The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [100]
Hale's recurrent psychiatric episodes gave rise to the popular myth that he sometimes hallucinated during these breakdowns, literally seeing a little “elf” who would advise him on the conduct of his life. Helen Wright first recounted this tale in her noted biography of Hale, referring to the specter as Hale's “little man.” Expanding on Wright's account, other authors began to use the word elf. The legend is rooted in a letter that Hale wrote to a friend, in which he refers to a “little demon” plaguing him. Psychiatrist William Sheehan and astronomer Donald Osterbrock have made a good case that Hale only intended the demon to be taken figuratively, not literally, as the personification of his depressions, much the way Winston Churchill referred to his “black dog” when facing a bout of melancholy.
In the end, Ritchey carried out Hale's orders concerning the imperfect glass. Gritting his teeth and complaining all the way, he initiated the grinding and polishing of the flawed disk in 1910, an arduous task that was finally completed in 1916. Over those six years, the disk was figured to exquisite perfection. The curved glass surface was subsequently coated with silver, transforming it, at last, into a true astronomical mirror. All the while, the materials for the mounting and dome—every bolt, rivet, and steel beam—were laboriously transported up the mountain by truck. The nine-thousand-pound mirror went up on July 1, 1917. To Walter Adams “there was more publicity…than was desirable” during the event. The Pasadena police had received word that there might be trouble on the road. As a result, the bridges were guarded, and deputies accompanied the mirror to the top.
Full view of the 100-inch Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson
(AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)
The Hooker telescope got its first trial exactly four months later in the midst of wartime, which resulted in the 100-inch's assuming the nickname of a famous German howitzer—the “Big Bertha” of light. Among those present on that first evening of November were Hale, Adams, and the British poet Alfred Noyes, then visiting Pasadena as a university lecturer. Hale, as director, was the first to climb up the black iron steps to the observing platform and look through the eyepiece at the chosen target, Jupiter, then brilliantly shining in the nighttime sky. To his horror, he saw six overlapping images of the planet rather than one. The mirror was somehow distorted. Was it a physical defect—the numerous bubbles indeed wrecking havoc, as Ritchey had warned—or merely a temporary warping, caused by workmen having left the dome open that day and heating the mirror? “To add to the gloom,” recalled Adams many years later, “news of the great disaster to the Italian army at Caporetto had just arrived, and I remember our sitting around on the floor of the dome speculating on whether Italy was completely out of the war.”
After waiting many excruciating hours for the mirror to cool in the nighttime air, trying but finding it impossible to sleep at one point back at the Monastery in their spare rooms, furnished only with bed and desk, first Hale then Adams returned to their cathedral of brass and steel at around 2:30 in the morning. Jupiter was now out of reach, so the night assistant swung the telescope around, its massive weight smoothly rotating with little friction because its bottom supports floated in tanks of mercury. The scope's new target was the bright