 October is Archives Month, and so in honor of Archives Month, we have Dr. Joe Bassie here today. He is a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He is also a retired Air Force officer, scientist, and historian, I believe in that order. He is also publishing a book with AMS due out probably about this time next year, which will be using a lot of historical photographs from the NCAR Archives. So he's been here doing research for two days now, and I've learned a great deal from him. And I hope you will too. He's what I would call now my resident expert on Walter or Roberts, even though he's in California. I will be hitting him up for help when I have reference requests. So without further ado, Dr. Joe Bassie. Thanks. Well, thank everybody for coming. I appreciate it. There are other things you all could be doing. So it's nice that some people are interested in history, especially scientists. I'll do respect. Sometimes scientists, they're a little bit ahistorical. But actually, I think this is interesting. The story I try to tell in my dissertation is about how science came to Boulder. And if you're aware of the history of Boulder, you know, Walt Roberts was a key player in that. So a lot of what I do in my dissertation as Walt Roberts kind of at the center. It's not a biography of Walt, but he was a convenient vehicle with which to study locally, things that happened in Boulder in the 40s and 50s, but also to study scientific U.S. science policy and how it evolved from the 30s through the early 60s. So that's kind of what I try to do in my dissertation. Just one small editorial note before we get into this. I'm with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University slash Worldwide. Worldwide is the virtual campus. So basically, I can teach anywhere I have Wi-Fi. That's kind of what the worldwide means. We have a physical campus in Daytona Beach and another one in Prescott, but I am not on those august faculties. I am on the worldwide faculty. Okay, so why don't we get into this? This needs no introduction, actually, in this audience. In many audiences, this does need an introduction, but obviously the NCAR building, you all know UCAR and NCAR and maybe a little bit about its history. So one of the things I want to explore today, and I'm happy to keep this in kind of a seminar-ish format, is because many of you knew Walt or knew of Walt or his work, so we can have a dialogue as we go on. I'm not big on pontificating. How did Walt Roberts, who's a solar-trained astronomer, wind up as the first director of the United States' first and largest Center for Atmospheric Research? I mean, that's a question that almost begs an answer. How does an astronomer, especially back in the 50s, when disciplines are very well-defined, very well-mapped out, wind up being the first head of the National Center for Atmospheric Research? So this is Walt Roberts. Many of you know him. By the way, I'm not Walt Roberts on the flyer. A number of people have said, this doesn't look like you. I said, that's not me. That's Walt Roberts. Okay, but in any event, here's Walt Roberts up on the mountain in Leadville, so we want to talk a little bit more about Walt and what he was doing. So Walt was always very interested in what he called the practical applications of astronomy. Now, if you took a public opinion poll and asked, what's the most or what's the least applicable or practical science, many people would say astronomy for astrophysics, and I'm one of them. I was trained as such. So, you know, I'm not throwing rocks outside the building here. So basically, Walt believed that there was a way to make astrophysics practical, and Walt's vision was basically through meteorology. He began early in his career. It was early 1940. He was co-author of a paper in effect trying to correlate events on the sun, solar activity, with weather events here on the earth. So this is the sun-weather connection. So Walt was, from the beginning in his graduate school days, had this idea in his head that sun-weather connection is a way to make astrophysics, solar astronomy in particular, useful to society. That's an important thing to know. Where did this come from? He in part picked this up from his mentor, Donald Menzel, Harvard astronomer. Walt went to graduate school at Harvard, studied under Donald Menzel, who's a noted astronomer of that era of mid-20th century. And Walt basically picked up this idea that Donald Menzel used to get funding from a person named Henry Wallace, who at the time was Secretary of Commerce, later goes on to be Vice President. And the ploy, or the argument was, if we can predict solar activity better, we can predict weather better. Therefore, we can improve agriculture. So, and there is a long stream of this thinking that the sun-solar activity affects daily weather, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. So, what do you call this discipline of sun-weather studies? To use some sociology of science terminology, sometimes this is, I think it's fair to call this an intercalated discipline. Any chemists here know what intercalation means? I had to look it up, too. I'm a physicist, not a chemist. But this is borrowed from chemistry. It means to fit something in between. And so, in many ways, what is sun-weather, what do you call sun-weather study? Is it meteorology or is it astronomy? Is it geophysics or is it some combination thereof? Where does it fit into these disciplinary