had to, as I said, we've reached a peak and the decision of whether to build-- a decision had to be made to build a bigger, more effective instrument. Which instrument to be built to maintain your reputation, to keep the place alive.

Sullivan: 07:16

Right. Right.

Stanley: 07:17

I think Taffy made the better decision, actually.

Sullivan: 07:23

There was no idea of any [earth?] rotation, synthesis or anything like that with the two [paraboloids?]?

Stanley: 07:29

No. That--

Sullivan: 07:31

Who was proposing?

Stanley: 07:33

Well, it was sheer luck at the Owens Valley, too. There was no thought of synthesis when that was built. The spacings are actually wrong. And--

Sullivan: 07:45

Things are not ideal for--

Stanley: 07:47

Not ideal. Yeah.

Sullivan: 07:48

Okay, so Christianson and Mills leaving later, is really another second whole episode. I mean, it's not related to this first thing. Or would you say this is related?

Stanley: 08:02

Well, I can tell you specifically, it is related. I don't think I'm betraying any confidence of saying, it shouldn't be. I think it’s history and it should be written. And Chris wrote a letter to Oliphant.

Sullivan: 08:16

Whose position was what?

Stanley: 08:17

He was head of the Australian National University, and a very important man. And he said, "Taffy is incompetent in effect." And I was telling that the story to Bob Bacher, Provost at Caltech. We, the great majority of the staff of Radiophysics, feel that the radio astronomy program and Radiophysics should become part of the Australian National University.

Sullivan: 08:46

Was that true?

Stanley: 08:48

It's true. And would he take simple action? I don't know, this is the rough gist of the letter. Bob Bacher, when I was telling him the story, he was about the most astute scientific administrator of-- well, he is the most astute I have ever run into - and I learned to [inaudible]. He stopped me and said, "You don't need to tell me the rest of the story." He took that letter and showed it to Taffy. He said, "Good." And he said, "There's one thing you got to remember." He said, "Bosses have a union." [laughter] And now I'm conjecturing now to a large extent, but it's pretty clear that was very closely linked in time to-- in fact, I don't think again I'm betraying confidence as we-- Chris said to me sometime later when he took the job at university, that's Sydney University, he said, "It hurts like hell to have to take a job which Ron Bracewell turned down." [laughter]

Sullivan: 10:02

And Mills' departure, the standard story is that of course, he wanted to get a bigger Mills Cross.

Stanley: 10:07

Right. Same thing. That came automatically so the people were isolated. Some of the people were rather weak, I think, in personalities.

Sullivan: 10:14

But now with this--

Stanley: 10:15

Paul was the only one who sort of stood outside for a while. He managed to for a large time, for a long time. But he was on [Mills’ side?].

Sullivan: 10:25

But looking at it from Bowen's point of view, if he had chosen for the larger Mills' Cross, then perhaps Culgoora never could have come along. And then he would have lost Wild. I mean, was there any real solutions? I mean you had these very good, very independent-minded scientists who had long careers in the Lab, but was there any way of really keeping them on?

Stanley: 10:47

No. I'm older and wiser by now, and I think this is an inevitable fact. And you were sounding [inaudible]. I said there's no way of avoiding it, but the only way to break it up a little bit is to have a much stronger administration somewhere further up the line to oversee these things and know that these sorts of things inevitably happen. I mean, you get old, young [inaudible] come along. And you have to do, somehow, [inaudible]. That's one of the-- I think that's the end of Radiophysics as well as the part of the start-up too. They're all the same age. It had no real mechanism like a university does for channeling people through. And that is the tragedy, I think, of the organization.

Sullivan: 11:35

Yeah. Yeah. No. I know exactly what you mean, and I've also seen it at NRL for instance. Is it also fair to say that the loose organization that you've brought up several times helped to create this kind of situation?

Stanley: 11:54

Right. Right. It created a lot of people, too independent, thought that they could-- thought they had the strength to survive for themselves. I'm sure they don't really fully appreciate the list and the tech you talk on [inaudible].

Sullivan: 12:10

Okay.

Stanley: 12:11

It's a very grudging sort of an admiration I think.

Sullivan: 12:16

Let's go back to the New Zealand expedition which we forgot. Which took place '48 I believe it was.

Stanley: 12:23

Yes.

Sullivan: 12:24

Can you tell me your recollection of that?

Stanley: 12:26

Oh, yes, that's pretty clear. That sprung out of the, I told you the other day, out of the feeling that okay, we weren't identifying Cygnus. We had the strongest source. This was the real kicker on the strongest source. We couldn't identify, my hang up on the [inaudible] source. We knew that the sea interferometer wasn't entirely a reliable way. That was the thing I could not convince John of. I forgot there was one other instrument John suggested which I killed him off and this is why we got on the two element interferometer. John actually crashed not on the two element interferometer, but on the idea that [inaudible] make a super array out of Dover using the sea. And I had absolutely no faith in it because I said we obviously need much more precise measurements. We're not going to do it with the Dover sea interferometer. It's part of Chris's reason for saying they should put a [brass plaque?] on the place and I agreed with Chris. But unfortunately the reality of Radiophysics was that by now Bernie Mills, John I think, had let this opportunity pass by, Bernie had now established himself as being the [inaudible] interferometer man at Radiophysics. To get anybody else in this required a considerable expenditure and Joe had given us the option of getting into that. John felt we should stick with the single interferometer and build a bigger instrument. But anyhow let's go back, we're getting a little bit off. I thought you should have that part of the story.

