Interview with Art Crawford, Spring 1965
Description
Creator
Rights
Type
Identifier
Interviewer
Interviewee
Duration
Start Date
Notes
Please bear in mind that: 1) This material is a transcript of the spoken word rather than a literary product; 2) An interview must be read with the awareness that different people's memories about an event will often differ, and that memories can change with time for many reasons including subsequent experiences, interactions with others, and one's feelings about an event.
Series
Transcription
Transcribed by TranscribeMe in April 2019, reviewed and corrected by Kenneth I. Kellermann and Ellen N. Bouton.
Crawford
This is a long time ago, of course. And one has read - I've read recently the reports written by his brother and I looked over his own papers and those of Grote Reber.
Kestenbaum
The IRE? Yeah.
Crawford
The IRE things. But to the best of my recollection that Karl was working just on the general problem of interference, shortwave interference, which included static, any other man-made static, but mainly the static due to storms. And I think it's pretty well known what happened. In the performance of these studies, he noticed that on his records there was an unexplained type of static that was not associated with storms and which he describes as hiss type of static. And he had noticed that he had - probably on his record for some time and then as time went on he went back and looked at them. And he thought for a time that it was probably associated with the sun because he had a rotating array that he could measure the direction of arrival of the static. And then when he found out that as time went on that it didn't agree with the sun, he naturally thought, "Just what is it?" And I wasn't very close to that work. I was working in ultra-short wave.
Kestenbaum
You were not connected with that project?
Crawford
No. Most everybody at Holmdel at that time was working with Harald Friis. But I was working with another who was co-director of the Laboratory, Carl [inaudible], and we were working on ultra-short waves. These are wavelengths, say, of, oh, four meters or so. Whereas all the other fellows there were working on the transatlantic frequency, which was -
Kestenbaum
I just want to review -
Crawford
- 14 meters or something like that. But that was his main job was to study interference of all kinds, so.
Kestenbaum
I just briefly want to review how that was set up. Now as I understand it there were three Laboratories, Cliftwood - is that Cliftwood, C-L-I-F-T-W-O-O-D?
Crawford
C-L-I-F-F. Cliffwood.
Kestenbaum
Cliffwood.
Crawford
It's just -
Kestenbaum
- and Holmdel. Now you were in -
Crawford
No. There wasn't any Holmdel. It was the beginning. I started working at Cliffwood in 1928, the same year that Karl Jansky came. We came the same summer. And in fact we lived at the same rooming house until he was married. In 1930. So we moved to Holmdel. And it was at Holmdel that most of these measurements were made.
Kestenbaum
Jansky was in Cliffwood, I believe, until 1930.
Crawford
So was I.
Kestenbaum
Oh, I see. And then he moved to -
Crawford
We built this Lab down here. There wasn't any Holmdel -
Kestenbaum
I see.
Crawford
- before 1930. England and Friis bought the land, and then built the building, and then we moved from Cliffwood Lab to Holmdel.
Kestenbaum
But he was put on the static job and was quite by chance that he came across these -
Crawford
Right.
Kestenbaum
And how long did he - how long did he labor over these - ?
Crawford
Well, I think he was still - yeah. I can't say, but I would guess that all the way through - most the way through the '30s he was thinking about this or working with it. Of course, it was only a part-time - static studies were only a part-time thing for him anyway. I mean, an awful lot of his time was spent on just the studies and characteristics of noise. How do you measure static? How do you record it? How do you interpret it? How do you measure what the power is?
Kestenbaum
Well, didn't he sort of stop recording this in the early '30s, in 1933?
Crawford
I think he recorded there as long as, well, probably '33 or '34.
Kestenbaum
'34.
Crawford
But I think that you can find some references to measuring his type of static even, oh, two or three years after that.
Kestenbaum
And, well, if he stopped around '33 and '34 - these are things that his notebook should record. I'm going to take a look at them very soon.
Crawford
Well, the best thing is his progress reports, I think.
Kestenbaum
Yeah. Why did he stop doing this?
