The Universe, 1879-1949

CELESTIAL, TERRESTRIAL

Five years later, wearing acid-shredded overalls in an MIT laboratory, Abbot the graduate student was introduced to an intimidating man in a silk hat named Samuel Pierpont Langley. Langley, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, told the young physicist that he would indeed like to see Abbot's experiment, "but I regret that my engagement will not permit."

Thc following day, a surprised Abbot received an offer of $1,200 year for a position as an assistant at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), in Washington, D.C. He had not heard of the observatory, but he accepted the job anyway and took another train, this one headed much farther south. He arrived in the capital at the height of summer, only to find Langley abroad in Europe and the temperature in the sheds where he was to work climbing to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Twelve years later, in 1907, Abbot was appointed director of the SAO, and, in 1928, upon the death of Charles Doolittle Walcott, he became the fifth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Ironically. a significant part of Secretary Abbot's work would be to resolve controversial engendered, directly and indirectly, by the man who had hired him 33 years earlier. Langley's incorrect measurement of the solar constant, for example, had hung in scientific doubt for years. At the SAO, Abbot had worked on Langley's bolometer and galvanometer, improving the accuracy of both instruments. After Langley's death, he expanded operations at the SAO and successfully corrected the solar constant.

Abbot sought clear skies for his observations, and set out to find them. On Mt. Wilson, in California, he proved that the methods of measurement he had perfected were not affected by the altitude at which the observations were made. Physically vigorous, Abbot also visited sites for observatories on mountains ranging from Harquahala, in Arizona, to Brukkaros, in Southwest Africa; Mt. St. Catherine, in the Sinai; and less satisfactory prospects in Argentina and Chile.

Abbot worked for most of his life measuring and recording the effect of solar radiation on cyclical climatic conditions, as well as its influence, through photosynthesis, on terrestrial biology. In 1929 he established the Division of Radiation and Organisms, which later became the Smithsonian Radiation Biological Laboratory and stayed in operation for nearly 60 years. Abbot's strong belief in the existence of a relationship between fluctuations in solar radiation and climate patterns and his consequent attempts to predict the weather ultimately brought criticism.

On another front, the Secretary tried to improve relations between the Smithsonian and the surviving Wright brother, Orville. From the beginning, Abbot had entertained doubts about Langley's flying machine, and he disagreed with the way the Institution had handled the reconstruction of the 1903 Aerodrome during the Walcott years. He wrote candidly that Langley's "method...was to make rough trials at once, to improve the method as experience dictated, and at length reach the final dispositions as the result of correcting this or that detail." In other words, Abbot thought his friend and mentor had avoided thoroughly studying the details before launching tests, which led to repeated failure.

The dispute between the Smithsonian and an embittered Orville Wright had been precipitated by the Institution's dubious claim that the Aerodrome had been the original flying machine. In an ongoing patent fight between the Wrights and Glenn Curtiss, designer of the reconstructed Langley machine, Curtiss sought to escape the suits, which alleged infringement of the patents on the Wrights' flight-control system, by using the Smithsonian's claim as the mainstay of his defense. This so incensed Orville that he refused to offer the original 1903 Flyer to the Institution; instead, it was displayed in the Science Museum in London, in 1928.

Abbot tried to placate Orville by meeting with him, and later published a paper under the Smithsonian imprint entitled "The Relations Between the Smithsonian Institution and the Wright Brothers." In the paper, Abbot stated, "All men agree that...Orville and Wilbur Wright, alternately piloting their plane, made the first sustained human flights in a power propelled heavier- than-air machine...."

Abbot further conceded that the Institution "lacked of consideration to put the tests of the Langley plane into the hands of [Wright's] opponent, Mr. Curtiss," and that "the labels on the Langley Aerodrome shall be so modified as to tell nothing but facts." Unfortunately, he also included in the publication the original report on the Aerodrome, and Orville remained adamant.

Meanwhile, Abbot, with the encouragement of Smithsonian aviation specialist Paul E. Garber, had sent a congratulatory cable to a young man named Charles A. Lindbergh, the first flier to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone. As a result, Lindbergh agreed to donate his single-engine transatlantic plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, to the Smithsonian. A beneficial relationship developed between the world's most famous pilot and the world's largest museum.

