petri dish

arrows to atoms: 1957 and all that

I came across a large display model of this stamp a while back and got curious about it: I'm an historian of science at the University of Oklahoma, and the whole "arrows to atoms" motif as the state's semi-centennial motto came as a surprise to me. Not ever having thought of my adopted home state as particularly nuclear (next door New Mexico, on the other hand, yes!) -- especially as a key marker of state identity -- I wondered what the connection was. The advance of military technology from one form of indigenous American offensive thrust to a later version? New ways of picturing "Boomer Sooner"??? A timely shout-out to 50s rocker extraordinaire, Wanda Jackson -- Oklahoma's gift to rockabilly and female sass -- whose 1957 rendition of "Fujiyama Mama" was a cultural high point? (sample lyric: Well you can say I'm crazy, so deaf and dumb! / But I can cause destruction just like the atom bomb!). For more, see the always on-top-of-it conelrad, in their "Atomic Platters" section (and to hear the song itself, listen to this radio track.)

It turns out that this was one of the promotional themes for the Semi-Centennial Exposition, the Oklahomarama -- where you could visit the "Foodarama," a "Motorama," an "International Photorama," and "Soonerama Land," according to the encylopedia at the Oklahoma Historical Society: you just knew Oklahoma was on the verge of something big with that many "ramas" going on, right?  But what about the atoms? That had a newsy hook -- the award of a 16-ton "nuclear reactor for teaching purposes" to Oklahoma State University -- but it also seems to have had a more expansive interpretation as well, that of crossing the threshold of two "frontiers": as the New York Times put it, "an arrow, to represent Oklahoma's redskin frontier, and a variation of the familiar emblem which symbolizes atomic energy, to suggest 'new frontiers'" (March 24, 1957, p. 135). There was a special exhibit on "The World of Tomorrow" that featured atomic power, and the atomic spirit was made concrete in the form of a 200-foot tower (an arrow pointing upward to: tomorrow? space? heaven?) with a silhouette of Oklahoma's border contained within a giant (outdated) solar system model of "an orbit of golden atoms" which lit up at night (this and more described in the May-June 1957 issue of Oklahoma Today, the Semi-Centennial Souvenir edition.)

It turns out that the emphasis on atomic power was more than just a clever way to hitch Oklahoma's wagon to a radiant symbol of the new horizon, but that the wagon was being driven by corporate and civic leaders who were certain that Oklahoma could capitalize on the changing scientific landscape and get in on the ground floor of a new technology that would bring wealth and prosperity to an undercapitalized state, one of the new kids on the block: hence the creation of the "Frontiers of Science Foundation" in 1956 by Dean A. McGee (of energy industry giant Kerr-McGee -- they were the first oil company, in 1952, to mine uranium and they were the nuclear leader in Oklahoma); E.K. Gaylord, the powerful media boss and publisher of OKC's family-owned newspaper, the Oklahoman; Stanley Draper, manager of the city's Chamber of Commerce; and James E. Webb, who had ties to Washington DC due to his stints as U.S. Director of the Budget and Undersecretary of State under President Harry Truman, currently Chairman of the Board of Republic Supply Co. (a division of Kerr-McGee). The Foundation sponsored a "year-long, full time, all-expense-paid refresher-type-course seminar for high school science teachers" and "was first in the nation to go into a statewide testing program to identify youngsters of outstanding ability," reported an article in Oklahoma Today in Spring of 1958. They explained to their readers that this group, driven by a "strange, new, fascinating vision of a New West and the New Frontier of the Mind," had flown around the country making contacts, soliciting advice, and that there was:

"hardly a major nuclear plant, research center or policy-shaping government body in America which hasn't been literally overwhelmed by this 'big bunch of men from Oklahoma' who came dropping in out of the sky to ask the questions the scientists have been so eager -- and fighting so much public apathy elsewhere -- to answer."