Crawford
Well, what else was there to do? He had measured it. He'd gotten the direction. He didn't know what it was. Nobody did. He really never stopped studying static and interference. He continued that right up till, I guess, the war time. And when the war came along, why, then we all were into - I doubt that he was doing much in static work during the war.
Kestenbaum
Did you think in the latter part of the '30s he was active in this - ?
Crawford
Well, he was measuring noise and static. But what else was there to do?
Kestenbaum
What else was there to do?
Crawford
This the point. A man just can't - you just can't sit around and do nothing -
Kestenbaum
Well, was he curious about other sources, perhaps?
Crawford
I don't think so.
Kestenbaum
It didn't occur to any of his co-workers that there may be other sources?
Crawford
No. No. Well, this was a kind of a diffused source. We had the idea that there was just noise coming from our Galaxy. And at that time I don't think anybody, I think, stopped to - that it was noise coming from a particular spot in the Galaxy. We kind of just had a feeling it was just coming from all directions in the Galaxy. But it seemed to be strongest when he was pointing at the center of the Galaxy, which is what you'd expect. He didn't get any noise from the sun and the sun is our nearest star. So I guess one wouldn't - you wouldn't expect that you would get something from another little star. And besides, his directivity of his antenna was so large that he couldn't point at any particular spot.
Kestenbaum
As far as you know, Mr. Crawford, did anyone in the Laboratories tell him to ease off on the study in [continue?] static?
Crawford
No. I am sure -
Kestenbaum
No one.
Crawford
I am absolutely sure that there was not a meeting of his boss with our director of research and whatnot, and the people sitting around saying, "Oh, there's Jansky. What is he doing? Maybe we should stop that work." It was just like many other things, you're working in a general field, and this came up. You investigate it to - as much as he could do.
Kestenbaum
Yeah. Do you need the people realized the importance of this discovery at the time?
Crawford
Oh -
Kestenbaum
They did not.
Crawford
I'm sure they did not. No.
Kestenbaum
Nobody was ecstatic about -
Crawford
Oh, yes. We used to kid Karl a bit about - because he would get some crank letters from people who were saying that he was interfering with, well, things that he really shouldn't be, saying that this was some radio signals coming from non-terrestrial sources.
Kestenbaum
Did those crank letters get sent here?
Crawford
Yes. Yes. He had quite a number of -
Kestenbaum
And how did people find out about this?
Crawford
Oh, my gosh.
Kestenbaum
Publicity in the newspapers?
Crawford
It was in the newspaper. You see, there were always reporters at these meetings and when he gave - a meeting at, I think it was in Washington - people came down to interview him. It was written up on the front page of The New York Times about these noise coming from interstellar space.
Kestenbaum
I'm just wondering if it didn't occur to anybody here that this may be just one of many of thousands of sources? You point your antenna anywhere and there would be a radio source. The Milky Way is just one direction.
Crawford
Well, the Milky Way is our Galaxy. We're in the middle of it. You see? So no matter which way you'd point, you'd be seeing part of the Milky Way. It just points out that he got the most when he was pointing towards the center of the Milky Way, in which case his antenna was looking at more of the Milky Way. But I'm sure that nobody had thought that maybe galaxies farther beyond our own would give noise.
Kestenbaum
Did Jansky try to inject any theory into this as to what generates these noises? Was it one star or was it a collection of stars?
Crawford
I think his feeling was that it was probably just a combination of interstellar matter, not only stars, but whatever is in between the stars.
Kestenbaum
Did he ever try to give a reason or explain what this meant? In other words -
Crawford
[crosstalk] none of us knew [crosstalk].
Kestenbaum
He didn't want to probe too much into the reason behind it. He was in the measuring business and he measured it. And then it came -
Crawford
There was an awful lot of publicity at the time. You see, there was this newspaper - and then the National Broadcasting Company put in a line down to Holmdel and interviewed him. And they put his noise on the air. Obviously, here are these signals or this noise from - I don't know whether they even called it noise at that time, they probably called it signal - from outer space. And then you'd hear the, "Shhhh."
Kestenbaum
Different than the kind of static you heard.
Crawford
Different from a crash setting. Ordinary static is quite irregular and crashing. But this was a - this was a steady noise, much the same as what we called at that time first circuit noise.