Sullivan: 14:10

Yeah. Let me just ask one other question.

Stanley: 14:11

That one died fast.

Sullivan: 14:13

I wasn't quite sure what you meant by-- you mean an array at Dover Heights which would be a sea interferometer?

Stanley: 14:18

A sea interferometer that has a much bigger collecting area. Say a paraboloid slice, parabloid. It was never really clearly defined, except-- actually, John had some papers on that. I never really saw -

Sullivan: 14:30

I think I did see a couple of proposals on that when I was going through the archives. Yes, but let me ask another general question to do with this versus the whole Michaelson interferometer that was being developed at Cambridge in particular. What did you see as the fundamental advantages and disadvantages of the two at that time?

Stanley: 14:51

I didn’t see – well, the only disadvantage I saw with Michelson was, well, was the fact that it  more expensive because you had to build two antennas. You had to put somewhere-- we didn't know about varying the spacing. Well, we did have some idea that you took various spacings and you've got some diameter information about it. There were more technical problems in building the Michelson interferometer. The sea interferometer was a cheap, quickie way of getting on the air. And the big advantage to the sea interferometer was economics. If you wanted to get into the game of doing more sources. There was no doubt that the Michaelson interferometer in my mind was going to beat the sea interferometer if we had to do precise positions. And that's why, of course, we went to it. We no longer had the political ties when we were in California and started to embrace the interferometer with open arms.

Sullivan: 15:48

Was there something that the sea cliff interferometer survived so long in Radiophysics because it had been a part of the wartime experience as well as the early Radiophysics days, do you think?

Stanley: 16:00

Well we had to get new-- fundamental research occurs, you have to have a reason before you can get extra money. We barely got that for all. This is only the difference now between 1946 and 1950 we're talking about, when a decision had to be made. Four years. Now, we're starting to talk about the instruments. There's a natural human tendency to let the thing-- although I might have felt that we were over the hill, I wasn't convinced that we were. I mean, I couldn't go to somebody and say, "Hey, we've got to get out of this. We've got to go"

Sullivan: 16:33

You weren't pounding the table saying--

Stanley: 16:34

No, I wasn't pounding the table about it at all. But I had a sense of depression that it wasn't going to last that much longer.

Sullivan: 16:42

Okay, now back to the New Zealand expedition.

Stanley: 16:45

Okay, so that was part of the story. But we also decided that, okay, Cygnus wasn't identified. We had to find some other way [than the sea interferometer?] to do it. And one of the ways was to watch a source completely through the sky. We didn't have a full understanding of the mathematics of the interferometer at that time, but we knew that at least if we could see the thing rising and setting we'd have a better chance of determining what the right ascension was [inaudible]. And hopefully we could symmetrically predict the interference pattern on either [inaudible].

Sullivan: 17:20

Some errors might cancel. Was that also part of the--?

Stanley: 17:23

Right. Right. That was part of the thinking on it as well. So we were looking for that. We were looking for a North-South-- a northerly exposure. And so I dragged out the maps and I hadn't been back home in New Zealand since we left when I was only 6 or 7. And I looked at Northern New Zealand and said, "Hey, there's North Cape." And I looked at the elevations I went down. I said, "It's about 300ft or something like that, let's go there." I said, "It'd be a nice trip. I'd like to go home." John being somewhat bolder than I was at that time and things like that. Went to John, said, we're going to have an expedition to New Zealand. Sort of not wanting to be too silly. I never wanted to be very severe in England or think about it. He was going to England, I think, on a trip of the United States and he took the boat. And the boat to New Zealand has to do a strange thing. There are no harbors on the west coast of New Zealand. You've got sand bars. It has to go all the way to get to [inaudible] it has to go right around the tip of New Zealand and come down into Waitematā Harbour although the West Coast harbor is only 10 miles away when you get into Waitematā Harbour. So we get a letter back from Joe and I don't know if that's in the file with it. John got the letter back and there's a little profile. This is what North Cape looks like. So I got the equipment and goes, Right. And got hold of  an old army [inaudible] and design equipment, got it on a ship and I preceded John in New Zealand. It was a big thing in New Zealand. First time I ran into reporters, I mean, I had a reporter there waiting the aircraft and hurry. And then they sent up something from, Ellis I think was the guy's name, from Christchurch, from CSI to work with us. He was a bit of a wild character.

Sullivan: 19:29

To work with you in what sense? Help with the setup?

Stanley: 19:32

I think they had some idea. They had some idea that we could educate a New Zealander in radio astronomy and that might start and let that came. I never really heard of him again, although I sent him the note a couple of times at Christmas. But he was a sort of a--

Sullivan: 19:48

This wasn't the fellow that was advisor or teacher of Alan Maxwell who I believe in undergraduate and did an experiment in radio astronomy around 48 or 49--

Stanley: 19:59

It might be. It's a while since I [inaudible]. I haven't seen Alan for a long time.

Sullivan: 20:03

What was this fellow's name? Allison?

Stanley: 20:04

Ellis, I think. Ellis. E-L-L-IS.

Sullivan: 20:07

Oh, Ellis.

Stanley: 20:08

Ellis.