In the 1942 Annual Report, Abbot listed 35 differences between the original Langley Aerodrome and the restored one that was tested in 1914. At the next meeting of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Wright crossed the room to shake Abbot's hand; within the decade, the Flyer would be disassembled in London and sent back across the Atlantic to the Smithsonian. The long feud would be over.

Despite the Smithsonian's lack of funds and the fading of some of its leading lights, it retained talented scientists throughout the early part of the 20th century. Most of them worked quite autonomously on projects unrelated to the interests of the current Secretary or his predecessors. One of these scientists was Ales Hrdlicka, a Czech who was brought on by William Henry Holmes in 1903 to head the division of physical anthropology.

Hrdlicka generated considerable controversy among paleoanthropologists by his claim that no human had trod the North American continent prior to the last Ice Age. As the most influential physical anthropologist of his time, Hrdlicka dismissed other scientists' claims that the ancestors of Homo sapiens may have come to the continent prior to that time. He assembled a huge collection of human skulls and bones, from which he sought to develop a comprehensive body of knowledge on the racial and cultural diversity of North America. His excursions to Alaska and the Aleutians produced a vast quantity of human remains for the Smithsonian-and eventually led to some thorny legal problems.

Hrdlicka trained another anthropologist of great promise, T. Dale Stewart. In the new National Museum, which was to become the National Museum of Natural History, Stewart and Hrdlicka developed a section of forensic specialty that became an important asset to police and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which often consulted with the Institution in seeking to identify the remains of potential crime victims. Stewart was one of the few people not intimidated by Hrdlicka, who ran his division with an iron hand and with what he acknowledged were his own personal quirks and prejudices. He believed, for instance, that researchers should not talk during working hours, and that women should stay at home "vere dey belong."

One notable woman who not only did not stay at home but achieved distinction at the Smithsonian was Mary Jane Rathbun, who had been given a clerkship at Woods Hole by Spencer Baird and had learned zoology, marine biology, and other natural sciences largely through her own observation. The sister of Smithsonian Assistant Secretary and National Museum director Richard Rathbun, Mary Jane came to the Smithsonian in 1886 as a "copyist," and, by 1913, occupied an office in the west wing of the Natural History Building as assistant curator in the division of marine invertebrates.

As such, Rathbun had sole responsibility for the division's operation. She oversaw collections, handled divisional reports, and attended to all correspondence- in longhand. Her highly legible specimen labels and catalog entries, written in what has been described as a beautiful Spencerian hand, were well known and instantly recognizable.

In 1914, when it became unavoidably obvious that Mary Jane Rathbun needed help with the division's work, although no money for a new hire existed, she resigned so that her salary could be paid to an assistant. After her resignation, she worked for many years as a dedicated volunteer carcinologist-a zoologist who specializes in crustacea-and published more than 160 papers on a wide variety of scientific subjects.

The assistant hired with her salary was Waldo LaSalle Schmitt, a naturalist with the Bureau of Fisheries who would become curator of the Smithsonian's division of marine invertebrates. Schmitt accompanied expeditions in the Pacific, and spent summers with the Carnegie Institution's marine laboratory in Tortugas, Florida. Awarded the Smithsonian's Walter Rathbone Bacon Traveling Scholarship in 1925 "for the study of the fauna of countries other than the United States," Schmitt collected marine invertebrates along both coasts of South America. He became such a recognized authority on these animals that Captain Allan Hancock, who conducted expeditions in the Galapagos, said of him, "Well, if that fellow knows so much, we'd better take him along." Schmitt continued to study crustacea into his nineties.

Meanwhile, other departmental adjustments were made to acquire talent and accommodate certain eccentricities. For instance, the division of echinoderms had been created to provide a position for talented echinoderm specialist Austin H. Clark, who wrote voluminously while maintaining the most cluttered office in the museum building. According to Ellis Yochelson, Clark once discovered a typewriter that had been hidden for a decade under a pile of papers.