structures? So, we can kind of further break this down. Well, it's kind of an aspect of solar terrestrial physics where we get the sun-Earth connection. And then, specifically, the sun-Earth connection. Under that, we would form the sun-weather connection studies. So, from early in his career, Walt Roberts was a person who was working in this intercalated or this borderland discipline. That was not astronomy, was not totally meteorology, but was in between. And remember, Walt is not a trained meteorologist. He is an astronomer, studies solar astronomy, comes out here to run the original coronagraph up on the mountain. So, Walt's got the idea, let's do sun-weather connection. All right, now, some of you may know this, but often I have audiences that don't understand this sun-weather issue because they say, of course, the sun affects whether you have seasons. Well, that's not what we're talking about. So, well-established is tilt of Earth's axis that causes the seasons. I read about a year or two ago that half of Harvard students don't know why that's why you have students, so why you have seasons. So, take that for what you will. I make sure my students know why you have seasons and it's not distance from the sun. Then you have another well-established effect on climate, the Milankovitch cycles relating to various aspects of the Earth's orbit around the sun. More speculative are the connections between solar activity, things like solar flares, geomagnetic storms, what we now know, coronal mass ejections, which I studied 30 years ago with Bill Wagner, if anybody remembers Bill Wagner here. And the issue is, do those day-to-day variations on the sun, although embedded in the solar cycle, do they affect things like climate or day-to-day weather? Now, we have solar constant, which seems to, after 30 years of observing from space, seems not to be a major issue. Although Charles Greeley Abbott, who was director of Smithsonian for a long time in the early 20th century, believed that there was a variation in solar constant that affected a lot of this research for a long time. And then solar activity, again, the day-to-day variations due to solar cycle, are their short-term day-to-day weather changes. In the 19th century, this was called sunspottery. And this was picked up, maybe through people like Abbott, to Menzel and then Roberts. So that's what we're looking at when we're looking at Walt Roberts' sun-weather connection work, is not the other things. We're looking at the day-to-day variations on the sun affecting day-to-day earth weather. Now, this talk and my work is not to verify or not verify this relationship. And it's problematic in current meteorological thinking. But the issue for us is that Walt did use this. And this was his entree, if you will, into the world of meteorology and atmospheric science. All right, so the problem, how do you make this esoteric subject, astrophysics, practical and direct quote from Walt is to get a demand and a constituency for this. So the rhetorical strategy he used was link day-to-day concerns that concern everyone, that's another Walt quote, in common language. Everybody understands the weather. Nobody does anything about it that old saw. All right, so he wanted to really push hard on this sun-weather connection, tapping into probably the thinking of people like Lockyer and then more relevant to him, Charles Greeley Abbott, when they use similar approaches to actually fund solar science. So this is not just a theoretical exploration or investigation. This is Walt Roberts thinking two steps here. One, make it practical. And if it's practical, I can get money to fund this work, right? So here we're tapping into this whole issue of how is science funded and how does it vary over the decades? So the pitch, this is direct quote from one of Walt's letters to a possible donor, is from researchers of this sort will come information of vast importance. And the last, if present indications continue or borne out, this will be of great importance, right? So this was his approach. Now the question you might get is, did it work? Anybody want to offer an answer? It worked. It worked at least to the point of keeping what is HAO going for a while until more or less Sputnik augmented by some government and happy to say Air Force funding. So who did he get to accept this line of reasoning in the 40s and 50s? The airlines, aviation companies, paper mills? Why do you think paper mills would be interesting? They grow trees. They want to know what's going to be the climate for trees, right, efficacious tree growing. Distilleries, grain, camping, equipment, manufacturers? There was actually one proposal for HAO and Tom might be able to talk more about this and actually be bought out and become a subsidiary of a camping equipment company. Rather than, I'm not making this stuff up. It's all in the archives. Blame Diane and Kate. Or it's in Walt's papers at CU. David Hayes blamed him. But it's in there. Say again. There you go. And various other entities. So it is actually quite amazing, I think, how good Walt was in using this, certainly meteorologists would say even back then this problematic connection between sun and weather to generate funds for his work. This idea was at time sort of mainstream. This is William Herschel, perhaps the greatest observational astronomer of the early 19th, late 18th century. And he was one who advocated of the idea that the sun variations