Sullivan: 20:09

Well, I'll have to check. I actually have got a copy of this sort of undergraduate thesis that he did. But anyway.

Stanley: 20:15

Well, we got to New Zealand and when I got to New Zealand I did all the prelinimary leg work to find out what we could do and where we could go and I soon found that it was impossible to get to North Cape. I believe it is now possible to get there. There's no roads up there and you certainly couldn't get a 20-ton trailer over the sort of country they had up there, which was almost desert. So I picked on a site on the east coast of Lee. And Lee is that area of the east coast of New Zealand is very reminiscent of Maine. Very, very strong reminiscent of Maine, at least that harbor in particular. The hills around it are not reminiscent of Maine, sort of rolling grassland going to the sea and the cliff was 900ft high and looked towards an island group called Little Barrier Island and it was a sheer plunge. We got the best. It was terrible weather. I think I mentioned that to you the other day. I remember on one occasion going up there at night, Taurus was rising, the Crab was rising, [inaudible] rising at night. I remember we had a barometer. We sort of were getting fancy. We decided that we could make refraction corrections. We knew something about the conduct in the atmosphere and things like that, but we really couldn't.

Stanley: 21:43

And one of the New Zealand government departments in New Zealand got very excited and saiddid we want to mean tide height levels and things like that. I had to act very learned and said well, yes, I think so. And I think the guy thought I was a bit of an ass. But the whole key to the success of the expedition of the fact that we were able to get [any notification?] out of it was that New Zealand had less radio development than Australia. The interference patterns were the cleanest I've ever seen. I got these beautiful clean interference patterns at 75 MHz. Well, anyhow, I was talking about the barometer sitting in the trailer at night there and I remember watching the darn thing one night, and within the space of half an hour, no, about ten minutes actually, it went down half an inch, and then the wind. I swear I’d just hang on to everything. And the wind hit the side of the trailer was going in and out of the side of the trailer. It was roughly [inaudible].

Sullivan: 22:42

But you say some of the identifications came out of the more accurate positions that you got from the New Zealand?

Stanley: 22:48

The Crab--

Sullivan: 22:49

The Crab did.

Stanley: 22:49

--really came out of New Zealand. Yeah. My recollection is not clear enough to say that one of the other sources did. I'm pretty sure Virgo was surprising came out of Dover Heights.

Sullivan: 23:04

But interference was quite a problem at Dover Heights, are you saying?

Stanley: 23:07

Yes. Yes, interference was quite a problem.

Sullivan: 23:10

In the sense that sometimes data was hopeless and other times, it was okay, or was it always sort of messing things up?

Stanley: 23:18

It wasn't always messing things up. It was sort of in the general level of the noise. I never really pinned-- I couldn't say specifically that interference, that I could clearly classify as interference, was a major problem. But the noise level of the records was much higher or noticeably higher at Dover Heights than it was at the ones I saw in New Zealand.

Sullivan: 23:40

I see. And that's the only explanation you can think of it as a possible cause?

Stanley: 23:45

Yes, basically. Yes, it may be in the conditions in the Australian coast at that latitude. But I think more likely there was a fairly-- there was fairly high low level of interference in the general [inaudible]. And Lee didn't see this. And we had a wonderful few months.

Sullivan: 24:07

Did you stay in this trailer, or did you see any--?

Stanley: 24:09

No, we stayed in a hotel. We looked it up in this little old country hotel that had two drunken proprietors and lived the life of Riley there for a while. We travel up and down the North Island of New Zealand. I went back to my old hometown of Cambridge.

Sullivan: 24:26

Were you both bachelors in those days?

Stanley: 24:28

Yes.

Sullivan: 24:28

Yes. So you could--

Stanley: 24:29

No, John wasn't. John was not. John was married. And the second part of the expedition was Lee.

Sullivan: 24:37

Well, you worked two sites?

Stanley: 24:38

[crosstalk] sea [hub?]. I mean, two sites. The reason I picked the Lee site was that, "Okay, I said instead of going to North Cape, I'll pick--" New Zealand's very narrow across. And if I can pick another site on the other coast, it doesn't take as much effort to get there. Well, it happened to be there's an old radar station in a place called Piha, which I've got pictures of this place.

Sullivan: 25:03

P-I-H-A?

Stanley: 25:04

P-I-H-A. It's fairly close to Auckland, and it's on the west coast harbor now of Auckland. And it was on a cliff of much the same height as it was Lee. So I forget the actual time we were at Lee. But we towed the trailer off, farewell from the farmer, very cooperative. Wonderful people in the area. Although we made a terrible mess of land as we took the trail out and towed it back to Piha and did the same sort of observations over there watching the thing set instead of rise.

Sullivan: 25:40

Okay. We were up to the point of you going to the States. So you went to Caltech in 1955. John Bolton was already there?

Stanley: 25:53

John preceded me by a few months, yes.

Sullivan: 25:56

But there were no instruments there at that stage?

Stanley: 25:57

Nothing. Nothing.

Sullivan: 25:58

So what was the first stage to--?

Stanley: 26:02

Well, the first stage was-- I'm trying to collect my thoughts and say clearly how we arrived at the first stage.

Sullivan: 26:13

Was there a promise of ONR money at that stage, or?

