Fred Crews, Interviewed by Kenneth I. Kellermann, 9 August 2010

Kellermann: 00:01

Okay. This is Ken Kellermann. I'm here with Fred Crews in Green Bank on August the 9^th [2010]. Fred was one of the first employees here in Green Bank many years ago and for many years was effectively in charge of running the site, I guess, right?

Crews: 00:25

Almost.

Kellermann: 00:26

Almost, yeah. Well, there are a number of assistant directors who were officially in charge, but in practice it was you. Should I start at the beginning? I may have to go out and get a drink. Well, you started in '58?

Crews: 00:50

'58. 1958.

Kellermann: 00:52

When, you remember? What time of the year?

Crews: 00:55

Fall. Fall of '58.

Kellermann: 01:06

I have to go get a drink.  [brief pause]

Crews: 01:07

All right, all right.

Kellermann: 01:14

Who hired you?

Crews: 01:16

Dave Heeschen. My mother-in-law-- I was not very happy in the work that I was doing--

Kellermann: 01:26

Which was what?

Crews: 01:27

I was doing television and radio repair on the road and in the shop in the southern part of the state, and I was not very happy with that. I had several other jobs. And my mother-in-law saw the ad in the newspaper that the Observatory was beginning and that they were interested in hiring some people, and they gave an address to write to, get in contact with. And I got in touch with them, and Dave Heeschen and John FIndlay came down to Beckley and they interviewed me. Findlay was looking for microwave engineers. Well, that was not my background. But Findlay, so he said, "No, I don't even want to talk to you." And Heeschen said, "Well, I do." [laughter] And as a result of that, I got an offer to come to work here. I didn't even know what it was because they were talking about telescope operator. And Beaty Sheets, I recall, I came up here for a visit, so I'd know something about the area that I did not know anything about it at the time. And Beaty Sheets was the one I talked to, and at that time, she was the official secretary for all the people here. And the office at that time, the sort of business office, was down on the main highway, and there's an old farmhouse. But the office for employees dealing with employees' business and that sort of thing and the office for the scientists was an old house. And the scientist had their office upstairs, and the employees had the shop downstairs. We did repair work.

Kellermann: 03:15

Now which house was that?

Crews: 03:17

It was the Beard house. It was right down here. Down here near where 85-1 is. At that time they were building 85-1, which was built by-- I mean, designed and the company that sold them was Bob Hall. And the second day I worked, I had this kind of a scary job. They sent me up on the telescope and I was to assist the iron workers. They were setting the panels, the surface panels of the dish, they were solid aluminum surface panels, and they were setting to make them conform to parabola, and my job-- they had a tape going after the focal point and, I mean, I had to be underneath and in the structure hanging on as best I could, no safety belt, no hard hat even then. And I had to pull that tape, and then the workers who were steel, iron workers, they would mark the spot, and then we'd move on around the dish. And I spent the whole day up there.

Kellermann: 04:36

I spent my first week here doing the same thing with Cam Wade and the 140-foot.

Crews: 04:40

Is that right?

Kellermann: 04:45

So what was your job at the time-- your official job at the time?

Crews: 04:55

At the time, we really didn't know anything about it. At the time, Bill Meredith, he was from Charleston.

Kellermann: 05:02

So Bill was already here?

Crews: 05:05

Bill was already here. He'd only been here a week or so. And, maybe a month or so. Sid Smith, by the way, was the first employee I met the day I came to work. And he was the engineer, and he'd worked here for a while. At any rate, Dr. Heeschen was forming this telescope operators thing. Bill was the first one, I was the second, and Omar Boyer was the third. And so we had to be trained. And also, very soon thereafter, Frank Drake came along.

Kellermann: 05:42

Frank came after you?

Crews: 05:44

Yes. And later on, Heeschen turned responsibility for running the operators over to Frank Drake.

Kellermann: 05:55

Do you remember what David Heeschen's position was, at the time, when you came?

Crews: 06:03

He was under Dr. Otto Struve.

Kellermann: 06:04

Yep, right. He was head of astronomy or something, wasn't he?

Crews: 06:07

The head of astronomy and/or operations.

Kellermann: 06:10

Right.

Crews: 06:12

Basically, Heeschen sort of ran it because Struve wasn't with it during much of that time.

Kellermann: 06:19

What do you mean wasn't with it?

Crews: 06:21

Well, he was very old, and he was originally from [crosstalk]--

Kellermann: 06:24

But you realize when you say that that he was probably younger than you and I are now.

Crews: 06:30

That's probably true. I know it is in my case.

Kellermann: 06:31

That's all right. So then Frank Drake became head of operations?

Crews: 06:45

Yes. And when he left--

Kellermann: 06:47

That was the next question.

Crews: 06:48

This is interesting. We had a Rec association, and Frank Drake was the head of that. He took care of the money and everything. And it was an employees thing. And it was not AUI. It was the employees.

Kellermann: 07:03

Right. Still is, I think.

Kellermann: 07:04

Yes, that's true. And so Frank turned the money over to me, and of course, I was-- I didn't know what-- all that. But nevertheless, we immediately got the Rec association in better form and elected officers and that sort of thing. And also I remember very well when Frank did Project Ozma.

Kellermann: 07:34

Yeah. Well, I want to come to that. Let's say we'll come back to that. Do you remember about what year Frank came, or?

Kellermann: 07:47

I would say he it was 60, not long after I got here. I think about 60.

Kellermann: 07:54

I see. And when did the 85-1 go into operation?

Crews: 07:59

Oh, that's interesting. We got our first observations on April the 1st, 1958. 1959, sorry, April 1st, 1959. And it was an AIL receiver.

Kellermann: 08:21

Paramp.

Crews: 08:23

No, that was before paramps. It was just tuned. Now, Frank Drake, his receiver came later, and it was a traveling wave tube receiver.

Kellermann: 08:36

That was for--

Crews: 08:39

Shorter--

Kellermann: 08:40

Shorter wavelengths. Yeah.

Crews: 08:41

Yeah. Heeschen’s AIL was basically a 21-centimeter receiver, 20 centimeters.

Kellermann: 08:50

Is that the one that Frank use for Project Ozma?

Crews: 08:53

No. Yes, yes, that's right. Sorry. Sorry. That's right. Because that frequency would return-- it would tune to-- I mean, that receiver would tune to 1,400 megahertz--

Kellermann: 09:04

Megahertz.

Crews: 09:05

--or better. 1,421.

Kellermann: 09:09

So you and Bill and Omar--

Crews: 09:15

And then George Grove.

Kellermann: 09:16

And then George Grove. When did he come?

Crews: 09:19

Oh, it was within a year after I came. And by the way, George had been living until just recently.

Kellermann: 09:26

I know. Yeah, no, I know that. Yes. I would see him at the big things.

Crews: 09:35

Then I think Bob-- no, wait a minute. That's wrong. Bob Vance was next, and then George Grove.

Kellermann: 09:43

Why'd you need so many operators?