affected earth weather. And he was actually studying wheat growth in England at the time. So this idea goes back at least 200 years to established well-known scientists. So Norman Lockyer, who's a great solar physicist of the 20th, sorry, late 19th, early 20th century, the person, one of the people who discovered helium in the atmosphere of the sun basically was a big advocate of the idea of a sun-weather connection and actually used it at times to try to get funding from the British government to support solar research. So Walt actually had distinguished predecessors in what he was doing, not to mention Menzel, his mentor. This is a direct quote. The 11-year period is not one to be neglected. So this is one you could go out and tell your friends and see how it works. This was from a Smithsonian report in 1900. So he was a very aggressive believer in this idea of the sun-weather connection. Hey, just jumping up a little bit, there's Donald Menzel on the left. And that's Walt Roberts on the right. This is from 1954. All right, you can't answer Tom or anybody who was here at my talk seven years ago. Who's in the middle? Condon. Good. Edward Condon, who were the triumvirate who brought the National Bureau of Science, sorry, National Bureau of Standards lab to Boulder in the early 1950s. Although in my dissertation, I roll in another shadowy character, Senator Big Ed Johnson. And according to documents, I found that the university library here at Archives, he was a lot more influential in what happened here in Boulder than any of these folks would care to admit, especially Condon, who said it was my idea to bring it to Boulder. Well, that's not what Senator Big Ed Johnson said in a sworn affidavit years later. So, and you can go look at it. And his chief of staff put in another sworn affidavit saying that's not what happened. So, you can read it in my dissertation. Oh, sorry. All right. So, what was Walt looking at? Many of you have seen these sorts of pictures before. It's a prominence using coronagraphs and then later other types of instruments, radio astronomy to look at the sun and again to try to link solar activity to weather phenomenon here at the Earth. It wasn't all difficult up there in the mountains in the 1940s. It's Walt and Janet in front of the coronagraph building. Hopefully, that's not how we usually got to work, but I'll take DC traffic over that to be honest with you. All right. So, Roberts crosses the border, these borders or creates sort of advances, this intercalated discipline. So, by necessity, enters the world of meteorology and atmospheric research via sun-weather studies. Even though these were controversial, by doing this, Roberts gets to know people in what community? The meteorological community. He has a very good reputation with the U.S. Atmospheric Science Committee in the 1950s, a U.S. meteorological community, sorry, in the 1950s. And he's authored a number of these papers on sun-weather connection, sometimes alone, sometimes with other folks. And he's actually helped organize conferences here and in other places like Air Force Cambridge Research Lab on sun-weather connection studies. So, this is not an offshoot or some weird study that just occurs when nobody's paying attention. These were big deal things that Roberts was involved with at the time. So, for instance, one of the things he pushed for a while was the influence of solar activity on upper atmospheric low-pressure systems in the North Pacific. So, he wrote some papers on that. So, I argue that Roberts by the late 50s had become bilingual in these cultures, the astronomy culture and in the meteorological culture, atmospheric science culture. So, he is able to navigate this borderland successfully. He's not a trained meteorologist, but he's developed a confidence within the meteorological community of his abilities to think about meteorology. So, what's the result of all of this? Well, NCAR, UCAR is created. Does anybody know what the trigger to create UCAR, NCAR was in 56, 57? It was a report. So, don't disparage committee reports. They can lead to some good things. It was the Orville report. Does anybody know about the Orville report? The Orville commission. Basically, Orville was a meteorologist, I think first name, Howard, I have to check that, who was tasked by Eisenhower to look into weather control. So, a big reason for the existence of UCAR and NCAR was weather control. And you can read the whole chain of events in my dissertation slash book when it comes out. So, basically, once you create NCAR, you have to find a director. There was a short list. Does anybody know who number one was on the list? James Van Allen, right? So, Van Allen, you want to move from Iowa? I won't say anything about that decision. And then, for various reasons, there were other people on the list. Roberts was one. According to Roberts' own recollections, he did not really want the job initially. He was talked into it by the then president of the University of Colorado, Quig Newton. You got to love these names, right? It was J. Quig Newton, former mayor of Denver who took over here. So, that's what I kind of argue. Then, soon after, or about the time this is happening, we get the International Geophysical Year. This is a poster of the era produced by the International Geophysical Year U.S. Commission, which shows the sun and earth. Hey, get it? The sun-earth connection, like the big mural in the building up on the