Kestenbaum
Yeah. Mr. Crawford, what was your job?
Crawford
Which is [crosstalk].
Kestenbaum
What was your job at the time?
Crawford
As I said, I was in the ultra-short wave business. I was trying to build receivers that would work at frequencies well higher than that, or much shorter wavelengths.
Kestenbaum
Was there any equipment at that time that was above, let's say, 14 meters?
Crawford
No. We had to build our own.
Kestenbaum
What frequency were you working in?
Crawford
Oh, four meters, two meters, which you had to build your own receiver. You'd get tubes that you would take the bases off and make the leads as short as possible, make them work.
Kestenbaum
Were there any receivers in 1932 that operated at four meters?
Crawford
No. You mean commercially available? No.
Kestenbaum
Well, no. That could have been used in Jansky's equipment back then.
Crawford
Well, that came along afterwards.
Kestenbaum
About what year was that?
Crawford
Well, I guess even up into '36 and '37, he was building ultra-short wave receivers, improvements, with as sensitive as he could get them.
Kestenbaum
Do you feel - ?
Crawford
I remember he had one and two and he put it on - he put it on antennas to listen for this type static. But we didn't have highly directed antennas at the time.
Kestenbaum
Do you think that Jansky was working with what was considered to be the most advanced equipment in those days, the receivers and antennas?
Crawford
Certainly, the receiver was. I'm sure. I doubt that there was any receiver anywhere else in the country that was more sensitive.
Kestenbaum
Who built this receiver? Was that Friis?
Crawford
10:38 It was through Friis' direction. That's what he was mainly interested in was receivers and sensitive receivers.
Kestenbaum
And in other words, even if he wanted to measure noise and static hisses, and wavelengths shorter than 14 meters, he couldn't have done it because he didn't have the equipment.
Crawford
Not at that time. No. But, as I say, I guess this was reported in '32 or '33 going clear into '36, '37, '38, he was working, building receivers that would work in shorter wavelengths. At the same time, he was studying the characteristics of noise, how to record it. And I remember he got [inaudible] noise one time. He built a receiver and did some noise - studying the characteristics in emission noises. So my point I want to make is that that he was not taken off this job. He was not transferred to a different type of work. It was just a continuation.
Kestenbaum
Yeah. Do you recall, Mr. Crawford, whether Jansky - did he like the Laboratories? I mean, as there any reason -
Crawford
Very much.
Kestenbaum
- to suspect that he wasn't happy here?
Crawford
Not that I know of.
Kestenbaum
No.
Crawford
Oh, no more than the rest of us. I guess all of us were griping a bit during the '30s. You see, we were down working only four days a week for [inaudible] in '32, '33, '34. When I was married in '34, we were working four days a week with a corresponding cut in pay. So things weren't too - we weren't too happy about that. But as far as the Laboratories as a place to work, I guess we really felt fortunate that we were with the Laboratories. So many other places where people were fired. There wasn't too much opportunity.
Kestenbaum
Would there have been much opportunity for Jansky to carry on this sort of work even if he'd wanted to in another institution?
Crawford
I doubt it very much because - see, that's the point I think I want to make here is that all these people who are writing now, Southworth's article where he says that - where is it? Maybe it isn't in this one. [sound of pages turning]
Kestenbaum
What is this called? He says -
Crawford
Oh, yes. This was -
Kestenbaum
Scientific Monthly by George Southworth.
Crawford
Yeah. You've seen this, haven't you?
Kestenbaum
Yes. This is a mono from Bell Labs.
Crawford
It mentions here, "At this point, Jansky prepared his well-known papers describing the results. Other papers described other aspects followed - somewhat later, he was assigned to other duties and his work in radio astronomy came to an end. His interest, nevertheless, continued."
Kestenbaum
George Southworth.
Crawford
What I claim is this segment is completely just nonsense.
Kestenbaum
It's nonsense. Why would George Southworth write something like this?