Crews: 09:45

Well, in order to do a full time, 24-hour coverage, it takes four operators. And you still have a one-hour vacant that somebody else has to cover or an eight-hour period.

Kellermann: 09:57

Right. So with these five people, Bill Meridith, yourself, Omar Boyer, Bob Vance, and George Grove, at some point, you became in charge of--

Crews: 10:18

Telescope operations.

Kellermann: 10:21

Yeah. Well, at first, of course, it was just 85-1. Or--

Crews: 10:24

That's right. That's right.

Kellermann: 10:26

So did you become the chief operator at 85-1, or was that later or--?

Crews: 10:31

No, I did that. And I did the scheduling of the operators and that sort of thing.

Kellermann: 10:34

For 85-1?

Crews: 10:35

Yeah.

Kellermann: 10:36

So why'd they pick on you?

Crews: 10:38

I don't know. I guess Heeschen liked me. Maybe not.

Kellermann: 10:42

That's a semi-serious question.

Crews: 10:43

It was our job.

Kellermann: 10:45

Yeah, I know that. But that was an important decision because you later went on to take charge of everything. And so Bill got more involved in the science, I think, in computing.

Crews: 11:03

Yes.

Kellermann: 11:04

And certainly Bob got involved with computing.

Crews: 11:06

Yeah. And Bill left the observatory and went to NASA, I think.

Kellermann: 11:15

JPL?

Crews: 11:15

JPL.

Kellermann: 11:16

JPL, yeah.

Crews: 11:16

JPL, yeah.

Kellermann: 11:18

But then he came back, didn't he?

Crews: 11:21

He came back as a programmer in Charlottesville. And then he left that.

Kellermann: 11:29

He was at Socorro.

Crews: 11:30

No, he was at Socorro when he passed away. You're right. You're right. He was in programming out there.

[silence]

Kellermann: 11:50

And George did a variety of things.

Crews: 11:52

Yeah. Among other things, at one time he was in charge of the clock. At that time, methods of getting accurate signals for timing information and that sort of thing and keeping the dials on the telescopes right to, like the sidereal time. We had a room in this basement that kept sidereal time.

Kellermann: 12:19

Yeah. Yeah, I remember that, right.

Crews: 12:21

And it had to be checked at least once every week and adjusted finely just a little bit. And we piped sidereal time out underground down to all the telescopes. And they used that for their determination of sidereal time on the telescope dials and for pointing the antenna course. Later on, all that was tied in with the timekeeping people in--

Kellermann: 12:58

Naval Observatory.

Crews: 12:59

Naval Observatory, yeah, which eventually moved to the West Coast sort of. You have 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20 megahertz.

Kellermann: 13:08

Yeah, Boulder.

Crews: 13:09

Yeah, Boulder, Colorado, yeah.

Kellermann: 13:10

Yeah. But the clocks are still at Naval Observatory. Well, there's other ones in Boulder now too. That's right. Yeah.

Crews: 13:22

Yeah.

Kellermann: 13:23

So when did you get involved in the 140 foot?

Crews: 13:28

Pretty early on. When I first came here, they were putting in the foundation. Now that foundation is something else. The walls are three-feet thick. And the foundation goes down to bedrock, which is about 30 to 40 feet in this area, all over this area. We're at 2,700 feet elevation. And you can just about count on finding bedrock at about 35 to 40 feet. So that's the way the 140-- When I came here, they were pouring concrete. And then there were all kinds of problems because the contractors got way behind and there was nothing for the-- and that's how 85-1 came into being because the scientists were sort of fussing because there was nothing for them to do. And so they got 85-1. And they didn't take long to exhaust many of the things. Of course, there's only one antenna. And as a result of that, they wanted this antenna that would serve also for better aperture and that sort of thing. And so they engaged a company to do the 300 foot.

Kellermann: 14:55

Right. That's a separate story too, of course.

Crews: 14:57

And Bob Hall was a bit involved in that telescope.

Kellermann: 15:00

Yeah. You know that Bob died two weeks ago.

Crews: 15:05

Oh, yeah. Yeah, they've already brought his remains to Green Bank.

Kellermann: 15:08

Is that right?

Crews: 15:09

Yeah. They've already brought him over. Bob's wife and Dave Hogg brought him over and put them out down at the telescope.

Kellermann: 15:16

I didn't know that. Is that why the flag is-- I saw a down there half--

Crews: 15:25

I would say that's it-- it was only last week they did that.

Kellermann: 15:29

Right. So back to the 140-foot, the—so when it was nearing completion. You must have gotten involved in hiring the operators and--

Crews: 15:48

And the fact that it didn't get completed until 1964.

Kellermann: 15:54

5.

Crews: 15:55

1965. Yeah.

Kellermann: 15:56

I was here. Did you recruit and hire the operators for that?

Crews: 16:03

Yes. And of course, we already-- it's an equatorial mount telescope. So the operators were just moving-- I just hired new people. But they went into the 85 and the trained operation went on the 140.

Kellermann: 16:19

Oh. So they trained at--?

Crews: 16:21

They trained--

Kellermann: 16:21

The 85?

Crews: 16:22

I tried to train them at the 85, yeah.

Kellermann: 16:24

Right. So who were those-- but none of the people -- the most experienced people were the five people we just talked about. None of those became operators at the 140 foot.

Crews: 16:41

Oh, yeah. I think so. Bob Vance. Of course, he went into computing [inaudible]. Yeah. And then, we had people like Bill Hunter. And eventually, he became the person who's charge-- well, Howard Brown was actually a trained operator from 85-1. And then, he went over and took over the 140. And then, later on, Howard kind of backed out. And he was sort of more of a consultant for the 140 because 140 was a difficult machine. It just had a lot of machinery, a lot of machinery. It had 32 pumps. It had to operate 24 hours a day. And that was just to keep the thing floating. It was a floating bearing, very-- it was an unheard-of situation in any kind of a structure.

Kellermann: 17:36

And Howard was the chief operator of the 140-foot?  Howard Brown.

Crews: 17:42

To start with.

Kellermann: 17:44

No.

Crews: 17:45

He didn't operate.

Kellermann: 17:49

No.

Crews: 17:50

He was in charge. He was--

Kellermann: 17:50

Right. Exactly.

Crews: 17:51

You knew that.

Kellermann: 17:52

Yes. And Bill Hunter was deputy chief and-- but Howard did the scheduling, I think, of the operators.

Crews: 18:06

Yes. No, no. I always scheduled the operators.

Kellermann: 18:10

Oh, you did.

Crews: 18:11

And through the input from the supervisors. And an interesting thing happened. Howard was always bothered by the fact that I seem to have an ability to figure things out. And I remember we had powerline problems. And our power comes-- here on the site is underground to keep out the interference problems. But it comes across the mountains over here to the west of us, comes in that way, and then goes underground and it hits the site. And I remember one time-- now, Howard loved to have downtime.

Kellermann: 18:50

I know that.