Given the Foundation's mission, it is clear how pleased they were to focus the Semi-Centennial Exposition around their aims, which included a "Frontiers of Science" exhibit of their own and an International Science Symposium. The souvenir Oklahoma Today issue noted with pride that "an actual replica of the Earth Satellite, a model of the Vanguard Rocket to be used in launching the famed satellite, and a Solar Battery in operation" would be key draws for the Frontiers of Science exhibit. The Exposition was scheduled from mid-June through early July of 1957 -- after reading about the Vanguard display, I figured it must have been an incredible let-down a few months later to hear about the US being pre-empted by the Sputnik launch in October of that year, and then of the inability of the US to get a satellite up to answer Sputnik and then Sputnik 2 -- the Vanguard attempt blew up on the launch pad, prompting jeers of "Flopnik" and the like.

But that would be to underestimate the boosterism and savvy of the FofSF bunch! They argued that Sputnik --  "the greatest challenge facing Western Civilization" -- was not to be feared, given that the good guys in white cowboy hats had everybody's back:

"Some have wondered why, after Sputnik went up, President Eisenhower happened to select Oklahoma as the site for his sole major address away from Washington to reassure a worried nation. It was no accident. It was basically a tribute to a small group of Oklahomans who had quietly started three years previous, well in advance of any other state, to fuel up a rocket-powered wagon train out of the New West."

Because of the activities of the FofSF:

"half-a-hundred of the [scientists] whose names have since become almost as familiar headliners as Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield had come flying into Oklahoma from all over the globe for an endless series of lectures, conferences, inspection tours. Men like Dr. Vannevar Bush, considered the 'father' of modern American science; Dr. James R. Killian, M.I.T. president now President Eisenhower's top scientific advisor. . . [all of this had become so common that] the recent visit of one of the greatest scientists of his age, Dr. Niels Bohr, hardly provoked more among the general public than a pleasant nod of recognition. Where a few years back he might have been classed in the same category with a man from Mars, he was now viewed simply, with respect, as one of the 'home folks.'"

I would have liked to have seen a comparison by our state's leaders of where we had landed in terms of our aspirations from the Semi-Centennial to the just-celebrated Centennial. I'm sure that back in the '50s and '60s the efforts of the FofSF helped to identify individuals to help staff a new scientific workforce (and certainly all of this seemed to help James E. Webb, who ended up as the head of NASA), but how it all worked out educationally for future generations seems a mixed-bag from my end. Certainly, I've taught a number of students who had innovative science teachers in high school, but I've heard earfuls over the years from the majority of students who have a long list of grievances about how deficient their science classes were. Maybe 1957 is not so far ago, after all.

And then there's a little matter of a note that President Eisenhower made in that national security speech in OKC, where he called for Americans to close the education gap with the Soviets. He stated that:

"Young people now in college must be equipped to live in the age of intercontinental ballistic missiles. However, what will then be needed is not just engineers and scientists, but a people who will keep their heads, and, in every field, leaders who can meet intricate human problems with wisdom and courage. In short, we will need not only Einsteins and Steinmetzes, but Washingtons, and Emersons."

We hear much the same rhetoric in these parts today about the need for better science education, in pursuit of economic competitiveness and national security. Not so much, however, about the need for Emersons. Maybe that was too radical for 1957. . . and for today.

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For more: The city of Tulsa felt left out of all the atomic celebration hoo-ha in OKC, and came up with a twist of their own for a Tulsarama celebration: they would bury a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere [classic photo here] and assorted memorabilia in an atomic-attack-proof vault, to be dug up later for Oklahoma's Centennial celebration in 2007. When the car was retrieved last year, it turned out that two feet of standing water had rusted the car straight through [must-see photo] -- guess it wouldn't have survived a nuclear explosion! (A film reel of the American Petroleum Institute's promotional video, Destination Earth did make it through, though -- here's the scoop. All this via Telstar Logistics, a whole adventure in itself.)