hill, right? So, sun-earth connection is something people are very interested in. Not just sun-weather, per se, but the sun-earth connection in Toto. And that was a big driver for the International Geophysical Year. So, Boulder slash Roberts are in a good position to take advantage of that. And at this point, Roberts has well established himself within the meteorological community. So, he's able to exploit that both for what he would argue was the good of Boulder and then I would argue for the good of Walt Roberts. He got to do something very interesting and at this point kind of segues almost totally into the administration of atmospheric science. So, he's successfully navigated these cultures over a few decades so he can communicate cross-culturally. He's known as an effective administrator at this era at this time. National Academy of Science specifically wants cross-fertilization into atmospheric science. Now, intercalation is a chemical term. Cross-fertilization is a biological term. The idea was after this Orville Commission produced its report was that meteorology wasn't going anywhere. There weren't any significant problems that were being attacked. So, weather control was one issue but more broadly than that people were concerned policymakers that meteorological studies were not bringing to use the quote and I apologize the best men to the field. So, the idea was it might be good to have somebody who's not a meteorologist head this center. That's one of the reasons Van Allen was on the list. At this time is the Cold War, of course. In 57 you have Sputnik. I found a document in Jerome Namayes' papers at the U.C. well Scripps U.C. San Diego basically that talks about the forecast gap that not just was there a missile gap with the Russians or Soviets not that there was just a education gap we weren't going to leave the meteorologists out there was a forecast gap. So, besides weather control we needed an institution that would attract quote the best men and would help reduce this forecast gap with the Soviet Union. And they were related because part of the weather control was who understood weather better and who could forecast better so that's the forecast gap. So, again, Roberts winds up on the short list and eventually he becomes the first director national center for atmospheric research. So, I think this is kind of an interesting story the way this plays out and again you can learn a lot by looking at the career of Walt Roberts. It's a famous picture of I.M. Pei and Walt sitting up there on the hill. The architecture is unique. Do you know why the architecture is unique? My friend Bill Leslie at Hopkins has written some on the architecture of the NCAR building. This reflects or to use a 30 cent word is a reification of what Walt Roberts thought science should be how it should be conducted. It kind of looks like a monastery or medieval castle. That's the way Walt wanted it. Areas where lots of people would bump into each other but ultimately you were sort of in your cell not jail cell, your monkish cell thinking about whatever problems you were thinking about. So, this was very much a manifestation of what he wanted NCAR to be. He also personally picked the site. And so what's unique about NCAR? I mean the building. And it's up on a hill, right? Everybody know American history? Who originally talked about city upon a hill? John Winthrop of the Plymouth Colony. By the way, Walt Roberts grew up about 20 miles from Plymouth. So, NCAR is a city on a hill for scientific and atmospheric studies. And it's kind of a convent. Or not convent, a monastery for these kinds of activities. So, this is very much the manifestation of how Walt viewed science to be and it's a direct result of his interest to make astrophysics applicable by meteorology. The other interesting example is Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde. He took pay to Mesa Verde to show him the kind of architecture. So, it's a monastery as well as a Cliff Palace. Exactly. And people have written about that. I should add, Kim Malville was, the last time he and I had a discussion was about 30 years ago. So, I was happy he was able to come here. And I think we talked about history of astronomy just to segue a little bit. My interests are obviously eclectic and in part because of people like Kim who influenced me during my education because I love solar astronomy. I was a space weatherman in the Air Force but people like Kim kind of indicated to me that there were other ways I could still play in astronomy and space science but do history, which I've always loved. So, thank you for that, Kim. All right, so what does this show us? First of all, the difficulty of navigating subcultures. This is not done a lot. Obviously, Tom is a person who has done something like this but it's because of the way we structure universities, departments, academic disciplines. This is not done a lot. And it is froth with problems if you try to do it. So I think Walt was at a good point in time to be able to do this successfully. I don't know, at least as of today, I would suggest Walt's career as an academic path for new scientists to take. These sorts of unusual arrangements in science can often come from the need to solicit support. So again, the idea that Roberts used the Sun-Weather connection to get funding to run HAO until government largesse opened up after Sputnik. And then the question of interesting offspring disciplines. When