Crews: 18:51

It just tickled him to death. And I remember one time, we had a power failure. Well, of course, as soon as I heard about it, I went down there. And there was no power in the control room. But there was power down in the substation, which is probably 100-- 200 yards away. So anyway, I went down there and I've-- I had them disconnect the line going up to the 140-foot so it wasn't hot. And then, I got busy. And I made a few measurements with the meter. And I walked up over the hill and I said, "Well, fellas, you know what? The power bridge right here didn't hold [laughter]. I was right!

Kellermann: 19:37

How did you know that? Know what?

Crews: 19:38

I measured the resistant [inaudible]--

Kellermann: 19:40

Oh, right. Okay. All right.

Crews: 19:41

And Howard said, "That Fred Crews--" he said, "He's always into everything [laughter]."

Kellermann: 19:49

Howard must've been in charge of the maintenance, though, because he took the maintenance day very seriously.

Crews: 19:55

Yes. And later, they had a guy by the name of Russ Poling. And Russ, by the way, is still living.

Kellermann: 20:02

Still living, we just played golf with him yesterday, a day ago.

Crews: 20:04

Yeah, okay, great.

Kellermann: 20:06

He told Michele his neighbors pronounce “Pauling.”

Crews: 20:11

Well--

Kellermann: 20:12

I always thought it was Poling, too, but.

Crews: 20:14

Well, it's spelled P-O-L-I-N-G.

Kellermann: 20:16

I know. Anyway, he was the head [inaudible].

Crews: 20:26

Yeah. He looked after the telescope, that's basically what it amounted to. He took care of the pumps and that sort of thing under Howard’s supervision.

Kellermann: 20:40

Where'd he come from?

Crews: 20:41

Beverly, West Virginia between here and Elkins.

Kellermann: 20:44

Yeah, but I mean what was he doing before he came here?

Crews: 20:47

I don't remember now.

Kellermann: 20:51

And who were the other mechanics?

Crews: 20:55

Well, later on, we--

Kellermann: 20:59

There were two or three or four.

Crews: 21:01

Oh yeah, there were--

Kellermann: 21:02

I mean at the 140 foot.

Crews: 21:03

I don't recall that. We had floating mechanics, and our favorites, and really the best ones we ever had, were twin brothers. And they're--

Kellermann: 21:21

Gordon.

Crews: 21:22

--Ron and Don Gordon. And they're twins. And one of them-- they were exactly different. One was the gofer, and the other one was a doer. And one would climb down off the telescope and go up and get parts and stuff like that, and the other would be up on the telescope, and he would do it. They work really well together. And they're still around.

Kellermann: 21:47

Yep. I saw Ron on Saturday. So were you at all involved in the 140 foot during the construction time, or?

Crews: 22:02

I was just nosey because I remember one of the tests down there, and Bill Horne was the chief engineer then. And--

Kellermann: 22:13

Not from the beginning though, was he?

Crews: 22:15

Well, he was the first full-time engineer that come along after Sid Smith, Bill Horne. And one of the tests we had to make-- and it had to be done. And the company that did the antenna was Pacific Crane & Rigging. And one of the tests had to be done was if you had the telescope over at the limit-- now, the limits on the telescopes are very important because they stop the antenna before it hits the ground. They have to be tested. We used to test them weekly just by running the telescope up close to them and slowly running into them. And we had to be sure they were working. So now this had never been tested before. So anyway, they went over and slowly tested it. And I recall, that while they had it over there, they lost control of it--

Kellermann: 23:11

Uh-oh.

Crews: 23:12

--but it did stop. And the question was, if they had no way of getting it back up through the limit. So there was a way that you could go up where the machinery was-- now these are hydraulic motors. And you don't just turn a rheostat or a potentiometer or something like that, your controlling valves in those hydraulic motors, and the idea was that they were-- on the count of three, they would release the brakes from downstairs, which means the telescope's now free to go depending on what its own balance is. Well, it turns out-- and thank goodness it was bottom heavy, but we didn't know that at the time. At any rate, they counted one, two, three, and they pulled, and sure enough, it turned around and went home. [laughter] I was up in the-- up there in that room where the machinery was because I wanted to be able to hit the brakes before we could get a message to the operator downstairs because, you see, he had to release the brake.

Kellermann: 24:15

Right. Right. Well, I remember all the nights I spent up there repairing pumps in the middle of the night when they would go they were going, or replacing them, I guess.

Crews: 24:28

Yeah. We had a backlog of spares.

Kellermann: 24:32

That's all gone now, isn't it?

Crews: 24:36

No. It's still down there. And it's so universally known now that it almost never gives trouble.

Kellermann: 24:46

Yeah.

Crews: 24:47

It’s under a contract to MIT or somebody. They pay the Observatory to use that telescope. And a year, a while back-- well, I'm getting ahead of the game. But years ago, Bill Brundage got this idea. He used 140 foot to broadcast a signal to the moon. To broadcast, which we don't do. But nevertheless, we got--

Kellermann: 25:08

That was in 1983. That was super [crosstalk].

Crews: 25:11

We got permission to do that. And we did it. And I was involved in that. And we got back QSL cards from hams all over the world.

Kellermann: 25:20

Right.

Crews: 25:21

Like the old Sears Roebuck catalog, that thick, of those things. And they are here in Green Bank. I made sure they stayed in Green Bank, didn't go to Charlottesville.

Kellermann: 25:31

Good.

Crews: 25:39

I thought you might be interested in hearing the story about the paint on the reflector.

Kellermann: 25:45

Yep. All right.

Crews: 25:45

Okay. Now Bill Hart, I'm pretty sure was from the University of Michigan.

Kellermann: 25:50

Yes.

Crews: 25:51

They probably one of the first, if not the first, aside from the military, maybe even before them, 85-footer.

Kellermann: 25:58

Yeah. Actually, I think that's not right. My understanding is that they ordered the first antenna from Blaw Knox. And NRAO came along – this is what I heard from Fred Haddock. And NRAO pulled some strings and jumped the production line and got the first antenna. And Michigan got the second antenna, which turned out to be much better.

Crews: 26:31

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Kellermann: 26:33

Because of what they had learned, and they had a better surface. And it's still in use, the Michigan antenna.

Crews: 26:39

Okay. Yeah. Well, I wasn't aware of that particular part of it--

Kellermann: 26:41

Go ahead.

Crews: 26:42

But the major problem with that antenna, first of all, it's galvanized steel. Galvanized steel, now you do that for longevity because, otherwise, you got rust all over it. And so it's galvanized instead of painted. In the first instance that wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was that the surface was clean, shiny aluminum. Solid aluminum.

Kellermann: 27:07

The reflecting surface.

Crews: 27:07

Yeah. Reflecting surface. If you point that thing at the sun, you burn up the focal point.

Kellermann: 27:12

Right.