Images: The postage stamp image can be found at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oklahoma_1957_Statehood_Stamp.jpg .

the space race and the dark side of the moon: saying good-bye to roger boisjoly

In class last week we were talking about what it means to live our lives in an age of science by looking at everyday ways in which assumptions about science and technology become part of the "common sense" background to "what everyone knows." It's this background against which new information and events are absorbed, deflected, or judged. We looked at the famous "Duck and Cover" educational video from 1951 (featuring an animated "Bert the turtle") that taught baby boomer kids what to do in case an atomic bomb exploded nearby, and viewed a recent smartphone ad that deftly illustrated a theory of technological determinism in 30 seconds. And we also looked at myths from the Challenger disaster that linger on 25 years later (related post here). 

All three of these artifacts are instances of manipulating the perceptions of those on the receiving end, but the sky-high costs of the conventional wisdom relating to the Challenger disaster is one that reverberates most portentously. This was brought home to me once again in the news that Roger Boisjoly, one of the Morton Thiokol engineers who had argued against launching Challenger, had died last January. I had met Mr. Boisjoly in July of 2000, when I brought him out to OU to speak to our NSF REU on Human-Technology Interaction, as part of the Ethics Workshops I designed for the engineering, computer science, and social science undergrads with whom we were working. Mr. Boisjoly's story was well-known to me as someone teaching topics in science and technology studies. But his work on the Shuttle as an engineer intersected with my regular-person life as well, and was also a factor in why the ethical aspects of the space program (engineering and otherwise) was something that I spent time exploring. 

Growing up in southern California in the 1960s, we kids came by a "not a big deal" attitude toward the space program because it was embedded in the regional culture. We were used to playing outside and watching vapor trails cut across the blue expanse above us, and hearing window-rattling sonic booms that suddenly split the air, as test pilots hurtled far above the ground somewhere off in the distance. NASA missions would splash down in the Pacific ("our" ocean), and when the space shuttle program was being tested and then deployed, landings often occurred at Edwards Air Force Base. Of course one could play at space at Disneyland, with Rocket to the Moon (although most of us kids loved Tomorrowland best for Autopia, where we could finally take the wheel and cruise the open road: independently conquering terrestrial space at high speed was what we really wanted to do).  And swooping and soaring and radiating "Googie" (space age) architecture was everywhere, in the coffee shops where we had breakfast on vacation, at the gas stations where our parents fueled up, and at the places where we went to for fun like bowling alleys and movie theaters. Theatrical architecture entertwined with the space program in a more somber form as well: within swimming distance off the shore at Long Beach were artificial islands (which were actually oil rig sites,  elaborately concealed behind structures that looked like hotels with waterfalls and palm trees and colored lighting at night), which commemorated the deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts -- Gus Grissom, Edward Chaffee and Ed White -- who had been killed when a fire broke out in the command module during a launch pad test in 1967.

Most of us had relatives and/or neighbors who worked in the aerospace industry at places like Rockwell, JPL, and TRW (one-third of the nation's aerospace engineers worked in southern California by the 1980s, and the industry employed a total of a half-million people). In my family it was my grandfather on my mother's side, Robert B. Barnes, an antsy high school dropout from small-town Ohio who was gifted at working with machines (he was a race car driver in the 1920s). He ended up in LA, becoming an employee at Menasco in Burbank in 1940. That's a picture of him from Menasco's annual report in 1946, which featured his story of rising from a lathe operator (.95/hr pre-war) to a position as an "experimental machinist" (1.90/hr), and about how he had been rewarded by "a committee made up of his fellow workers and management representatives" for a "suggestion he submitted for improving the handling of one of the parts of a landing gear." It was Menasco, in fact, that would later be the company that designed the landing gear that made it possible for the Shuttle to touch down on the ground upon re-entry. A small part of my grandfather's mind and hands had gone into the eventual developments that allowed each Shuttle journey to regain physical contact with home.