Stanley: 26:16

Well, the director of the project, actually-- there was no real director. But Bob Bacher, who was then the chairman of the physics, mathematics, and astronomy was, in effect, running the project. And he did all the time, John was there, which was sort of a sore point with John, and Bob has got a promise of ONR money but not a very large amount of ONR money. And I can't remember the specific amount, but it was barely enough to support myself and John. So the problem was to get something on the air, anything on the air, and I had designed the little paraboloid back in Australia, which wasn't little at that time. So I said, "Okay, we'll try the same trick again except this time I'll build a 30-foot and we'll get it up as fast as we can." Before I’d come to the United States, John had done some searching around for sites and he did have a partial commitment on this that if he built a site, it had to be within, I think, 150 miles of Los Angeles or otherwise it'd increase the running costs by some $20,000 or something like that. And ONR wasn't too happy about having that sort of a thing. So he, after looking up and down California, or what he thought was the accessible area of California, decided on the site at Ojai in Santa Barbara, where I live now.

Sullivan: 27:45

What was the name?

Stanley: 27:45

Ojai.

Sullivan: 27:46

Ojai?

Stanley: 27:47

Yeah. And it's spelled the Spanish way, O-J-A-I.

Sullivan: 27:49

O-J-A-I. Ojai.

Stanley: 27:52

However, just before I came, he found that it had been selected as a Minute Man site or something like that, what the Navy had it anyhow was a funny thing for class [inaudible] couldn't define. And it wasn't that great a site. It wouldn't have done what I thought it could do because I had a look at it, it sort of in [inaudible]. He could put up a single antenna if nothing else. So together we started off looking again.

Sullivan: 28:18

And you were thinking of two-dish interferometer, or what were you thinking of?

Stanley: 28:22

I don't think that John had really any clear idea at that time what specifically he wanted to put up. But you'd have to ask him.

Sullivan: 28:36

Yeah, I'm sure I did.

Stanley: 28:38

And I really can't say--

Sullivan: 28:42

You were following his ideas on that sort of thing?

Stanley: 28:45

To a large extent. Yes, that's true. So we started to look for sites again and we did it together. We traveled up and down. We traveled down out into the desert, the Borrego Springs area. And I was doing a rough sort of a testing with a radio receiver that went to 100 MHz but nothing much more. And it was pretty obvious that none of the sites would do any good. But I thought there was some possibility in the Lake Henshaw area which was immediately under Palm [inaudible] obvious advantages to sort of establishing that area. However, we got down as far as a place called Earthquake Valley, which is right on the Mexican border.

Sullivan: 29:31

[inaudible]. Got it.

Stanley: 29:33

It didn't test badly. I said, "Well." On our general philosophy, I said to John, I said, "I don't think we want this." I said, "We can find a more pleasant place than this." So I'll have to tell these stories in parallel because the other thing was going on at another time we're in series, rather, but they're running parallel. He was off to England, and he said, "Well." He said, "Keep on looking." I think it was the URSI meeting, wasn't it? [inaudible] meeting. [inaudible].

Sullivan: 30:01

Dublin IAU in '55.

Stanley: 30:02

Dublin IAU.

Sullivan: 30:03

That's right.

Stanley: 30:05

Yeah, he was off to the Dublin IAU, and he said, "You keep on looking." So I had the first employee. Well, there were two first employees. One was Johnny Harriman and the other was an engineer in the aircraft, joined temporarily. Temple was an old California employee. His father had been a law professor at UCLA and he knew everything in California. So I went looking further up north, going up the back road going up to the [inaudible] and over the Mojave Desert. And I got as far as [inaudible], which was about the limit of the Navy's specification and distance. And again, I'm in desert, the lowest part of the desert. It's August. The temperature's sort of-- well over 100 degrees. [inaudible] doesn't test too well. I said, "I don't like it. There's a Navy missile station over there." He said, "Well, [inaudible] to us." I know a place where my second wife and I had our honeymoon. He said, "Let's keep on going." So we kept on driving into the [inaudible] and kept on driving up until we got to Big Pine. And I said, "Let's go inland from there." As soon as I saw the [stars], he said, "You've got it." I said, "We need space, flat. And I'm sure I can get what I want. The earth moving costs will be small. We have to do it."

Stanley: 31:29

And so we drove over to the Orange River at Big Pine. And I said, "This is close to it." But he said, "Well, we got to go one more place." So we went all the way up to Mammoth then and looked at a place up there. This is where he actually had his honeymoon, Twin Lakes region up there, which is very beautiful. I said, "This is great." There was a wonderful meadow there. And then I, not knowing anything about California, started to make some inquiries and found they had 6-foot snowfalls in the winter. [laughter] I said, "That's out." So we tested the Big Pine site again on the way back. And when John came back in September, he was pretty busy and I said, "I got it." So we’ll go up right away. He was going out to a party on that Sunday night. So he drove up and [inaudible] let's go. And in the meantime anyhow, the parallel story that I'm telling you in series was the 30-foot-- we decided to go ahead with starting something at Palomar, just to get our names on the books and put it in the record that we were actually active. So I designed the 30-foot, 21-centimeter receiver to go with it. [inaudible] 21-centimeter receiver, we were on the air with that in six months, taking records.

Sullivan: 32:44

Right. Now, was Barry Clark with you by then? Or--

Stanley: 32:46

Yes. There was a group initially of-- Barry Clark had been an undergraduate at Caltech. He was definitely there. There was no question there. The problem in the early stages in getting students was that we were not recognized and we're starting-- how do you get students? So to some extent--

Sullivan: 33:11

You're competing with Palomar.