Crews: 27:12

So we had this rule when initially that-- and, of course, the antenna was steered by the operator himself originally. The rule was that you always avoid the sun by at least an hour, which is 15 degrees. And so we always did that, and we're very careful to be sure of that. I remember when Grote Reber came, he insisted, because there was a time that when one of his sources was close to the sun, and we said, "No. We're not going to do that, Grote." But at any rate-- so Bill Howard had the same problem out at University of Michigan. And what he did, he came up with a flat white paint. And he had the surface painted with this flat white paint. And that worked pretty darn well. You can sort of point it at the sun with a little bit of care. But then a company in, I think, California, maybe eastern California, called Triangle Paint Company. They developed a solar reflectance paint. And this paint was really interesting because we got some. Well, Bill Howard was the one that came up with it. No. No. I don't know how Bill Howard-- No. It probably came from Bob Hall with the information. He may have requested that they design that paint. But at any rate, we painted the 85-1 with it. We could point that thing at the sun, and if you just went out and looked, up over the lip of the dish out in the field, and looked out, you could just see a shimmering air sort of, coming up of around the edge, around the edge of the dish, instead of being focused, it was being broken up. Then I got worried that the performance of the 85-footer could be greatly improved because steel untreated is a real problem. And so you can paint it with white paint, and that makes all the difference in the world. So we painted the 85-1 white, and that was as far as I know, that was the first one to be painted. The paint was white, just good quality paint that you were using on metal structures.

Kellermann: 29:40

So not from this Triangle Paint Company, not this one.

Crews: 29:43

No, that was just regular paint. Well, I think we bought it over to Elkins.

Kellermann: 29:46

Right. And when was that? Do you remember?

Crews: 29:49

I don't remember that. Yeah. But that did improve the performance of the antenna because the pointing of the antenna was almost a function of the position of the sun to a period because it [bit?] the structure.

Kellermann: 30:07

Sure. And so on your 140-foot panel that's sitting out here, that was used to test various paints later on. Is that right?

Crews: 30:23

Well, we painted it, but yes, to kind of do that, but over the years, we wanted that to be something that the public would see and they could see up close. So it's always been there, but I've never seen anybody looking at it.

Kellermann: 30:41

I think the two of us mention it when they go by or something. So is it ever used to test paint?

Crews: 30:54

What's that?

Kellermann: 30:55

The panel here.

Crews: 30:56

We had no way to get a focal point.

Kellermann: 30:58

Yeah. No. I thought there were temperature sensors on it too.

Crews: 31:06

Oh, yeah. We could do that. Yes, we did that. Sid Smith was involved in some of that.

Kellermann: 31:22

Right. Well, going back to the 140-foot. So Howard Brown never actually operated, I guess. I don't remember.

Crews: 31:32

Well, he did, but it didn't last long because we needed him as a supervisor.

Kellermann: 31:36

Right. Well, he was a very strong supervisor. I remember shortly after I came here, I was observing, and it was back in the days of chart recorders. And the chart recorder-- the pen locked up as, as they often do, and I had a lot of experience with that particular recorder. I used it when I was a graduate student at Caltech. And that day was maintenance day when I was finished observing, so there was no observing. So I took the chart recorder and brought it back here to the lab to fix it. Well, Howard had a fit. I had no right to take the equipment away and bring it back. And he called Heeschen in Charlottesville and said, "Never do this again." He took great pride in his equipment there and his telescope. Well, let's turn to the 300-foot. So that was built pretty quickly. And hired new operators there, or?

Crews: 32:54

Just moved them on. Just kept hiring them and training them. Sometimes at this point, we began training them at 140, of course. We had to have more people. And the 300-foot crowd was very different, a=in that their telescope just moved north and south. It depends on the earth to rotate. And you'll see Ken, maybe you've already noticed it. The surface on the 300-foot was a mesh surface. It was molded aluminum, but it had about-- or at least a quarter-inch openings in it, which the purpose was to get the weight down because the 300-foot was built as a stopgap antenna. And the thought was that it might last for 10 years. The 140 didn't get finished until 19-- and you said '65. And so, they really needed that antenna, and they certainly put it to use. But the panels were a problem in that they were made of aluminum, and aluminum tends to stretch. And the backup structure was not all that good either. So over a period of years, you had this, and you look out surface and you see waves.

Crews: 34:17

So I got this bright idea. Why don't we take that surface off, one panel at a time, and put it down on the ground and get a farmer to come in here with his farm tractor and he'll roll it flat again? And that's what happened. And that was an interesting exercise because the way the panels were installed, and this was el cheapo-- the way the panels were installed, you had the ribs of the telescope coming out, you know. You had the ribs coming out, and then they had a device called a stud that you put in a welding gun. And you put it down against that, and hit the trigger, and it automatically welded this threaded rod to the telescope structure. And then you adjusted the nuts [inaudible] up and down to get the panel height that you wanted. Okay. So anyway, I put those things on the ground. We rolled them flat, took them back up there. And what I had forgotten is that aluminum can be stressed, S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D. It didn't like that, and it began to buckle and do all kinds of stuff because you hardened it. You really hardened it. But anyway, that sufficed until-- later on they put a different surface on it.

Kellermann: 35:43

Do you remember when that tractor work was done? The telescope--

Crews: 35:47

No.

Kellermann: 35:48

--was finished in '61?

Crews: 35:50

Yeah. I would say about '67 or so.

Kellermann: 35:55

Yeah. I think it was here then when it happened.

Crews: 35:56

Something like that. But it worked for a while, but then began to give trouble again. And then later on, they put a new surface, a completely different surface on it. But down, over to the Tour Center, there's a piece of the old surface-- well, the final surface, actually. It was still a mesh, but the final surface, there’s a piece of it all wrinkled and torn and twisted from falling, in the Tour Center up there hanging on the wall.

Kellermann: 36:32

So, what do you remember about Project Ozma?

Crews: 36:37

Project Ozma was really interesting because Frank Drake who did Project Ozma, he was looking for intelligence from somewhere else in the universe. And you ask yourself the question, "Well, where would you expect it to be coming from? Civilizations out there, if they would either be way ahead of us or way behind us and never developed?" So he looked at optical analyses of the sky, and he was looking for star systems like our sun that were less than 10 light years away. And that would just about limit transmitters as we knew them and receivers as we knew them here on Earth. So the idea was if they were out there, they realized we were here, but they were trying to get in touch with us but that was not very likely for all the reasons that I mentioned. So anyway, then the next question was what frequency would they transmit on? Well, you would think, and this was Drake's idea. You would think that they would transmit at the most prevalent frequency or nearby, really nearby.

Crews: 38:01

Well, that happens to be hydrogen, which is 1,425 bing, bing, bing, and so what we did, we scanned around the hydrogen frequency 24 hours a day, well, as long as those two stars were above the horizon. And I remember it was so interesting that-- maybe that was another experiment, but we would wait on the sources to come up above the horizon, and we would track them. And I remember right over here, across the road from where we are, that was our eastern horizon here. So before observing time started, we took a telescope over there and waited for the source to come up. Turned out that the observatory secretary, whose name was Beaty Sheets-- well, her daughter now living, Beaty has already passed away. That's where she lived, and she was courting, and we'd point the telescope over there, and we could hear these two lovers whispering as they said good night to each other on our telescope.