Throughout this period, the Smithsonian continued its tradition of association with farflung collectors who provided the Institution with a steady stream of natural-history specimens and artifacts. In the summer of 1919, for example, missionary David Crockett Graham began collecting in Szechuan, China, with Smithsonian support, and made 14 additional expeditions during the next 20 years. Graham kept a detailed journal of his travels in such remote parts of China as Tatsienlu (Kangding), Chuan Hsien, and Tibet. He trained and employed native peoples to collect for him, and was eventually made an honorary "collaborator" in biology by the Smithsonian's National Museum.

In 1925 ornithologist Alexander Wetmore was appointed Assistant Secretary in charge of the National Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Zoo. A colleague described Wetmore as a "tall man of quietly distinguished presence and great natural modesty." Although jackets were not required apparel for men after World War I, employees tended to put them on before entering Wetmore's office.

Up through the depression, the Smithsonian remained an essentially male domain. According to Herbert Friedmann, who succeeded Robert Ridgway as curator of birds, men at the Institution felt that women "interrupted their bull sessions." Men still expected to find a fresh cuspidor beside their desks in the mornings. "We never needed a clock to tell us when it was 4:30," Friedmann later recalled. "I could hear Riley pounding his pipe on his cuspidor." Riley was the aging honorary curator in the Department of Biology, a founder of the division of entomology, and a sometimes obstreperous colleague.

A male curator in the division of mollusks was known for naming newfound species after women he had known, and for occasionally pursuing female employees. And there were other lapses in the pursuit of pure science. An emotionally unstable aide in the geology department threw a rock that struck a curator of minerals on the head. Depending on the source, Mary Jane Rathbun either threw a glass of water into the face of an hysterical technician faced with dismissal or stood on a chair and poured a pitcher of water over the technician's head.

When the head curator of anthropology, Walter Hough, died in 1935, none of the three curators in the division-the irascible anthropologist Hrdlicka, archaeologist Neil Judd, and ethnologist Herbert Kreiger-was on speaking terms with another. Most scientists, however, were far more interested in their own research and writing than in the Institution's administrative problems or in who occupied its musical chairs.

Exhibits in the museum reflected this ordered, staid view of science as a monument to dedication and single-minded pursuits without evidence of petty personal clashes. This aura was best represented by the 70-foot skeleton of Diplodocus longus, an intimidating fossil from Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado-Utah border that was mounted to allow an ever-increasing number of awestruck visitors to pass beneath it.

By the standards set by the Smithsonian Secretaries who preceded him, Abbot was considered relatively easygoing, willing to take the time to tell an occasional anecdote or sing a sea chantey. As a dedicated scientist, he wrote The Sun, which correctly advanced the theory that the sun's photosphere was gaseous and not composed of liquid particles. Eleven years of solar-radiation study at various high-altitude-desert observatories went into his Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory. He also wrote a book about science for young people and an autobiography.

The Smithsonian continued to suffer financially under Abbot, however. In 1934, during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Institution applied for relief under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and was assigned 77 temporary workers. That project ended a year later, but under another program, this one sponsored by the Works Project Administration, in 1936 the number of temporary workers grew to 88, and then to 167. The workers assisted in improving some collections, but disturbed others. As many curators discovered, their practical utility was limited. (For his part, T. Dale Stewart complained that a temporary worker could put a number on a bone when told to, but then didn't know what to do with the bone.)

In 1937 Abbot presided over the creation of the National Collection of Fine Arts. The establishment of this new bureau took place only after the National Gallery of Art had been underwritten by a gift of $15 million from industrialist Andrew W. Mellon and thus had become a mostly autonomous entity. From then on, the National Gallery, with Mellon's magnificent collection of mainly Renaissance art, would officially be a bureau of the Smithsonian, but would have its own building on the Mall, paid for by Mellon's gift, and its own endowment and board of trustees. In years to come, this arrangement would lead to the National Gallery's complete separation from the Smithsonian.

The National Collection of Fine Arts (NCFA), on the other hand, remained an integral part of the Smithsonian, the culmination of almost a century of the random assemblage of art and of conflicting opinions about the ways in which it should be administered and exhibited. The NCFA was to control the various, polyglot collections that had been brought together by five different Secretaries.