I was doing space weather and as Tom has done in the past, it was often hard for me to explain what was I doing because it's not really astronomy, it's not really geophysics, the classic question, there's weather in space. So it is an interesting question in terms of the epistemology and sociology of science on what do you really call solar terrestrial physics? And Tom and I talked about this at AMS is why has there not really evolved a discipline of solar terrestrial physics? It's people that are in other disciplines that kind of play in that pool and then go back to their own disciplines. By the way, who tried to create a discipline of solar terrestrial physics? Walt, Department of Astrogeophysics, which probably came from Menzel too. But the idea is this specifically focus and train people to focus on sun-earth-connection studies. That was the whole point of the Department of Astrogeophysics. And anybody know what happened in 1983 when I was at school? Department of Astrogeophysics went away and became the Department of Astrophysical, Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences. I called it the Department of Everything. So that's an interesting issue where there was some backward motion in terms of, let's say, discipline formation of a true solar terrestrial physics discipline. Could I just comment on another alternative name to astrogeophysics was suggested by Sydney Chapman which is Heliogeonomy. Whoa. So it's interesting, even linguistically, people are still trying to search for ways of expressing what happens in this realm in terms of weather. In this case, in the sense of trying to make it understandable to people. So we talk about space weather and in this particular blurb I have here, space weather being associated with tornadoes. So there always seems to be this urge to kind of take weather terms and apply them to space, I think in part because of this notion of trying to make astrophysics, space physics, applicable and understandable. So not quite the same as what Walt was doing but kind of, I think, broadly in that vein. So that's kind of the overall story. I wanted to segue a little bit. My dissertation's not just about Walt and what we just talked about, it's a lot about Boulder and what happens in Boulder and why. So this is a picture I just got today from the National Institute of Science and Technology and basically this is the crowd that showed up in September 1954 when President Eisenhower dedicated the NBS Labs which was mostly Central Radio Propagation Lab which was the space weather predecessor to the Space Weather Prediction Center. So one of the themes in my dissertation is that Boulder people had a lot to do with science coming to Boulder. First with the CRPL move and then later on with the Blue Line Amendment to put the building up on the hill. And so this time Boulder citizens voted with their pocketbook by making donations to buy land to give to the government to entice the government to locate the NBS Labs here in Boulder as opposed to another front runner with Charlottesville, Virginia for instance and I think Stanford, California. So that's one of the themes again in this story and Walt Roberts is up to his eyeballs in both of these activities but especially this one. So I thought this was an amazing picture. Now of course President Eisenhower's part of the draw but still for the population of Boulder at that time to get a crowd like this is pretty significant I think. So my dissertation kind of takes apart unpackages some of this and what was going on and what really happened behind the scenes both with this and the Blue Line. But I thought you'd find this picture interesting. So with that I've been talking about 35 minutes. Don't want to keep people longer than they really want to be. So any questions or comments? You know I know Kim has history here and some other view. I knew Walt a little bit in passing. I never thought I'd be writing about him 30 years later. Funny how life goes. But it's partially your fault Kim. So forget me into the history thing. So any questions or comments or dialogue? As I say I'd like to kind of keep this in kind of a seminar type format. As long as I've been mentioned I might as well. Sure, sure. The other person who was trying to make astrophysics practical was Carl Kiepenhoier who Walt identifies as being one of the great influences in the establishment of the chronograph at climax. And Kiepenhoier in the late 30s was able and throughout until about 1944 was able to impress the Luftwaffe. Right, yep. That solar physics was necessary for success of the war effort by providing predictions of radio signals to guide German planes to bomb England. And Kiepenhoier established a series of chronograph stations and solar observatories throughout Europe with that in mind. But the interesting thing about Kiepenhoier is he really outfoxed the Third Reich because all that time he was really doing basic solar physics and had really no interest at all in the war effort. And finally in 1944 the Luftwaffe made a cost-benefit analysis and they discovered that solar physics was not benefiting the Luftwaffe at all. Sure. And Kiepenhoier was dismissed from his position. On the other hand, Roberts was doing, as you know, Kim, work for the government. He was providing solar data to what was then the predecessor to the Central Radio Propagation Lab. I think it was called the Interdepartmental Radio Propagation Lab then back