Kellermann: 39:14

Beaty and Jamie?

Crews: 39:15

Yeah. Yeah.

Kellermann: 39:19

Oh, wait a minute. How could you hear them? I mean, unless you had an amplifier--

Crews: 39:26

We had monitors all over the telescope.

Kellermann: 39:29

Audio?

Crews: 39:30

Yeah.

Kellermann: 39:31

Yeah. Microphone at the focus--

Crews: 39:33

Oh, yeah. We had to do that-- we put those up at the focal point to hear the clanging and banging of the motors of the antenna. We had a monitor, and you could just switch from one station to another. And we did that on the 300 foot too. And anytime you heard a noise, then you'd call the mechanics, "Hey, I heard a noise up there. Please, come down and take a look at it."

Kellermann: 39:59

Their daughter's name? Remind me.

Crews: 40:01

My daughter?

Kellermann: 40:03

No. Sheets'. Beaty's. I knew her.

Crews: 40:07

She just got married again.

Kellermann: 40:08

Really? Do you--

Crews: 40:09

I can't think of her name now.

Kellermann: 40:11

Where does she live?

Crews: 40:14

She lives over there, in the old house.

Kellermann: 40:15

Same house?

Crews: 40:16

Yeah. Yeah. She just got married again. They had a big wedding. Down at the Presbyterian Church.

Kellermann: 40:26

Somebody local, she married?

Crews: 40:27

I didn't know the guy at all.

Kellermann: 40:34

Shelley?

Crews: 40:39

That sounds right. I wouldn't say for sure.

Kellermann: 40:43

Because I think she's close to my daughter, Sarah's age. They played together. Sarah used to stay with them sometimes when we were away.

[silence]

Kellermann: 41:04

Anyway, so back to Project Ozma.

Crews: 41:09

Oh, I've got a good story on that one.

Kellermann: 41:13

Yeah. Go ahead.

Crews: 41:14

Frank Drake wanted to monitor everything. So we had chart recorders monitoring the output of the receivers. We had a system that if you got a signal on the chart recorder, it would slam a thing, and you'd hear a bang, bang, bang on the headphones or on the speakers around the room and so we had all that operating all the time. And we were cautioned by Frank Drake to be careful and listen to all those problems, to watch the chart recorders. We had a chart recorder right beside the operator so he could watch for the noises and everything. And there was a fellow who came here from Switzerland or Sweden depending on-- Norway or Sweden depending on what the politics were, who was the international boxer from over there. And his name was Hein Hvatum. And Hein was here, and he was really an excellent electronics man. Super electronics man. And so anyway, Hein helped us with interference things, and I do remember-- interference as well as receiver things. When the first car came out with the engine in the rear end, I tried to think this morning what that was.

Kellermann: 42:42

Corvair?

Crews: 42:43

Corvair. Maybe not. Anyway, whatever it was, Hein bought one. And he came roaring down-- and this is one of my favorite stories. He came roaring down to the telescope. Well, at the control center at the 85, the control center, you’ve got these double windows, double doors, and it's all window. And he pulled up there. That was in the control room, observing. He opened the door and he said, "Hey, Fred. Come out here and look at my new car." And I went out there to look at it, and when I went back inside, all of the monitors that Frank Drake had were upset and banging and banged and carried on, and I missed the whole thing. [laughter]

Kellermann: 43:29

Well, was that because of the car or because of--?

Crews: 43:32

Who knows?

Kellermann: 43:34

Yeah. Did you have the feeling when that experiment was going on that this is something that was really important, that--?

Crews: 43:44

It was eerie. It really was.

Kellermann: 43:48

And do you recall a lot of public interest?

Crews: 43:53

Yeah. And you always had to fight the public. They would come knocking on the door. It's a telescope. And I know somebody came down there one day and insulted George Grove, one of the operators, insulted George. And he told them to get the you-know-what out of here [laughter] because they were interfering with their engines.

Kellermann: 44:19

Right. What were the attitudes of people like Struve?

Crews: 44:24

I never saw him very much.

Kellermann: 44:27

You didn't see him much?

Crews: 44:28

No, no. No, I did not. I saw Heeschen. I remember, we lived about a mile and a half away, and my wife-- that was before we-- maybe we had our daughter. But nevertheless, my wife was afraid alone at night. And I was observing for Dave Heeschen around the clock. And one night, my wife called me up, and she said, "I am just scared to death." She said, "Something's going on outside." Well, it turned out it was a dog wandering around outside, or even outside our yard fence. But anyway, I said, "Well, I'll be right out," and I shut the program down to stop the antennae where it was, but I did stop it and locked it down. And when I came back, which was about an hour later, Heeschen was sitting in the chair waiting on me. [laughter] And he said, "Don't ever let this happen again." And of course, eventually, my wife settled down, and she was okay.

Kellermann: 45:37

Still were living in that redwood house?

Crews: 45:39

No, he lived in-- I don't know. No. The Redwood house didn't-- it didn't even exist then. But he lived in the Lab in one of the-- that's the way I remember it. Yeah. I could be wrong.

Kellermann: 46:06

What do you remember about the move to Charlottesville?

Crews: 46:11

Well, to me, it was kind of disappointing. What we had to do at that point-- you see, the computers were a problem. We had data recording. But the initial data recording was on these IBM cards. Remember the cards?

Kellermann: 46:32

Yeah, I think a lot of people--

Crews: 46:34

Paper tape. Paper tape was about an inch wide. And it punched holes along the width of the tape and that-- those holes told you what the so-called binary code, decimal code was for that particular instance. And I mean, that was one of the numbers. And so every day, every morning at 8:00 o'clock, we got together the telescope logs and the tapes and sent them to Charlottesville because we didn't have a computer that could deal with that in Green Bank. And of course, that all changed later and straightened itself out, but-- and among the things that we used also was-- oh, the cards were used to give your source information, position and things like that. They were not used for data recording. Okay. But anyway, we sent this roll of tape from each telescope to Charlottesville every day, not knowing and having no way of testing that the tape was any good. They would call us up sometime between then and noon and say the tapes were okay or the tapes were no good. And so you chalk it up to experience or-- and look for trouble at the same time. So we did that for a long time until things got better for different methods of recording, other methods of recording, and so on. Things did get better, computers, better computers.

Kellermann: 48:10

But as a local resident and you're close to the staff, people that are working here in the community. But when did you first hear about the plan move to Charlottesville?

Crews: 48:32

I don't remember. I just don't remember that.

Kellermann: 48:34

Do you remember what the reaction was among the staff-- the people that were going to remain here, it was only the scientists that moved and some of the engineers. They moved to Charlottesville. And what was their reaction or attitude?