Crawford
He wasn't really assigned other duties. He kept on at the same work. And to say that his work in radio astronomy came to an end - people nowadays looking back, they know what radio astronomy is now as we as we know it. And with real good hindsight vision, you say, "Well, gee. Jansky was working on radio astronomy then." But he didn't know it. None of us know it. So he really didn't - he was not working in radio astronomy. This is just nonsense.
Kestenbaum
Why do you think he wrote a thing like this?
Crawford
"He was assigned to other duties and his work came - "
Kestenbaum
That's the source of one of the problems here and we don't want -
Crawford
"His interest nevertheless continued."
Kestenbaum
Yeah.
Crawford
And it's kind of interesting that the type of wording here is almost the same as his brother, his brother's article.
Kestenbaum
Yes. It is.
Crawford
You recall that.
Kestenbaum
Yes. I read that. I think he said his -
Crawford
"Sometime after Karl Jansky presented his paper in '32, his superiors transferred his activities to other fields." Now this doesn't quite say it - to other duties. "He would have preferred to continue his work in radio astronomy." Southworth said "his interest nevertheless continued." Now which came first here, I don't know.
Kestenbaum
Yeah. Well, maybe an explanation behind his brother writing a thing like that -
Crawford
In is obvious that -
Kestenbaum
- but why Southworth? Why do you think Southworth would write a thing like that? He was a member of a Laboratory for years. Followed the waveguides, and he worked in the group.
Crawford
Well, he was in radio work, too. I don't know. People have a feeling now that - well, the thing that I don't like is that is sounds like it was a conspiracy. Like there was a well-laid plan to say, "Let's stop this work that Jansky's doing and do something else." And this I just will not go along with.
Kestenbaum
Do you think Southward trying to make it sound this way? Would it appear that way?
Crawford
It looks that way.
Kestenbuam
Well, that's the source of the problem here.
Crawford
Well, Southworth.
Kestenbaum
Remember the Lab [crosstalk].
Crawford
- and Southworth is in recent years - he wrote a book on his 40 years or 50 years, whatever it was, as a radio engineer. And if one reads that, you will find - have you read it, by the way?
Kestenbaum
No. I haven't.
Crawford
Well, through that I find there are things that I don't agree with and it's written from a little sore-headed angle.
Kestenbaum
I see. He had some gripes.
Crawford
I think so.
Kestenbaum
Did you know - ?
Crawford
Well, I'm sure one thing - I hate to have this on tape [laughter]. This must be kept -
Kestenbaum
Yeah. This is confidential.
Crawford
All right. I do know that at the time that my boss, Harald Friis, was made director of Radio Research that Southworth was pretty put out about it. He had thought that he was the one that should've been picked for it.
Kestenbaum
I see.
Crawford
As a matter of fact, shortly after that, why, he started writing a book and for a long periods of time, we never even saw him because he was writing a book at home.
Kestenbaum
Some sort of professional jealousy or -
Crawford
I think so.
Kestenbaum
Yeah.
Crawford
I think so. And I think the - well, Arnold Bown who worked with him at that time was a very close friend of mine, since died. His feeling was that Southworth thought that he should have been made director of Radio Research because he was the father of the waveguide. And he felt that if there's any work to be done with waveguides, it should be under his wings. Well, as a result of - for the radar work during the war when we went to high frequencies, it was necessary for us to use waveguides. So I was in Friis' group over in the main building. And we took up the use of waveguides.
Kestenbaum
Do you have any reason to - ?
Crawford
And I think that Southworth didn't like that. He thought that all waveguide work should be under him.
Kestenbaum
Do you have any reason to suspect that Southworth conspired with Jansky's brother to - ?
Crawford
No. I doubt it.
Kestenbaum
And these two things came independently.
Crawford
Well, I don't know which came first. This one, I guess, was written in '58 and Southworth's is '56. So I have a - just the way it's organized is so close that it certainly looks as though - Jansky must have read this one, Southworth's.
Kestenbaum
Do you regard the rest of Southworth's report as accurate?
Crawford
This report here?
Kestenbaum
Yes.
Crawford
Oh, I think so.
