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Ardently voicing these concerns, Shapley convinced Hale that the so-called debate should be more of a discussion, “two talks on the same subject.” And instead of forty-five minutes for each speaker, as originally posed, Shapley asked for thirty-five. “My sympathies are with the audience, always,” he argued. “Could it listen to or endure nearly two hours of nebulosity?” Curtis was dismayed by this suggestion; he firmly believed he needed more time to lay out his scientific arguments. “We could scarcely get warmed up in 35 minutes,” he pleaded with Hale. After a while, they all compromised at forty minutes. And there would be no rebuttals. “If you or he wish to answer points made by the other, you can do so in the general discussion,” Hale told Curtis.

Shapley and Curtis were each paid an honorarium of $150, out of which they paid their travel expenses to journey from California to the East Coast. For Curtis it was $2 for the stagecoach to San Jose, then another $100 for the round-trip railroad ticket. By chance both Shapley and Curtis took the same train out to Washington via the southern route, but they agreed not to hash out their ideas ahead of time in order to keep their arguments fresh. When the train broke down at one point in Alabama, they got out and walked around for a while, keeping their conversation focused on flowers and the classics. Shapley didn't forget to collect a few native ants. In all likelihood, they were also, silently and unobtrusively, sizing up their competition.

The annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences that year extended over three days. During the daytime sessions, a number of outstanding scientists presented talks. Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology, spoke on “growth and development as determined by environmental issues,” and rocket pioneer Robert Goddard advocated the use of rockets in weather forecasting. The “debate,” however, took place on the cool and showery evening of April 26, 1920, at the end of the conclave's first day. The audience of around two hundred to three hundred gathered in the Baird Auditorium of what is now the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History, prominently positioned along Washington's national mall directly across from the Smithsonian “castle.” In a news report the day before, the Washington Post announced that “Dr. Harlow Shapley, of the Mount Wilson solar observatory, will discuss evidence which seems to indicate the scale of the [Milky Way] to be many times greater than is held… Dr. Heber D. Curtis, of the Lick Observatory, will defend the old theory that there are possibly numerous universes similar to our own, each of which may have as many as three billion stars.”

The proceeding started at 8:15 p.m., and Shapley was the first to speak. He had been right to be nervous; two friends of Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell—George Agassiz, a member of the Harvard astronomy department's visiting committee, and Theodore Lyman, chairman of its physics department—were in the audience to size him up. But Shapley came prepared. He made sure that Russell, still a valuable supporter of his cosmic model, was in the audience to back him up during the discussion period.

What exactly happened that night—the tenor of the speakers, the reception of the audience—is largely guesswork, based on the limited evidence left behind. Recollections of the event are riddled with false memories. Shapley, for instance, recalled an interminable banquet beforehand with honored guest Albert Einstein whispering to his table-mate that he “just got a new theory of Eternity.” But the conference dinner was the following night, and the noted theorist of relativity didn't make his first visit to America until the following year. However, Shapley did save the typescript of his talk, complete with last-minute scribbles (some in shorthand, a talent honed in his reporting days), which revealed his style and manner. Given the diversity of his audience, many not schooled in astronomy, Shapley chose to avoid technicalities