Crews: 48:48

Well, I think it was--

Kellermann: 48:50

All the people that remain here?

Crews: 48:51

I think it was a concern that what can they do in Charlottesville? And all the information-- the technology at that time, was right here. Later on, it improved over there. I think about people like Ron Weimer. Ron Weimer was a digital engineer. And he loved trouble. He loved trouble. And if I have-- occasionally, I’d have a problem on the telescope. I was in charge of the driving control of the antennas. And I had to make sure that they ran and that sort of thing. And if I had a problem, Ron wouldn’t interfere. If I had a problem, I'd go to Ron. I'd say, "Hey Ron, bing, bing, bing." And he'd say, "Well, okay, let’s fix it,” and boy, he would stay with it right around the clock until it was working. And sometimes it was a while and most of the time it's a matter of an hour or so. Usually a digital problem, almost always a digital problem.

Kellermann: 50:01

So at some point, well, you became in charge of all the telescope operations.

Crews: 50:08

Yeah.

Kellermann: 50:10

And--

Crews: 50:11

And the maintenance.

Kellermann: 50:12

And site maintenance.

Crews: 50:15

For the antennas, yeah. And later in charge of the machine shop. This was funny because this was the time the TI, whatever, first handheld--

Kellermann: 50:30

Oh, the HP, the calculator.

Crews: 50:32

HP--

Kellermann: 50:34

35.

Crews: 50:35

35. But I think this was a little later than that. And I was not the boss but I was a super boss. In fact, I was supposed to help them. The machinist would get in the drawing and here was an equation. And I remember this guy is still in Charlottesville. I can't think of his name now. But he's still there. He's not basically an American to begin with but he's still over there. And he would come up with these drawings and they were equations. And these guys couldn't deal with them.

Kellermann: 51:16

Art Shalloway?

Crews: 51:17

No, not Art. He's a little short guy who's fairly-- he comes over here-- I only see him no more than once a year. But at any rate--

Kellermann: 51:26

Indian?

Crews: 51:28

Yeah.

Kellermann: 51:29

Shrikanth.

Crews: 51:29

Shrikanth. That's him. That's him. He would send those drawings and they had equations on them, and the operators came to me-- I mean, the machinist came to me and said, "Fred, we don't know how to deal with this. Would you teach us how to use calculators?" So I said, "Well, okay." Now, I never liked to have a machinist work more than four hours because it was dangerous. And so we'd take a four-hour break in the morning and a four-hour break in the-- after four hours of work so we'd sort of break up the morning into a coffee break and afternoon into a coffee break. And I said, "You take your coffee break and I'll take another 30 minutes and we will have a class on how to use a calculator." And boy, those guys-- I got them all a calculator and we got busy, and they learned how to use those things. And you'd go walking around the machine shop and here the guy would be operating the drill press or whatever because we had digital readouts. I'd put digital readouts on them.

Kellermann: 52:34

I remember.

Crews: 52:35

So anyway, here they'd be with that thing, and here would be the calculator right beside them. They loved that. Now, one guy never-- absolutely he refused having anything to do with that. He would say, boy by the name of [Dave?] Gardner, and he had been a machinist years before for Black and Decker company, and he absolutely would have nothing to do with the calculator. And one day I got-- Wendell Monk was an expert. He was a machinist but he was an expert. Not Wendell. Anyway, one of the Monks. And there was another guy too. I got him, gave him a time and I said, "I want you to find the rotating center of this piece of metal in this machine." And Monk just went bing bing with his calculator. He had it. And at the end of five minutes this other guy who didn't want to know anything about calculators, he was still trying to find the center using the techniques that he'd been taught by Black & Decker. And that got to where-- actually, now they have their own computers down there.

Kellermann: 53:52

I know. Yeah.

Crews: 53:53

So they have people now. And we have one guy. Have you been in there?

Kellermann: 54:00

Not for a long time.

Crews: 54:01

Oh, man. You ought to go in there and see this guy. He makes parts. He's even making parts with a South American antenna. And he does that digitally, and he uses one of these. I don't know how special it is that he uses a Dell. I'm pretty sure it's a Dell. But it has that sort of thing built into it. And he can put all that stuff in. And he makes it right there on a-- that gets fed into his computer-operated machine. Basically, we have available just about any computer-operated machine for a machine shop now. We have mills. We have lathes. Just you name it. They've got it down there. They can make just about anything with that machinery by using computers. Digital readouts, and this is interesting because I was able to find the company that made digital readouts, like on a lathe where you move this way and you move crossways. And what happened was and there was a fellow here. Oh, man. He was a student and later became a PhD. He was related a little bit to Howard Brown. But at any rate, he was here. And having the readout available, I plugged that into the old Apple II+ computer.

Crews: 55:32

Now, that is one of the advantages of the old Apple II+ computers to computers we have nowadays is you could build your own cards to do things and plug them in. And so this guy came up with a design for a card that we could plug in. It would calculate by you calculating in the computer where you wanted to be as a function of down the ways and so on. And then this readout would get displayed on the screen and say, "You need to go in a quarter of an inch," or something like that. Now, it didn't close the circuit, but the machinist would do like this until he got it made. So that was our first exercise along the line of looking for computer-operated machine-making machines or parts-making machines.

Kellermann: 56:29

At some point, you became Deputy Assistant Director or something like that.

Crews: 56:34

Yeah. I don't know that I ever got that title. Bill Howard had something to do with that along the way. But they got in the habit of-- they would tell me, or whoever the secretary was, "I'm going on a trip. If anything comes up you call Fred." And so I got that [laughter]-- I got that name. And I remember one time we had an incident where we had a supervisor. And he was like a division head here. And he had, I thought, taken big advantage of an employee. And I called him up and talked to him. I said, "Now, I want you to stop it." And he didn't like that at all.

Kellermann: 57:31

Now, this was whoever was site director that was gone?

Crews: 57:34

Yeah. They were gone. Bill Howard, he was gone. And I really romped that guy.

Kellermann: 57:40

Who was it? What was the division? Do you remember?

Crews: 57:45

It was plant maintenance division.

Kellermann: 57:46

[inaudible]? [inaudible]?

Crews: 57:49

Yeah.

Kellermann: 57:51

[inaudible]?

Crews: 57:55

This guy didn't last long. He was a German.

Kellermann: 57:58

German. Okay. I remember that.

Crews: 57:59

He was a German. He didn't last long.

Kellermann: 58:01

I know who you mean. I don't remember his name either.

Crews: 58:03

And so I really romped that guy. And it sort of went over his head. And when Bill Howard called me back he called me in. He heard about it. He said, "Fred, I want to thank you for doing what you did." He said, "You got that straightened out." [laughter]

Kellermann: 58:26

During those years, there were a number of Assistant Directors that came and went for a year or two at a time. So first after the move, everybody moved to Charlottesville. I think John Findlay was in charge. He had just come back from Puerto Rico.

Crews: 58:52

He stayed here for a while. Yeah. Yes.