The signal acquisition during Abbot's reign was the $4.5 million purchase of John Gellatly's art collection in 1929. According to the Smithsonian's interpretation of Congress's mandate, the NCFA's mission was to encourage American art and crafts, promote art appreciation among Americans, mount traveling exhibits, provide a repository for government-sponsored art, lend works to various government agencies, and represent the government in art-related matters. Yet it would be another three decades before the NCFA would have its own gallery-the Old Patent Office Building that long ago had contained the dusty, disheveled artifacts of the Wilkes expedition.

At about the same time as the opening of the NCFA, the Smithsonian was entering into yet another collaborative expedition of scientists and wealthy amateurs. For at least a century, such expeditions to various parts of the world had served the Smithsonian well. Now, in 1937, a ship set sail from the United States-this time for southern climes-with scientists set to mingle onboard with a group that included among its unlikely participants a popular novelist and a Philadelphia socialite.

Probably no Smithsonian venture had had less claim to pure science than this one, the West Indian excursion of Huntington Hartford. Hartford's primary objective was apparently to show off the Joseph Conrad, the fully rigged Danish naval training vessel he had purchased from noted sailor and writer Alan Villiers. Dinner jackets proved as important as microscopes, and fine food replaced the rudimentary fare that had served the likes of Kennicott, Dall, and John Wesley Powell.

One of the scientists onboard was Waldo Schmitt, the Smithsonian's preeminent invertebrate zoologist and a veteran of Galapagos Islands expeditions. Another scientist of note whom Hartford entertained was Robert Lunz, senior entomologist at the museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Both men had intended to collect zoological specimens, and collect they did, although, according to Schmitt's diary, they spent more time sightseeing and attending cocktail receptions and dinners hosted by governors, consuls, and senior military officers in the Caribbean than they did collecting.

The ship's other passengers included John Jacob Astor's sister-in-law; DuBose Heyward, author of Porgy the novel upon which George Gershwin based Porgy and Bess; and A. Atwater Kent, heir to a radio fortune. All were included presumably for their social connections or their fame. In the end, the ship visited 15 islands, and Schmitt sent back 17 barrels of specimens to the Smithsonian (Lunz assembled a similar collection) that featured mostly crustacea and invertebrates but included various fishes and two porpoises.

The Smithsonian paid only Schmitt's salary, so the expedition was judged a success financially and scientifically, and, at least for Schmitt himself, gastronomically. An additional advantage of the voyage was Schmitt's introduction to DuPont heir J. Bruce Bredin at a reception. Bredin conducted expeditions of his own, and in the future Schmitt would go along on some of them, both for his own edification and for the benefit of the Smithsonian's ever-growing store of specimens and artifacts.

Soon, however, there were far more pressing concerns in the country-and at the Smithsonian. With the bombing of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, and the country's entry into World War II, the Smithsonian found itself in a unique position. Its collective, highly specialized knowledge of the Pacific made it a great asset to the Allies. And, as in the past, the Institution was able to expand its knowledge, as well as its store of specimens, by assigning scientists to various military expeditions.

Abbot convened the special Smithsonian War Committee he had created, and approximately 10 percent of the Institution's staff found itself assigned to the war. Scientific cooperation was kept under wraps both during and after the war, however. One rumor had it that a Smithsonian study of the migration routes of Pacific snapping shrimp allowed American submarines to travel the same routes and avoid detection by Japanese sonar. Julia Gardner of the USGS was credited with determining the place of origin of a recovered Japanese fire balloon by studying microfossils in its sandy ballast. And aviation specialist Paul Garber designed kite targets for the Navy's antiaircraft gunners.

Precautions also were taken to protect irreplaceable specimens at home, in the event that the war should threaten the Mall. "The work of selecting and packing this material has occupied the staff for months," stated the Annual Report' of 1942. " Type specimens preserved in alcohol, which offer some difficulties in handling, were evacuated together with selections of insects."