Kestenbaum
I mean, with the exception of that statement [crosstalk] -
Crawford
This is the only place that I can see that -
Kestenbaum
Yeah. That particular statement involves a personality, at least it involves an accusation of some sort. The rest of it is just documented history and that in your opinion it's correct.
Crawford
It cannot be true. He was not taken off - now, to be assigned other duties, I would say, well, supposing he had - they said, "Well, now you're going stop this. You're going to work on antennas." Or what else could it be? Well, just about all we had going on at the time was antennas, and the receivers, and propagation. And this was a static study and he stayed on it.
Kestenbaum
Did you know Jansky's brother, Cyril M. Jansky?
Crawford
Not very well.
Kestenbaum
He did work for the Labs at one time.
Crawford
I don't remember that. I didn't recall that.
Kestenbaum
In fact, he worked with -
Crawford
I think it must have been just for a summer.
Kestenbaum
- John Schelleng at one time.
Crawford
It only must have been for a summer or a part-time job. I think because he was professor at this time - around this time, he was professor of electrical engineering out in Minnesota. Sharpless next door was in his class. And then even when he - and then he left there and went to Washington as a consultant, and did consulting work. And then founded a company that was more or less a consulting company for, well, making radio investigations, maybe of noise or field strength. If somebody wanted to build a broadcasting station, they wanted to know what kind of service area they'd get, his company would go out and make test measurements.
Kestenbaum
But static was Jansky's job.
Crawford
So far as I know, it continued right up to the war.
Kestenbaum
Well, I don't have any other questions, Mr. Crawford, unless you want to say anything that's on your mind, perhaps about Janksy's personality, how he got along with his co-workers.
Crawford
No. I still want to come back to the main point, is this business with people are now thinking that Jansky was working on radio astronomy as we know it now. And my point is that he was not and there was no such thing as radio astronomy. I don't think there - it was never mentioned.
Kestenbaum
The name was coined many years later.
Crawford
Later. And it must have coined in the late '40s, after the war. And the next thing that really came along that you might think was radio astronomy was the British using their radar antennas measuring - they were measuring signals from the sun. And then people started to say, "Okay. These are bodies that are putting out signals." And then another big boost to radio astronomy came when a fellow at MIT - I can't recall his name - built a method of measuring a very weak signal. You see, this -
Kestenbaum
Lee DuBridge?
Crawford
No. As you go up in frequency, there's noise from the - as you go up - as you go up in frequency or down in wavelength, this noise becomes quite a bit less. This is probably one of the reasons why Jansky - well, we had trouble receiving it on the shortwave sets, on the ultra-short wave sets, because the cosmic noise decreases with frequency. What was the guy's name? But that really gave radio astronomy a big boost when -
Kestenbaum
Your point is -
Crawford
- Dicke, Dicke had a - and I can't think of the name of what he called it - radiometer, the Dicke radiometer was a method that you can measure signals down to very low levels. You can measure signals that were even smaller than the set noise in your receiver.
Kestenbaum
Is that the same fellow who is in Princeton now?
Crawford
Yes. And most all radio astronomers now use this so they can measure - and they have much more sensitive equipment than we had at this time. The point is that Jansky's main static interference and was that -
Kestenbaum
Yeah.
Crawford
- he didn't think he was doing radio astronomy. Nobody else did.
Kestenbaum
Yeah.
Crawford
The astronomers didn't take it up. And in fact even Grote Reber, in his articles, he doesn't speak, in the '40, this is practically eight years later. He calls them cosmic static and he nowhere speaks of this as a type of astronomy, the static. And did you read Grote Reber's article in this?
Kestenbaum
Yes. Part of it. I read the introduction.
Crawford
This is one thing that was kind of interesting, what he said. "In my estimation, it is obvious that Karl Jansky had made a fundamental and very important discovery. Furthermore, he had exploited it to the limit of his equipment and facilities."
Kestenbaum
Yes.
Crawford
"If greater progress were to be made, it would be necessary to construct - " Now there's the only place that I can see that's not - where the Laboratories could be criticized, supervision and whatnot, in that none of us - I have to count myself with it, too. I was not in supervision at that time but Friis, Southworth, was in the company. He knew all about this.