 Aerospace engineering was not simply about rockets to the moon, of course; we knew as well that such efforts were directly entangled with the much larger defense industry -- after all, that was what had made southern California's economic sonic boom possible during World War II. Tied into the cold war arms race, the duck-and-cover drills we practiced in elementary school were also part of the space program: missile technology could deliver thermonuclear weapons to our doorstep as well as power spaceships to escape the earth's gravitational pull. If somehow this fact escaped notice, Harvard-trained mathematician and singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer broke it down for everyone on the 1965 song, "Wernher von Braun" from his album That Was the Year that Was: "'Once the rockets are up / Who care's where they come down? / That's not my department', says Wernher von Braun" (Lehrer was a staple on Dr. Demento's locally-produced KMET radio show, which began in 1971 and was a Sunday evening ritual). Selling the moon through feel-good media p.r. didn't obscure the fact that the ride to get there was propelled by "establishment" logic that also fueled an increasingly unpopular war in Indochina -- and anger at the establishment was increasingly on display at such historic events as the 1970 student riots in Isla Vista at UC Santa Barbara.

What was it like to be an engineer during such turbulent decades, when pressures converged from multiple sources, and with such high stakes in play? How had the engineering profession, the political, defense, and media establishments, and American society adapted in the aftermath?

Was Challenger tied to Apollo 1 and could it happen again? It was questions like these in addition to Challenger itself that we put to Mr. Boisjoly, who answered as many as we could manage to ask, with patience and candor and an intense desire to convey to the students how hard it is to maintain personal integrity within organizations in which accountability is diffused and complexity impairs clarity. In the end, just as it was necessary for such high-risk endeavors as the space program to engineer redundant safeguards into critical hardware and software components, so did we need redundant social practices that ensured that ethical decision-making would not encounter catastrophic failures. It was in working this through in conversation with Mr. Boisjoly that it became clearer to me that the Challenger failures were not due to proximate causes alone (what was or was not said or done in the night before the launch, or even in the years of working on the o-rings), but they had deeper roots that stretched back to the emergent years of the cold war itself. In the end, we were all implicated in Challenger's failed mission.

In overseeing his visit and meeting with Mr. Boisjoly in those few days he was here at OU, there was no escaping the overwhelming sadness that he carried with him. He spoke softly for such a large man, and carried himself in a way that displaced as little space as possible. It was hard not to feel that each time he went over his presentations about the Challenger events that he was re-living them, the pain and anguish and frustration and anger right there: about the horrifying outcome, about what he saw as the betrayal of his management colleagues to insist that the criteria be shifted to the contractors proving it was unsafe to fly rather than the onus being on management to prove that it was safe to fly, and about how he could no longer work as an engineer after he was seen as being a traitor to his colleagues for bringing files to light that had been kept from investigators (whistle-blowing). He said, however, that reaching out to the next generation was the best way of having the world make sense again.

Mr. Boisjoly was in occasional contact by email, and a few years later I was thinking of finding a way to bring him back to campus, but then the Columbia disaster occurred in 2003. I knew I could barely imagine what that must have been like for him; although he had been dubious about whether NASA had truly absorbed the lessons of Challenger, there was always the possibility that the costs that had been paid by all involved would result in such an event never happening again. And now that possible future was lost forever. I wanted to write to him, but I never found the right words, and was too worried about intruding and causing harm. Perhaps what I've written here is some small substitute for what I should have been able to manage then. I hope that now that Mr. Boisjoly has "slipped the surly bonds of earth" that he is at last at peace.

student anthropologists: through the looking-glass

I always look forward to the final project papers for my Science and Popular class -- watching the students take the wheel and report on their topics always turns up different angles and additional dimensions of the class for me. The projects take in a wide swath of territory, including (as just a few examples) high-spirited analyses of mathematics in Hollywood movies (Stand and Deliver, Good Will Hunting, Mean Girls, Proof and more), to nuanced explications of science fiction stories new to me (this time, of Ursula K. Le Guin's "Newton's Sleep") and to explanations of the popular culture moebius (s)trip that is Futurama -- an animated series that depends on its audience's sophisticated grasp of pop science even as it contributes in its own ways to science and popular culture.