Stanley: 33:13

Not so much that, but competing-- we wouldn't get Palomar students that came in to work on Palomar. They're unlikely to be convinced that they want to work in radio astronomy.

Sullivan: 33:21

That's true.

Stanley: 33:22

People have never built a telescope, yeah? But there were people in the Physics Department, and I think in particular of the early students, there was Dan Harris and Barry Clark and then-- a particular group of three who I felt I never really could decide amongst them was Alan Moffet, of course, and Dick Read--

Sullivan: 33:53

[inaudible]

Stanley: 33:55

--and Bob Wilson.

Sullivan: 33:55

Bob Wilson.

Stanley: 33:56

Right. Ken came later. He was in the second tier of students. It's sort of been fascinating to me to see how those three in particular worked out because it was difficult really to decide amongst them academically. But the differences in their characters I think showed up later.

Sullivan: 34:17

Why was it that you got into 21-centimeter-- neither you nor John Bolton had this in your backgrounds.

Stanley: 34:26

Well, for one thing, I never do anything twice. I think that's as good an answer--

Sullivan: 34:33

Were you interested in then the results coming from Holland.

Stanley: 34:37

Well, there was no real reason. The real reason to get into 21 centimeters, I suppose, was it was the thing at that time. The line had only been discovered in 1951. I didn't think of that as a research project-- we never really thought of it as being very interesting as a research project but we felt we could publish. There's so much information on the 21 centimeters at that time, we felt we could publish something whereas we didn't have an instrument which would compete with the instruments which were coming online and continuing.

Sullivan: 35:11

[crosstalk] that could be done [inaudible].

Stanley: 35:13

It was just something-- the other thing about it was that I had certain ideas about how parabolas should be built after the little one back in Australia and then the 30-foot. And also, Temple was an ex-- being an aircraft and this time, instead of using tube like I did on that one, Temple said to me, well, Let's get an aircraft rivet gun. Temple always thought [inaudible] rivet it together so I got little mangles and riveted the backup structure together. But I was able to try out many of the ideas that they were able to apply to the 90-foot.

Sullivan: 35:44

So it was a good test [inaudible].

Stanley: 35:46

It was a good test for the 90-foot [inaudible].

Sullivan: 35:50

What was the relationship with the optical astronomers? I mean, Greenstein in particular is the name that comes to mind. Were they behind Bacher pushing him to do this or was that independent?

Stanley: 36:01

That's an interesting question. My feeling always was that Jesse, for one, was not behind it. I felt that. Jesse felt quite comfortable, I think, with what you could get out of the 200 inch telescope so he thought it was an unnecessary complication. I think the people who pushed the radio astronomy at Caltech were Bob Bacher, [inaudible], and Rudolf Minkowski. I'd say Walter Baade was pretty solidly behind it too. But besides that, it was sort of somewhat ho-hum. And I think I ran into that problem again later. I felt when I proposed a larger Owens Valley array and I got it through all the scientific committees with very high recommendations--

Sullivan: 36:56

This is now the 1970s [inaudible].

Stanley: 36:58

Yes. 1961 was when I proposed that.

Sullivan: 37:01

Oh, '61, okay. So that's--

Stanley: 37:03

'61. I got the proposals at home, I can show you. It was written in 1961 [crosstalk]--

Sullivan: 37:07

Really? And what was it going to be?

Stanley: 37:09

This was going to be a five-element array which is really the-- well, the Owens Valley itself, although there was a battle between myself and Green Bank, of course, about who was going to build what, but I always felt the idea preceded what went on at Green Bank on the VLA but--

Sullivan: 37:29

That's interesting. So this idea, however, was around for at least 10 years, right? It was competing in the early '70s, or late '60s with the upgraded Arecibo and [crosstalk] already.

Stanley: 37:41

Oh, sure. That was [crosstalk] trouble. Well, see, I got--

Sullivan: 37:43

So this is the genesis of that idea 10 years earlier [inaudible]?

Stanley: 37:47

Well, many people have asked me, and again, why wasn't it finally built? Yes, I wrote two proposals in the Whitford report, which was the first. It was recommended to be built, if you remember. In the Whitford report it’s number one, it should be built. No mention of large arrays. It was a five-element array of 130-foot dishes with the possibility of expansion.

Sullivan: 38:09

And all moveable?

Stanley: 38:10

Yeah, all moveable.

Sullivan: 38:11

And in any case, you were saying that when you did that, you didn't get full support.

Stanley: 38:16

I think that Jesse, of course, has great strength politically in astronomy, and I felt Jesse was never behind it.

Sullivan: 38:26

In '55, were you part of the Astronomy Department?

Stanley: 38:30

Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.

Sullivan: 38:35

Although you say Bacher ran the show, and he wasn't really part of [crosstalk]--?

Stanley: 38:38

I was the first Director. Well, he was a-- yes, he was. He was chairman of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy.

Sullivan: 38:45

Well, okay. He's over many departments [crosstalk].

Stanley: 38:47

Yes. Right. Right. Right. He was in charge of astronomy, which I said was of the radio astronomy, which was a sore point with John, and it wasn't until John left that I was appointed Director.

Sullivan: 38:58

Which was what year?