Type specimens are those used for reference in identifying other organisms. The Institution transported these and other objects considered of prime importance- a collection that weighed some 60 tons-to an undisclosed location in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Luray,Virginia, where they remained hidden for three years. The National Museum's one great auk-a large sea bird of the North Atlantic that had been extinct since 1844 was taken off exhibit and wrapped in paper, where it was attacked by moths. (The feathers later were painstakingly glued back on.) Curators moved the heavy geological and paleontological collections from the museum's upper stories to the lower ones, and concern over works in the National Collection of Fine Arts led to the strengthening of the wall behind the mural Diana of the Tides.

Air-raid and blackout drills were conducted, and boxes of sand-to be used in case of fire-were placed in attics throughout the Institution. Many of these boxes would remain for decades, reminders of an uneasy time. Scientists went off to serve in the military, to assist various government agencies, and to teach. Some never returned.

The government repeatedly called upon the Smithsonian to provide information and services even as arcane as supplying mites and ticks to the military so that their effects on human health could be studied. For the first time, public attendance at the Institution declined, although it increased again at the end of the war.

Throughout his tenure, Abbot sought to convince Orville Wright that the Smithsonian was the proper place for Wright's Kitty Hawk Flyer. He arranged for Charles Lindbergh to meet with Wright on behalf of the Smithsonian, and, on a steamboat voyage to the newly created Langley Field, in Hampton, Virginia, he himself beseeched Wright to donate his plane to the institution.

On June 30, 1944, after 16 years as Secretary, Abbot became the first Smithsonian head to resign (all the previous Secretaries having died on the job), and was given an office in the Castle to continue his solar research. During his administration, Abbot had essentially continued his predecessors' expansion of the Smithsonian's role in the affairs of the nation, and had struggled to maintain the Astrophysical Observatory. He had helped the arts prosper, while increased emphasis had been placed on engineering and industry.

Overall attendance at the museums and galleries had grown dramatically during Abbot's tenure. For the first time, the annual reports featured these statistics without reference to the quality of interest shown by the public, or to the educational merits of the exhibits. Without formal recognition, entertainment-pure anathema to Joseph Henry-had crept into the Smithsonian's equation.

Abbot's replacement as secretary was Frank Alexander Wetmore (whose first name was never used), the Smithsonian's modest Assistant Secretary in charge of the National Museum. Wetmore had served with the Biological Survey, participating in field investigations throughout the United States as well as in Canada. Puerto Rico, Mexico, South America, and the islands of the mid-Pacific. An ornithologist with interests similar to those of the late Spencer Baird, Wetmore was a voluminous contributor to biological journals and an author of several books, and he became an expert on the birds of Central and South America.

A contemporary of Wetmore's who wrote for Audubon magazine described the Secretary's "tall, wiry frame...his smooth white hair, close-cropped, his hazel eyes steady behind plain rimless glasses.... His deep, drawling voice and earnest manner command respect.... Although he likes the company of...scientists, he is happiest when he is with birds." Indeed, Wetmore thrived in the field rather than in the office. Yet the irony remains that at various times during his career he held a multitude of posts, including director of the National Zoo, secretary-general of the Eighth American Scientific Congress, chairman of the Interdepartmental Committee on Research and Development, director of the Canal Zone Biological Area, director of the Gorgas Memorial Institute of Tropical and Preventive Medicine, and trustee of the National Geographic Society; and president of the American Ornithologists' Union, the Washington Biologists' Field Club, the Explorers' Club, the Cosmos Club, the Baird Ornithological Club, and the 10th International Ornithological Congress.

In 1946, the Institution's centennial year, the Smithsonian held a modest celebration that included a commemorative stamp issued by the Postal Service, a special exhibition in the foyer of the National Museum, and a reception there for some 1,000 guests that featured the Marine Band Orchestra on the second floor, over-looking the rotunda. Even Wetmore danced, a surprise to just about everyone. But there was no time during the centennial year to compile a written record of the Smithsonian's accomplishments over the century, and, despite the fact that they were badly needed, there was no special effort to attract public support and private funds.

Return to The Universe: 1879-1949

		Contacts | FAQ | Press Room | Privacy | Copyright	Top