I found a subset of papers that were especially intriguing, though, for their format: future professional scientists (in primatology, paleontology, and neuroscience) reflecting on their observations/interactions with members of the public in settings related to their professional scientific interests (a zoo, a natural history museum, and a science center).

The future primatologist set out to observe visitors at the Oklahoma City Zoo, and found himself reflecting on the differences between his own responses to the zoo as a child and as an adult, and then noting when the responses of the visiting children and adults diverged in certain situations. Outside the snake house, one of the snake handlers brought out a boa constrictor, and within three minutes 25 kids had touched the snake, but only 5 adults. This wasn't due simply to kids being more "hands on" than their elders: when he visited the aquatics area, an equal number of adults and kids had physical contact with the seals. Later, over at the gorilla display, "the [Gorilla] babies brought up an interesting topic that caught my eye. . . the adults were more fascinated with the baby Gorillas than the children were. The reason this caught my attention was due to the fact that most of the time children are more fascinated with babies, not adults." He wasn't sure what to make of all of this, but I bet he'll think about it from time to time. I like students leaving the class with answers; I like it even better when they leave with questions (especially self-generated ones!) as well. It gives me hope that a little piece of the class will travel along with them once we've all said good-bye.

Now, his visit to the zoo's "Great EscAPE" was more than just one stop on his itinerary -- as he finally revealed at the end of the paper: "I want to tell you why the Gorilla exhibit is my favorite part of the zoo. This is the whole reason why I am attending college and studying to become a Zoologist. I want to become a Primatologist and study Gorillas." It was here that he found himself out of sympathy with the zoo's visitors, much to his surprise, for it seemed like the public had trouble knowing the proper term for the Gorillas. He decided to sit at the entrance and record what happened: "I observed twenty-five people total, and out of the twenty-five only five people (three kids and two adults) called them Gorillas," instead speaking of them as "monkeys." A small point, you might think, but he was stunned, as he reported back: "Those numbers were a shock to me." This kind of loose talk grated on his burgeoning professional sensibilities; a few years earlier and a few years closer to the public side of the public/professional divide, and he might not have been bothered by it, let alone have noticed it.

The future paleontologist set off to interview visitors to the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, and he had his own unsettling moment, in some of the responses to his request for them to "Describe what you think of when you hear the word paleontologist" . . .  for when "some people answer that they do not even know what a paleontologist does it is a shock to me." Taking a more activist approach than the silently observing primatologist, he reported that "You can believe that I took that opportunity to educate them on the basics of what a paleontologist does." The ones who answered "Sam Neill" or "the guy in Jurassic Park" got to slide by :-)

Some of his respondents were fanciful, as with "one kid [who] said that he saw a T. Rex eating a paleontologist because the T. Rex did not want to be found," or "the little old lady" who was visiting the museum because "her grandkids call her an old fossil so she figured she'd come in and see the family." Speaking of dinosaurs and how they viewed them when they were children, one adult woman "said that she was always fascinated by them and actually wanted to study them, but got a little boy crazy and that quickly changed. Another woman said that due to religious beliefs she was not allowed to like dinosaurs." Interesting little bits at the intersection of science and popular culture that you don't know about if you don't ask! In his discussion of his interviews, the future paleontologist frequently switched back and forth from describing his interviewees' ideas to recalling his own early encounters with paleontology (it was seeing Jurassic Park when he was 11 years old that inspired his interest in his future profession). It was interesting to see him grapple with the idea of whether he could still be both a member of the public and a non-member of the public at the same time.