Stanley: 38:59

That was in 1960. So John had left, actually, and then they appointed me Director, and I felt I had inherited a sinking ship because there was nothing. Nothing had come out, nothing was published.

Sullivan: 39:10

Yeah. At that point, yes.

Stanley: 39:13

And, of course, that didn't look very good when the man who had originally been appointed had just walked out on the show and I could see my-- really, the man I owe, I think, most it was Arnold Shostak and he stuck with me [inaudible].

Sullivan: 39:26

I happened to interview him, by the way.

Stanley: 39:28

Oh, yeah? That had to be a gamble on Arnold's part.

Sullivan: 39:30

Yeah, yeah. Okay, going back to '55, this 30-foot dish we discussed. But what about the main instrument for Owens Valley?

Stanley: 39:41

Okay, well, ONR had never been told that they were going to build two large [inaudible] paraboloids. And John was very good at this with some fast footwork, and we talked about [inaudible] this is the way it's going to go. I can't remember the chronology of it. It was mainly John's idea now to go with the two dishes. I did say to him-- I saw the stuff he wrote. I said, "What are you buying me?" I said, "You asked me to design an instrument where you've got to get positional accuracies on 200 sources to better than half a minute arc." I said, "The literature on that is 10 arc minutes, not half an arc minute." I said, "Just sticking my neck out for you [inaudible]." But he wrote it up that way, the spacings and things like that were John's sole idea, not mine. So they got a design study going. Bruce Rule, and took over-- or rather Charlie Jones did the-- well, Bruce did the initial design and then started the detail design with Charlie Jones; he did a lot of work for us, various things. And we were at the stage where we would go out for bids and, of course, the bids-- I got them at home somewhere, and I forget the exact number what [inaudible] bid way over what the [inaudible], so some fast talking had to be done to sort of get the money out of ONR, and ONR came good. I think they came good with one first, and then they came good with the money for a second. Foundations came from other sources, so maybe he wasn't interested in real estate, so he had-- although some of it, I think, was sort of gotten in by the back door, foundations but--

Sullivan: 41:46

And they were built over what period?

Stanley: 41:49

The dishes, the first one, became operational late in 1958, because John was getting a bit mad at Bob Bacher because he wouldn't let him go and come to me. I don't think it was that so much because Taffy had-- I don't think John was being completely honest about that, because Taffy had offered John-- at that time, he said to John, when the 100 meters goes, you're going to be in charge of them, and so I don't know that John was being completely honest when he told me, I'm going in six months because I [inaudible] or something [inaudible].

Sullivan: 42:30

Yeah. But it also seems very strange for Bolton to have invested that much in developing the whole business, and then, although this was a very good opportunity, to leave it-- well, you said you were abandoning a sinking ship but--

Stanley: 42:42

Well, he did one thing. When he left, there had been some work come out of it. There have been some right ascensions, which John in the last had worked, really, for the last three months that John was there, and he took some of the right ascensions with him. We hadn't measured a declination at that time. We had an attempt [inaudible] declination, and John could be annoying when he was on top of the world. He was a beautiful guy when he was down. I loved John when he was down. [inaudible] this beautiful [inaudible] appreciate it. But when he was on top, he could be impossible. He has the arrogance of a shy man. He basically is a very shy person, but he handwrote me a list of things. He said, "Here, you're taking over it." He said, "If you're lucky, you can stretch this instrument out for six months," and somewhere I've got that list written down of the things that I should do for the next six months [inaudible] going.

Sullivan: 43:38

Then drop it?

Stanley: 43:40

Yeah. But I wasn't so concerned about that. I knew John. It's the old syndrome effect. If I'm going to leave the place--

Sullivan: 43:48

It can't be worthwhile, right.

Stanley: 43:50

It's not going to--

Sullivan: 43:51

But still, I mean, you say he had done something for two or three months, but there was a lot of potential there coming along, and I guess--

Stanley: 44:00

Well, I told him that. I said to John, "You're mad." The thing was, really, he really felt strongly about the battle with Pawsey. I said that everybody was on Pawsey’s side. John wasn't. But unlike Taffy, John was not a cold person. He was a very emotional, very warm person [inaudible] and that hurt him [inaudible] very deeply, and it was a scar he carried ever since that day he came into my office and said, "I'm out of radio astronomy," and probably carries it now. I said, "Why do you want to go back to that for?" God's sake, I said, "It's an emotional mess. You're walking into something which is going to last more than a lifetime now, [inaudible] what's happened in the last few years, particularly when you do this instead of going back." And I think it was just more of that with sort of rather an unthinking sort of sense of vindication. He would have done a lot better with his team.

Sullivan: 45:00

Yeah. Okay. What were the results in the first –

End tape 147A

Begin tape 147B

Sullivan: 00:01

Okay, this is continuing with Gordon Stanley on 12th August, 1981. In the first three years of Owens Valley, what would you say are the primary scientific results that came out of it?

Stanley: 00:12

Well, I think those three years were probably the most exciting of any time in radio astronomy, or should have been. But to me, I think I was getting a little bit stale. I mean, I'd seen so much-- I'd seen so much which I thought was impossible, but there's no question what the most exciting things were in those seven years. Brightness distribution work of [inaudible] and [inaudible], the identification work, and it's pretty hard to pin anybody down on that one. Although I felt myself I was in a bad position. The identification work caused a lot of problems at Caltech because [Peter Munsch?] said to me-- Peter was very much a realist, and he said to me, "Gordon," he said, "I'm not getting into this identification business." He said, "I can see all these people falling over themselves to become famous." But I had to resolve so many battles over the identification business that it became very unpleasant.