Kestenbaum
You mean none of you were too curious to pursue the thing.
Crawford
Esspenscheid, who has written - you know, quite a bit of historical things. In many cases, he will go back in some of his old notes and show where he kind of predicted this or that. Nobody was clamoring, "Now, why don't we build new equipment? Why don't we build bigger antennas? Why don't we do something else and try to track thisdown." It just wasn't -
Kestenbaum
Was it perhaps because you people were too telephone oriented?
Crawford
Might be.
Kestenbaum
But the atmosphere was not one of thought which was abandoned. I mean, you had certain directions and you had to build equipment and there was a problem with the transatlantic telephone.
Crawford
Yes. But Karl, as I say, still kept in static measurement. And he did put ultra-short wave receivers on antennas to look for noise in that. But he apparently never - either he didn't receive this same type of static, or he didn't gain any more information from it.
Kestenbaum
What did Karl Jansky do between 1940 and 1950? That and seems to be a blank.
Crawford
1940?
Kestenbaum
To 1950.
Crawford
Well, during the war he was on a classified project. He and, well, other fellows worked here, Edwards, downstairs. It had to do with - I think they were receiving transmissions from German submarines.
Kestenbaum
What about after the war?
Crawford
Well, during the war at the - possibly before the war was over, I know that Karl, again, noise studies. He was given the job of studying the noise in high frequency amplifiers, and how do you decrease the noise. And what can you do to make a better so-called noise figure, a more sensitive receiver.
Kestenbaum
In other words, he did this throughout his whole professional life, way into the times when he [crosstalk] -
Crawford
Until he died. Oh, except for the period during the war when they were using an antenna here in recording, I think, German transmissions. It was never really spelled out. We didn't ask.
Kestenbaum
Is there anything you'd like to add, Mr. Crawford, that - ?
Crawford
No. I guess not.
Kestenbaum
What about his camaraderie ship? Did people like him?
Crawford
26:07 Fine. He's a very strong competitor. He loves to play sports like tennis and table tennis. I used to play table tennis with him.
Kestenbaum
And he was part of the group.
Crawford
Baseball. Sure. We had a kind of a bridge club, about four couples that was - I can't remember whether we met every week, every two weeks, and played bridge. He loved to play bridge. He was a very competitive bridge player. I mean, he was -
Kestenbaum
You don't think his - did he ever complain about his illness or things like that? Or was it known to his co-workers that he was very ill?
Crawford
Oh, yeah. We knew that he had Bright's disease and extremely high blood pressure. So that he had to - he never smoked or drank. But he would come to - we'd have parties where where there'd be cocktails or beer and people would get pretty happy and singing. I play the piano and I remember he'd be alongside the piano with a glass of water singing with the group. He was just one of the fellows. And quite well-liked, I'd say.
Kestenbaum
Well, thanks very much.
Crawford
I used to argue with him quite a bit on politics at that time.
Kestenbaum
Oh, really?
Crawford
He was a rabid anti-New Dealer. He didn't care for Roosevelt.
Kestenbaum
He was well-informed in world affairs.
Crawford
Oh, as much as the rest of us but we argued about it. We were thrown together an awful lot, and would eat lunch together, at these parties. I am absolutely sure because we were all making about the same salaries. We came to the company at the same time. Well, there are five others -
Kestenbaum
[crosstalk] what were the salaries in those days?
Crawford
Well, when I was married I think I was getting $27 a week -
Kestenbaum
Oh, my goodness.
Crawford
- in 1934.
Kestenbaum
This is a man with a bachelor's degree.
Crawford
And I came with the company in '28 at $30 a week. Now, I think I got up to 33 or 34 and then the Depression hit, and we went back to 40 a week [inaudible] something like 27 [inaudible].
Kestenbaum
And the pay here compared to, say, university pay?
Crawford
Probably not too different. Probably even better at the university at that time.
Kestenbaum
Is that right?
Crawford
I wouldn't be surprised. I know my wife was a schoolteacher and [inaudible] taught in the junior high school. And when we were married she was making more than I was.
Kestenbaum
Well, thanks very much, Mr. Crawford.