The Perfect Machine by Ronald Florence Read Free Book Online

construction three great telescopes, each larger than any before it. The next step, in his mind, was not just an increment over those machines, but a leap in technology and design, an instrument orders of magnitude larger and finer than any that had ever been built. He had enough experience with telescopes to know that to design andbuild a machine on that scale and to those specifications would require an unprecedented national engineering and scientific effort: the coordination of the talents and efforts of hundreds of scientists, engineers, designers, artists, and craftsmen all over the country; the cooperation of the largest corporations, universities, and research institutions in the land; an appropriation of funds larger than any that had ever been made in support of a single scientific instrument; the extension of optics, metallurgy, control systems, and large-machine-construction technology to limits few had ever imagined possible; and a coordination of facilities and individuals that had never been attempted.
    Anyplace but the America of the 1920s, it would have been an inconceivable project. The war that had humbled and exhausted Europe had been one more challenge for the United States—a challenge, like the Panama Canal or the Brooklyn Bridge, that could be solved with American resources, might, and spirit. While Europe licked its wounds, exhausted, enveloped in still-unsolved questions of diplomacy and hegemony, Americans talked of damming the great rivers of the West, bridging the Golden Gate at the entrance to San Francisco Harbor, building skyscrapers and super liners that would dwarf the achievements of an earlier era.
    Even in that optimistic America of the 1920s, the machine Hale had in mind would press the limits of technology, stretching the confidence of a cocky nation perilously close to hubris. But science is compelling, the promise of timeless answers irresistible. And George Hale, as the secretary of the National Academy of Sciences had learned, was not a man to take no for an answer.

3

The Worrier
    Even as a boy, growing up in Chicago, George Hale worried too much. The family firm, Hale Elevators, had profited handsomely from the construction boom after the Great Chicago Fire, and the Hale’s lived well. A few split branches in the family tree, including the divorce of George’s maternal grandparents, caused a stir in their time, but quiet money, a reputation for generosity, and a splendid town house gave William Hale and his family a secure position in Chicago society.
    George was a sickly child. The doctors could find no explanation for his chronic stomach trouble, backaches, and fainting spells, so George’s mother, a semi-invalid who confined herself to dark rooms because of paralyzing headaches, prescribed her own medicine, a regimen of reading—Homer, Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, and Grimms’ Fairy Tales. George acquired, or inherited, both her love of literature and her unpredictable, terrifying headaches.
    When his mother retired to her dark room, George liked to experiment with tools and instruments. His brother and sister would discover him lost in a world of his own. When they spoke, he didn’t answer. If they made a loud noise, he seemed not to hear it. To those who had never seen the concentration of a scientist absorbed in his work, George’s behavior was mystifying. He didn’t seem an ordinary boy. On a trip to London, George’s friend bought magic tricks; George spent his allowance on an expensive spectroscope.
    Each new passion became an obsession: When he became interested in microscopy, his father bought him a fine Beck binocular microscope. For months microscopy excluded all other interests, until it was replaced by the next passion. George’s father worried about his son. What would become of a boy with no focus, no plans or ambition, who preferred puttering alone to sports and friends, whose dabbling in one science after another seemed to lead nowhere?
    Then George