Kellermann: 58:56

What was it like working for John? He's kind of an interesting person.

Crews: 59:02

He was kind of an easygoing guy and he appreciated-- there were times that I had to make moves. He lived over towards Charlottesville. And he came here later, I mean, over there. And he to show up and he would not be available when I needed him. And I would just have to make a decision and do it. And he always thanked me for it.

Kellermann: 59:31

And it changed abruptly because John was an electronics expert.

Crews: 59:35

Yep.

Kellermann: 59:37

And the second assistant director over here was Ted Riffe.

Crews: 59:44

Yep.

Kellermann: 59:45

Who was a businessman.

Crews: 59:46

Yeah.

Kellermann: 59:47

So he must have depended on you even more than John.

Crews: 59:51

I didn't particularly care for that because I couldn't talk technical matters with him. Yeah.

Kellermann: 01:00:01

But you had a bigger responsibility then.

Crews: 01:00:02

Yeah, yeah. And Ted always expected you to move. If something would come up, and you go and talk to him about it, and he say, "Well, why didn't you just take care of it?" Is Ted Riffe still around?

Kellermann: 01:00:20

Yep.

Crews: 01:00:21

Oh, okay.

Kellermann: 01:00:25

And then came Bill Howard.

Crews: 01:00:27

Yeah.

Kellermann: 01:00:31

Well, Dave Hogg.

Crews: 01:00:32

Did I tell you the story about the paint on the surface?

Kellermann: 01:00:35

Yeah.

Crews: 01:00:37

Oh, okay. All right. Then Dave Hogg was a good manager. That worked out well. I don't recall any difficulty at all.

Kellermann: 01:01:00

You mentioned Grote Reber once working at the-- did he observe on the 85-foot?

Crews: 01:01:08

Yeah. When I came--

Kellermann: 01:01:10

What was he trying to do?

Crews: 01:01:11

Well, let me, lemme just tell you this. Grote and I came to work the same day. And of course, he never got paid by the Observatory. It was unusual. He worked for a research corporation of New York City. And he had an unlimited expense account, but they paid him hardly nothing at all. And when we first started, and he came, the first day I came to work, both of us, and we had to live, the Observatory had no housing for people like us. At that time my family wasn't here. So we had to, every day we had to drive to--

Kellermann: 01:01:54

You want to add why your wife didn't come in first? She told us last night.

Crews: 01:02:00

Well, we didn't know what was going to happen because this was something that we didn't know was going-- what was going to happen and how it will work out and everything else.

Kellermann: 01:02:11

You were on probation first [crosstalk].

Crews: 01:02:12

Probation for six months.

Kellermann: 01:02:13

Six months?

Crews: 01:02:14

Yeah. No, it was three months.

Kellermann: 01:02:18

Three months.

Crews: 01:02:18

Three months.

Kellermann: 01:02:18

Three months. Yeah. Okay. And then after that, she moved here?

Crews: 01:02:22

Yes. And we rented a house right from Mr. Moro Beard who hated the Observatory.

Kellermann: 01:02:27

Why?

Crews: 01:02:28

Because down there where 851 Inn was his home place. His home farm. And I think that would be an interesting thing for you guys to do in Charlottesville, would be to have a map in the library somewhere. Archivists have a map of the owners of the original property. I remember one of the first guys that I met when I came. There was a man by-- an engineer by the name of Jim Cunningham. He didn't stay very long and he was very aloof, and if you had a question, he would answer it, but he didn't seem to be a part of the organization and he didn't stay very long. Jim Cunningham. And that was when the office, the business office and that sort of thing, was right over here near the Presbyterian church.

Kellermann: 01:03:24

Did you ever meet Howard Tatel? The telescope is named after?

Crews: 01:03:31

No.

Kellermann: 01:03:32

You were here at the dedication of 85-1?

Crews: 01:03:39

No, it was about two weeks after it was dedicated.

Kellermann: 01:03:45

Oh, I see.

Crews: 01:03:47

I was not here.

Kellermann: 01:03:48

So if you look at-- there's a picture of the dedication and his wife is there and his son. Son looked like a teenager at the time. The son is a very high-ranking federal judge now.

Crews: 01:04:05

Oh, really?

Kellermann: 01:04:07

He's blind. This is the Federal Court of Appeals I think. He holds a position that the previous person in that position went to the Supreme Court. So he's a very well-recognized judge. I've met him and he wants to visit here again.

Crews: 01:04:37

Oh, really?

Kellermann: 01:04:39

Yeah. Hopefully, he may come this fall. See, where were we? Oh, the houses, yes. So I think I know the answer. What was Beard's first name you said?

Crews: 01:04:59

Moro.

Kellermann: 01:04:59

Moro.

Crews: 01:05:01

M-O-R-O. And his wife is still living and she's over 100 years old.

Kellermann: 01:05:04

Emma?

Crews: 01:05:06

Emma, yeah.

Kellermann: 01:05:07

Where is she?

Crews: 01:05:09

She lives at her home alone. We're thinking that she needs to be in a place where somebody looks after her.

Kellermann: 01:05:19

So where do they live?

Crews: 01:05:20

She lives alone.

Kellermann: 01:05:21

But this was their house down here?

Crews: 01:05:22

No, but they bought a house out here. A lot of people did that, several people.

Kellermann: 01:05:28

So why did he dislike the Observatory?

Crews: 01:05:30

You see he was a Armour meat salesman in Beckely and he and Bob Byrd were good friends, Robert C. Byrd. Do you remember?

Kellermann: 01:05:38

Mm-hmm.

Crews: 01:05:39

Just that. And Robert Byrd was a butcher and Moro sold meat for Armour. He was a salesman for the Armour company to Robert Byrd. And so they knew each other. And he really got upset. And he of all the other people involved-- a lot of the people who had homes here were happy because the houses were all rundown and the farms weren't making any money and they couldn't do anything about it, and a lot of the people were happy because they got money--

Kellermann: 01:06:24

They got well paid. Yeah.

Crews: 01:06:25

They got well paid and they could go out into the community and buy-- most of them were elderly and they could go out into the community and buy a little house. The daughter of one of the ladies now lives right here in Arborvale. She's retired now. She taught school here.

Kellermann: 01:06:47

Who is that?

Crews: 01:06:49

Mary Margaret [inaudible].

Kellermann: 01:06:50

Oh, yeah. Michele knows her because they taught at the same time.

Crews: 01:06:57

Margaret, at the sound of visitors she's pretty--

Kellermann: 01:06:59

They talked about it last night. That's right. So she was in one of the farms here you said or?

Crews: 01:07:12

Yes. Her and her family.

Kellermann: 01:07:15

She was a child then I guess

Crews: 01:07:16

Yes. And initially, the houses on the site who were occupied by-- and there still are houses over going down to the Hannah houses, which were originally houses here that the observatory bought, and people that worked here lived in those houses. And of course, there's still the - what do they call it? The Rabbit Patch or something over there that still exists, and people who work there still live in those houses.

