The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [16]
Keeler, by this time, was getting restless back in Pennsylvania. The mighty iron and steel mills in the Pittsburgh area were expanding, dirtying up his sky even further with the black soot of their coal fires. And, though he was noted as the country's most able spectroscopist, Keeler was more and more hampered by his tiny 13-inch refractor, a telescope originally built forty years earlier for amateur viewers. Its aging lens absorbed the higher wavelengths of light—blue and ultraviolet—which limited him to work primarily in the yellow-red region of the spectrum. To make matters worse, his former assistant at Lick, William Wallace Campbell, had arranged for Lick to get a new spectrograph (an instrument that not only disperses the light into its constituent colors but records the spectrum as well). It was being built in Pittsburgh, and Keeler had agreed to test it out before it was shipped to California. The experience made him realize that it would soon be impossible for him to compete with Lick, especially since a great economic turndown, a depression that started in 1893 and lasted for years, had dried up sources of funds to expand his facility and raise his salary. Holden's firing came at an opportune time for Keeler.
In the search for Holden's replacement, a number of names came into play, including the venerable Simon Newcomb, George Davidson, who had originally coaxed Lick to fund the observatory, and several senior Lick astronomers. Keeler was added to the mix as a dark horse but soon became a favorite among the more progressive university regents. They wanted someone young, someone with impressive credentials, who would help the University of California achieve first-class status. Keeler won the vote by 12 to 9, Davidson coming in second.
Hearing that they might lose their director, Allegheny Observatory supporters launched a last-minute effort to raise enough funds from the Pittsburgh elite to build a new edifice for Keeler, one equipped with an imposing 30-inch telescope. Poems were even written and printed in local newspapers to boost the cause:
“Stay with us, Keeler,” so they say,
“And twice as much as Lick we'll pay.”
Wherefore perchance he'll not resign
But stay and keep our stars in line.
If the full amount required had been raised, Keeler would likely have stayed, not wanting to be disloyal to a town he had come to love. But the campaign fell short (to the relief of his wife, who longed to return to the sunny climes of the West Coast). Yerkes Observatory, in Wisconsin, home to the newest record-holding telescope, a 40-inch refractor, also made him a job offer but could not guarantee a permanent staff position. Keeler, anxious to advance both his research and professional career, at last telegraphed his acceptance of the Lick directorship to University of California officials. It was a time when the United States was finally emerging from its deep economic depression. Hope and optimism were on the rise, as the nation was attaining status as a world financial power, at last surpassing Great Britain in overall worth. Highways were being paved with asphalt, and cities brightly glowed at nighttime, awash in electric light. Telephone and telegraph wires lined urban streets like thick, artificial spiderwebs. Keeler's vocation was carried forward on the swelling tide.
Keeler went back to Mount Hamilton, or the “hill,” as it was affectionately known to its residents, on June 1, 1898, seven years after he had first departed for the East Coast. There he found his new duties resembling that of a small-town mayor.