Sullivan: 01:18

Do you mean scientific battles over the correct identification or how much confidence you could have?

Stanley: 01:23

No, who got credit.

Sullivan: 01:25

Oh, who got credit?

Stanley: 01:26

Who got credit for what? I mean, they were sort of being handed out like [crosstalk]--

Sullivan: 01:30

The positions were being handed out.

Stanley: 01:32

Right. Right. And also the attitude too at Caltech was that the people who used the 200-inch were the people who were far more important, and that's how I felt that some of the radio-- well, I wasn't involved in the identification per se myself at all. I felt badly for some of the other people who were actually doing the work at the Owens Valley.

Sullivan: 01:53

Like Tom Matthews and--

Stanley: 01:55

Lots of people like that. Some of the [inaudible] down there on the road on some of that stuff.

Sullivan: 02:01

But these were all-- well, we were talking about the important results. So the identifications--

Stanley: 02:10

The planets, of course--

Sullivan: 02:11

--the Jupiter--

Stanley: 02:12

--the Jupiter business, the Venus, of course, as well. Jupiter was a continuing story for a number of years, and -

Sullivan: 02:22

What about the question of-- we've already brought the point that they were movable, but Earth's rotation synthesis was not being thought about. It was simply a matter of getting a visibility curve, is that correct?

Stanley: 02:35

Yes.

Sullivan: 02:36

It has been said that Caltech should have jumped on this in '60, '61. They had it there and they missed the chance, essentially. Do you agree with that?

Stanley: 02:49

No, I don't agree with that. I think anybody who's made that criticism, it's made without looking at the facts. We did jump on it. As I said, there was a proposal put out in '60, '61 for an instrument that would have done, which was recommended by the Whitford committee. The money was never forthcoming. I would say rather, I don't know why, and at least a number of people have asked me why it wasn't forthcoming, but it's not clear whether it was opposition within Caltech, which tends to be a [normalcy?] sort of society, or whether it was some difficulty with the government funding that project.

Sullivan: 03:34

But, certainly, that would have been a much more easier system to do this, but with two dishes one can do the synthesis also, right? I mean, it was not necessary to--

Stanley: 03:46

Well, I think that criticism is absurd because within the limits of the sensitivity of the system, that's all the system was doing in the years between '61 and '66, it was doing synthesis. And there's lots of papers published wish to prove it as well.

Sullivan: 04:02

Yeah. I guess not--

Stanley: 04:04

It was not extended.

Sullivan: 04:06

Yeah. I see what you're saying. It's not directly earth rotation in the sense of looking at the source for 12 hours and putting it all together, but you were taking cuts, many different spacings, many different angles, and trying to understand the structure of the sources. It just wasn't quite put together in the same fashion as it was in Cambridge. Do you think that's fair to say, or?

Stanley: 04:29

Yes. But I think the contributions of the Owens Valley in that period were as great as Cambridge's work. Cambridge got an entirely different sort of thing. I mean the double source story, which was extremely important, took a heck of a lot of telescope time, the identification, which was equally important, just as much telescope time. It was nearly impossible to get time on the telescopes in those days. They work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was difficult for me to even find observers. We were not a national facility. We were supplying--

Sullivan: 05:06

Well, you mean operators, professional operators.

Stanley: 05:09

We didn't have professional operators for any students. We were not a national facility, and yet we got the largest fraction of the national budget in astronomy at that time. So I just don't think it's a valid criticism. It doesn't make sense. And we put in a proposal to get in a larger system which we never got the money for. We got one dish, 134-dish.

Sullivan: 05:33

The double sources are interesting. Is it fair to say that through the late 50s, you had Cygnus A. You had Centaurus. Those were two known doubles. But it was not recognized at all that this would be a general class of thinking.

Stanley: 05:48

Oh, no. Not a question. I mean, that was sort of out of the blue. The two stories came together. Manchester came out with a statistical picture that sources would double, that the [inaudible] showed indeed that it was a function of sources that show where the identification center should be and things like that. I'm amazed at that criticism.

Sullivan: 06:12

Well, I've heard several people say it. And to me, it's a bit of hindsight.

Stanley: 06:17

Well, I will say I'm resentful this time that-- they say Caltech should have jumped on the bandwagon. I suppose it's a personal criticism for me that I didn't raise the money to get the extra instrument. That's what I needed. I mean, I argued violently. But we were passing through a political period at that time, and I guess we were going even more that way where people who know me know what I did at that time that there was a move towards national facilities and at that time it seems as the right thing. But as many people have said that Pasadena contains a very small angle when viewed from Washington.

Sullivan: 07:02

I've never heard that.

Stanley: 07:05

And, of course, the same story. I can make that same criticism more validly over the Palomar Observatory or the Hale Observatory because the Hale Observatory sat there very complacently for years. Nobody's likely to build anything specific, which is large, and it's as powerful as [inaudible] went all of a sudden here was Kitt Peak with a much better start, with a much better engineering start. And I kept on hammering away at Jesse and the other people there and saying, "For God's sake. You got to upgrade your engineering telescopes and black boxes as far as just sitting there." But they did after a while, and then they got a bit of a disaster. And I don't know how they're going now. But I believe now they're doing a lot better.