in D.C. And as a result, Roberts's Ph.D. dissertation in 1943 when it was approved was born classified. It was one of the first scientific documents that was actually born classified. And then eventually declassified. But yeah, this was seen to have military value and as a former Air Force Base weather person, you can see it still is deemed to have value. So thanks for that. Roberts was not the only person doing solar observing during World War II, I think is the takeaway. Any other questions or comments? Yes. You've held the directorship of Venkar and the presidency of Yukar. Was he director of Venkar before he was the Yukar president? Or did it happen simultaneously? I think, Tom, maybe you know that. Didn't it happen when I think he was not the first president of Yukar, right? But I think pretty soon he assumed both hats. It's somewhere in that realm. I don't know the exact dates. But certainly his influence was major on the location of Enkar. As Diane and I searched, the committee that basically formed Yukar-Enkar and then went about trying to find a location for Enkar told congressmen that they were scouring the nation looking for a good site for Enkar. Well, when it came down to it, once they picked Roberts, Roberts said it's either going to be bolder or you're going to have to get somebody else. And he actually said that. So we couldn't find much evidence. There was this nationwide scouring to try to find other locations. Then in the papers of Alan Waterman, does anybody remember Alan Waterman, the first head of the National Science Foundation, long time head, I think 10, 12 years. I found a memo from Dixie Lee Ray. Anybody remember Dixie Lee Ray, governor of Washington State, who actually was a trained biologist. And she was an assistant to Alan Waterman in the early 60s. And she wrote this 100-page memo basically saying, the short quote is, meteorologists have pulled one over on us talking about the establishment of Enkar. So I think we're far enough into Enkar, Yukar that we're safe now. But that was a document that she was kind of the IG for the NSF. And so part of her portfolio was to look into what had been funded and why. And so she was actually quite adamant that this had been done in not standard channels, the creation of Enkar. And so I would argue the hero, if hero or goat, depending on your view, would be Earl Dressler. He was the NSF person that really pushed for Enkar and pushed for Boulder. And I've got documents in my dissertation or I quote documents where Alan Waterman is going to go testify before Congress and he's getting cold feet. And so Walt Roberts and some other people have to call him to buck him up. So it all has a happy ending, I guess. But this is all documented in either Walt's papers at Yukar or Walt's papers here at the university. So things were different back then. So, yeah, Diane. Well, a little up to Dixie Lee Ray, she felt that Boulder was very concerned about Denver kind of extending its tentacles up to the border, the county border, for water. And they wanted to have a presence in some Boulder. A lot of people didn't know what to do with that Mesa. A lot of ideas. Drive to the theater, hotel, finicular training, going up to the center. And that's why the blue line was created to keep resorts and things off the Mesa. And that's why almost immediately they had to vote on an amendment for Enkar to fulfill Robert's vision of the city or the lab on a hill. Any other questions or comments? Yes? Well, it was about four to one in favor. So I have not heard that... I mean, it's possible, but nothing I've seen said that people had buyer's remorse. Yes? Basically, it moved too fast without enough, let's say, oversight. And it was Earl Dressler just kind of pushing things through. It was not obvious to her that what was proposed was really needed. The discussion was between a central lab facility versus funding universities more and beefing up local laboratories like one of my alma maters, Penn State. Matter of fact, I think it was Eric Wexler was the president of Penn State, was very upset about the Enkar coming here. And they actually had to... Walt and another person contacted, I forget the name, it's in my dissertation, a professor at Penn State to go talk him down and tell him this would benefit everybody, don't worry about it. So this is why history is fun, is you get to see behind the scenes all this stuff when you start getting into the archives. Unfortunately, Senator Big Ed Johnson destroyed all of his papers except this one file that was handed to me by David Hayes at the University of Colorado. Probably he was an interesting guy and we'll leave it going that way. He was twice governor of Colorado and long-serving senator, so I'm sure he had his things he wanted to destroy. So, yes? I've always heard that the... I would say in general it's true in that there were lots of issues that arose during World War II, especially forecasting in the Pacific where you didn't have lots of data points, that I think encouraged meteorology, atmospheric science in the post-war years and especially when the Cold War started. And my friend Christine Harper, who's a former naval weather officer, was extensively on the origins of numerical modeling in the post-war years, so I recommend her book to you. But it was also interesting to read after the Orville Commission this sense that people, good scientists were not going into atmospheric physics, that the more