The future neuroscientist was staffing an exhibition table at the Oklahoma City Omniplex Science Museum as part of "Brain Awareness Week" (organized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, and locally coordinated by the Oklahoma Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience, "to advance public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research"). His table featured the "human brain station," which presented:

three human brains that have been donated for scientific use: a whole human brain complete with the outer meninges, a brain with a cutaway exposing internal anatomy, and finally a brain from which the brainstem and cerebellum have been removed from the cortex. . . [I discovered that] the brain as an icon for science elicits a wide range of responses. My favorite of all of these, however, happened when two couples approached the table. As the women recoiled, the men went through the 'who is more macho' routine, looking and sounding just like the younger boys who try to persuade their buddies with 'double-dog dares'.

He noted that this was a repeated theme:

when asked 'Do you want to touch a real human brain!?' . . . Most children respond[ed] with a resounding 'Wow!' or 'Cool!' and fight over the box of gloves in an attempt to get the first finger on the wrinkly pink mass. Other children simply disappear behind their parents' legs, silently answering me in the negative. More often than not, these children are girls.

Our exhibits are gender neutral; we don't tie pink bows around some brains or strategically place male or female volunteers. Our explanations do not vary from child to child. However, it seems that the idea of science being a male pursuit still seems to influence scientific interest. Sometimes, the parents seem to foster these values. 'You don't want to touch a yucky brain do you?' says one mother to her daughter. Conversely, boys who are afraid to touch the brain may be admonished by their fathers,'What's a matter? Don't be a sissy. Go touch the brain.' And this is where boys and girls begin to learn about how they should -- or should not -- interact with science.

In a fascinating turn of events, even as he was an observer of how attitudes were being formed about what is and is not appropriate in approaching science, he found himself in the uncomfortable position (uncomfortable because of his heightened awareness of himself as both an observer and as a participant) of administering lessons as an expert on the proper relationships between scientists and the lay public. Two incidents in particular caught him off guard:

After they began to touch the brain, one of the men asked me a question. I had practiced my demonstration several times, and as a future neuroscientist, I felt confident that I could field any question the 'uninformed' public could throw at me. This man, though, threw me a curve ball. 'So, uh, d'you believe in that whole evolution thing?' the man asked. I froze. Of all the questions I had been asked about where the brain came from or which part of the brain controlled what, I was completely taken aback by the seeming randomness of the question. I knew how I answered could have an effect on how these people perceived science. What's more, I felt torn between the desire to defend biology's most powerful theory and sidestepping the social landmine that this man had planted. His question and my reaction are indicative of the larger cultural battle between evolutionary theory and recent fundamentalist Creationism alternatives. That the image of the brain can serve as the catalyst for the dialogue, however, still continues to amaze me.

The second incident related to his observation that personal values often surface when "parents may redirect any of my mini-lectures over an exhibit." Who knew it would happen at the pig-eye dissection table? There:

an older man interrupted my explanation of the inner anatomy of the eye to offer, 'You know, they say the eyes are the windows to the soul.' I again got a little defensive, hoping that I could somehow steer the conversation back into the realm of the scientific, replying 'Well, uh, yes. If you look here at the back of the eye, you'll notice the optic nerve, which transmits all the information from your eyes and sends it to the brain to be sorted out.'

"Granted," our brain expert remarked, his response "was not as poetic as the old man's account, but I felt like the romantic aphorism needed to get" -- in his memorable phrase -- "a swat of science." In the end, he suggested, "the man and I played the roles of dry empiricist and artistic poet battling it out for the right to explain nature."

I'm always quite grateful that the students are willing to take a leap of faith with me that studying this science and popular culture thing will prove to be worth their time and effort, given that we're exploring an area that still exists off the map in any kind of meaningful way for most historians of science. To see students willing to begin reflecting on their own scientific images and go through the looking-glass -- well, it was a real privilege to share some of their glimpses. And who knows where next semester's students will go? I can't wait to find out.

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Image: A John Tenniel illustration from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.