Sullivan: 07:42

Yeah. Well, but you're talking now about 70s, I guess when you say they did that for a while. That's another thing that I've heard several comments on. This always amazed me is the incredibly low level of electronic backing, so to speak. And Hale Observatory is--

Stanley: 07:59

That's correct.

Sullivan: 08:00

even despite the fact they had the radio observatory as an example.

Stanley: 08:02

Well, they didn't like us in that way. And I kept on telling them that they needed it, but they sort of smugly said, well, they didn't really smugly say anything. They were quite happy to keep on going and not realizing that they were being passed by a much smaller instrument.

Sullivan: 08:16

Yeah. [inaudible] plates and so on.

Stanley: 08:18

But then there was the other problem with Carnegie Institute of course, too. It had a policy of not accepting government funds. Which I think was reversed finally during the administration of Horace Babcock.

Sullivan: 08:31

Yeah. Okay, one final question, a general one, which actually sort of relates to what we're saying now. What do you see as the major impact of radio astronomy on astronomy as a whole up until this era, now, in the early '60s? Either in terms of techniques or astronomical knowledge. In other words, sort of the big picture. How has it really changed?

Stanley: 08:55

Well, I suppose you want me to come up with an original comment on that. I'm not going to be very original. It's very obvious.

Sullivan: 09:03

I want your opinion, that's all.

Stanley: 09:04

But the major impact of radio astronomy is on cosmology. When I first came to Caltech, one of the earliest people-- when I was working in that period on Palomar Mountain, Milt Humason who was sort of carrying on the heritage of Hubble, who he had been a protege of, was using up huge slabs of 200 inch time looking at field galaxies in the hope that one of them had very large redshifts. There's no question in the connection between astronomy and radio astronomy. That's the most important factor of the whole lot. And I don't think-- as I commented just a few minutes ago, to some extent it hurts a little bit that the optical astronomers themselves don't seem to realize that. Astronomy is an experimental science. Radio astronomy is an experimental science. It took a great deal of technology to get the precisions, and innovations to get the precisions that we realize now. Sure, it's a technological matter now, it's just a matter of telling a person how to do it, and you do it. But it wasn't. You had to get there first.

Sullivan: 10:14

Yeah. Are you speaking in the present tense when you say that optical astronomy still has an attitude today? Or were you talking about--?

Stanley: 10:21

I was talking about then.

Sullivan: 10:23

Yeah, that's what I wanted to talk about, my time. Yes. So I really get the impression then that you felt there were two camps. I mean, it was they and us.

Stanley: 10:32

No question. It wasn't a question of feeling it. It was that way.

Sullivan: 10:36

Right. And even someone like Minkowski--

Stanley: 10:39

No, Minkowski was not like that at all. Minkowski and Baade were not like that. I went to at one stage-- when you were talking about what Caltech should have done. Well, I made a lot of moves on that. And as I said, I went through all the committees, and one of the things I thought of finally-- I thought, "Well, heck. I feel this division between the optical and the radio astronomy." So optical astronomy is a gentleman's game-- or was a gentleman's-- it's no longer that way. That's one of the things that's changed, and I think Kitt Peak has probably done that. They feel this is sort of rather scruffy area. It's sort of a bit suspicious like when Jesse went to look at Reber's installation. A little bit suspicious of what these guys do, they're somewhat charlatans. But I thought, "Well, it's only sensible," I thought, "by having this trouble, why not put the radio observatory under the control of the Hale Observatory?" So I went to Ike Bowen. I just said, "Okay, I don't want to particularly be director of-- I'd like to see this go. I think they have to build this instrument if you want to stay there. There's a point where you're over the hill." [crosstalk]

Sullivan: 11:50

And then what year was this?

Stanley: 11:53

Gee, when did Ike-- must have been the last year he was-- the last year he was director before Horace took over. It very shortly before he retired as director. So you can pinpoint that.

Sullivan: 12:04

But this was after you were Director, so this is after Bolton left?

Stanley: 12:07

Sure. Well after Bolton.

Sullivan: 12:08

Oh, I see, so this is late '60s?

Stanley: 12:10

Bolton never had-- John never had that power to do that. That was the whole point.

Sullivan: 12:13

You had a different terms of reference in that.

Stanley: 12:17

Well, I was Director. I was [inaudible] completely autonomous.

Sullivan: 12:21

I see.

Stanley: 12:22

I was answerable only to the program [inaudible].

Sullivan: 12:24

And Bolton's title wasn't even Director?

Stanley: 12:27

No.

Sullivan: 12:29

Oh, I see. So the chief scientist, who was that?

Stanley: 12:31

[Bacher?] was principal investigator.

Sullivan: 12:35

Oh, I see.

Stanley: 12:36

There was a principal investigator and [Bacher?] was it.

Sullivan: 12:38

Oh, I see. Okay, well, unless you think there's something else that you'd like to speak to--

Stanley: 12:44

No, I'm not [crosstalk] there's something else.

Sullivan: 12:46

We have covered it very well. Thank you. That ends the second interview with Gordon Stanley on 12th August 1981, at the URSI in Washington, DC. The first one was held seven years ago in 1974 at Owens Valley. It would be interesting to compare the two, to see how they come out.

End tape 147B