interesting problems were in straight-up physics or astronomy astrophysics. So that's an interesting story in itself there, which I don't pursue a lot just trying to focus on getting my PhD and not being a student forever. But it's an interesting issue. A fellow who just passed away, Flegel, what's his first name? Robert Flegel. Yeah, in his memoir, he takes kind of a backhand swipe at Roberts because he says the fact they picked Walt Roberts to run NCAR shows basically how few viable candidates there were. He said it, not me. You can look it up. I guess he had issues with Walt later on in the 60s and 70s about how NCAR was run. So there's little sour grapes there. But that was a comment he made and there might be some truth to it. Roberts had become known besides being interested in meteorology as an able scientific administrator and fundraiser through HAO. There were no major meteorological organizations at that time. So if you think about it, Flegel's backhanded compliment probably had some truth to it that even some of the noted meteorologists of the time really didn't have any experience running anything more than a department or a small lab. So there is some truth to that. But again, through his son, Weatherwork, I think Roberts situated himself nicely to do something like this. Now, he never saw it coming. I mean, a lot of things after Sputnik kind of happened. Quig Newton, I don't know if he used this quote on Walt, but like the quote from Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, where the quote is, there's a rising tide in the affairs of men and that you must ride the tide. So certainly Walt did that. He rode the tide. And he never quite lost the genetic urge to seek funding from private donors. So he was still very much an old-fashioned scientist in that way. Even though he kind of switched tunes after Sputnik because HAO was having issues. And Walt Roberts said, Sputnik saved us. That's a direct quote. But he always still had this urge, this old-fashioned urge which you see a lot in early 20th century astronomy that funding should come from private sources. And a lot of that's still true of most disciplines I would think maybe astronomy still gets relatively large amounts of funding from private sources like Keck. Any other questions? Yes, ma'am. Right. I don't... One of the interesting things for me was given that was a major reason for the creation of NCAR. How quickly it went away. I mean, there were mandatory reports to the Congress for a while. But even Walt, once this place is up and running, they're not doing much for quote-unquote weather control. The argument quickly became, well, the way we do weather control is understanding the atmosphere better, period. And so it went in that direction fairly quickly except I think for the mandatory reports to Congress. So in that sense, I think we're back to Dixie Lee Ray where it was... There was this established reason for creating this place. They said they were going to do this stuff and now they're just kind of doing what they want. There is a tide in the affairs of men. When you just ride the tide. And I think at this time in the United States, I think there was possibly the height of the Cold War from late 50s to mid 60s. And I think you're seeing it was let's just fund it. We got to beat the Soviets at X. And you put in X, space, gone to the moon, oceanography, meteorology, no more forecast gap for us. I think that was a lot of the impetus among decision makers in Congress and other places. As you may know, just as an aside, Eisenhower didn't want a human space program. And I don't think it was Eisenhower, I think it's chief of SAFs, but it might have said that he didn't want to play an interplanetary basketball game. Firsts of that. So it's kind of interesting. And as you may or may not remember or know, John Kennedy beat Nixon successfully in part on the missile gap, which never existed. And on some of these other gaps, which we now know never existed. And there's strong evidence that John Kennedy knew they didn't exist, but he was a politician. Any other question? I'm happy, I guess we'll have a little reception. I'm happy to continue. Diane. They still do Russia and China claims they can do climate modification. But again, like sun-weather connection studies, that's kind of for another issue, another talk. But one of my research is now as I'm looking harder into the history of sun-weather studies. Because when I was at Penn State in the 70s, nobody was I shouldn't say nobody was laughing at it. People were smirking at it, but nobody was laughing at it. And I think people still have sort of an open mind. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought. No. But to me it's a fascinating question in the history and sociology of science and in part because of I think what Walt found interesting is that it does kind of start bringing in various disparate disciplines. And Walt was I don't want to make this like Walt was just doing this to get money. I mean he really believed that science should, from everything I've read he's written, should have practical helpful applications for humanity. And I think he saw this as one way to do it. And oh by the way it also helped with funding. So I think we're almost on our hour, but again we can continue chatting and if anybody would like to follow up but I've got business cards and all that good stuff and Tom and Diane and Kate know how to get me. Thank you.