Kellermann: 01:07:58

Yeah, those are new.

Crews: 01:07:59

Yeah. And the same guy that built my house under-- I got a GI loan. I was the first guy in Pocahontas County to get a GI home loan, and there was a complaint. And this is where-- what was the first guy, the guy that was your business manager, Frank Callender. Frank Callender was the first business manager, and he came from the NSF. He worked at the NSF before he came here, and we wanted to build a home. It was hard to find a place to live, and we wanted to build a home or house, and so I found a guy in Beckley, West Virginia, which is my hometown, which is 125 miles away. And he is a house contractor, and he agreed to build it, but I had trouble getting a loan. So they'd have business sessions here where all mucky-mucks - I'm going to call it that - mucky-mucks of AUI would meet here, and they were having one here, and I was having this trouble. The government people that took care of loans and that sort of thing, and they didn't have a fellow who had a dealer loan, a government dealer loan. But at any rate, I couldn't get the fellow who represented that for the government, I couldn't get him to approve the loan. And so I talked to Frank, and he said, "I'll take care of that." I guess he called somebody at the NSF and they called somebody else. And so we got our loan, so we were the first one. But the guy who lived in Elkins, he told me, he said, "I don't have any loans to fool with over there now, and I don't want any." He said, "I just don't want to come over there because we have to inspect the houses every so often." And we had to plant a certain kind of a tree in the front yard, named the type tree and how far it was from the front door and all that.

Kellermann: 01:10:11

So you couldn't get a loan-- I mean, the Observatory did business with the Bank of Marlinton, I think?

Crews: 01:10:21

Well, they did. But that--

Kellermann: 01:10:22

And, I mean, they wouldn’t give loans to build houses?

Crews: 01:10:26

No. This was a government loan.

Kellermann: 01:10:29

Yeah, but why weren't the local banks--

Crews: 01:10:31

No, they weren't-- maybe we weren't smart, but they weren't into that at the time.

Kellermann: 01:10:35

I see.

Crews: 01:10:36

And it turns out that the guy that built my house built all the other houses over here in the Rabbit Patch.

Kellermann: 01:10:43

So people couldn't get loans to build their own home then?

Crews: 01:10:53

Well, they did after me, yeah.

Kellermann: 01:10:55

Yeah. But what if they weren't--

Crews: 01:10:57

Bill Meredith next door later built a house with the GI loan.

Kellermann: 01:11:01

What if they hadn't served in the military?

Crews: 01:11:05

That's interesting. Bill had, but it turned out that when he left, a fellow by the name of Tommy Carpenter, he was one of our telescope operators--

Kellermann: 01:11:13

Yeah, I remember him.

Crews: 01:11:14

--and he just went over there and started paying the bills, monthly. He was not a veteran at all, but he just started paying the monthly bill for the house to the government. And he got away with it. Nothing was ever said to him. And he finally paid for the house and then moved to another one, to [inaudible]. John Spargo lived there one time. He's at the VLA.

Kellermann: 01:11:44

Yeah. Sorry. This is an NRAO house?

Crews: 01:11:48

No. No. It was probably a house, but it had a government loan [crosstalk].

Kellermann: 01:11:57

Oh, I see. A person who built the house [inaudible]. Anyways, we got off the track of Grote Reber. He had an observing program on 85 foot, or, aside from all the other things that he was doing.

Crews: 01:12:20

And several things happened with Grote. I remember, Heeschen approved all of the requests for telescope time. He did that. And so Grote asked for some time for 85-1. I was the operator on duty at the time. And he was observing and he came in and he gave me a position. And he said, "Just set up on that position and track." I said, "Just set up on that position and track?" "Yeah. Yeah. Just go ahead and do it." And I said, "Well, I doesn't prove anything." I said, "I need to move off and on here to get any sense out of it." "No, you just do what I said." What can you do? I mean, he's the boss. And he said, "Oh, by the way, I have a boomerang." And there was a guy from England here at the time and he was an English engineer. And he went around with Grote and that sort of thing. And so they came down to the telescope with this boomerang.

Kellermann: 01:13:29

Is that Nigel Keene?

Crews: 01:13:30

No. Nigel Keene was from, wasn’t he from Australia? I'm not quite sure. I can interact--

Kellermann: 01:13:39

[inaudible] go ahead.

Crews: 01:13:42

Anyway, they came down, we got right out beside the 85 and we were throwing the boomerang. Well, the idea is you throw it and it comes back to you. And that's what we were doing. Well, sometimes it didn't. And somehow or other the guy throw this boomerang toward this guy from England, this engineer from England then it went to him and hit him in the head and knocked him out. We had to take him to the hospital in Elkins. But he got over that pretty quick.

Kellermann: 01:14:21

So do remember what Grote was trying to do when he's tracking this source without going on and off?

Crews: 01:14:30

No. And also, it's important to note that Grote has his own building down there. Oh, this guy from 85-1, he had a building where he-- and he actually had a-- at one time, he had a technician assigned to him. And he did his own thing down there.

Kellermann: 01:14:50

Can you remember the technician was, do you remember?

Crews: 01:14:55

I can't remember his name. Carl [Wooddell?]. He lives down next to Marlinton. I don't even know if he's still living. I know where his house. He's close to Marlinton. And Grot, he was always wanting to put up these huge long wire antennas, that was his big deal. And that's what he was experimenting with. And he was building circuits. And he was wiring, even at night. At that time the residence for people who were bachelors, so to speak, was over to Hill House. And at night we would lay-- oh, Finley went somewhere. And he brought a pool table.

Kellermann: 01:15:45

Who lived there? Finley and Reber?

Crews: 01:15:47

Started out as Finley, Reber, and me. Finley only when he was here.

Kellermann: 01:15:53

Yeah. And you just turning up for a few months in.

Crews: 01:15:56

Several months Yeah. Six months, three months.

Kellermann: 01:16:00

Three months. Yeah.

Crews: 01:16:01

And we had a pool table. And I remember one day we went up-- did I tell you about Ryders? The Ryders store at the-- I think I told you about it last night. We went to Ryders, which is a restaurant nearby because we’d get tired of our own cooking. We didn't do much of it then. There was no cook. Anyway, we went to Ryders. And they have a little grocery store that's part of their restaurant. And they had some horse chestnuts. And Grote saw them. He said, "Oh, boy. I'm going to buy some horse chestnuts." So he brought some. And he came back down to our house over here. And so he heated up the oven. And he just put those horse chestnuts inside. And I thought, "Oh, man. I don't think this guy knows what he is doing because you always put a hole in them. So that they have an air breather." And those things started blowing up. And it was causing the door to pop open. And Grote had a hearing problem. And whenever he didn't like the conversation, he'd turn it off. And he couldn't hear what's going on. We said, "Hey, Grote. Hey, Grote." [laughter] So he opened the door, and the stuff come out. This explosion from these nuts was over the inside, caked. And we didn't fool with it. And the lady who took care of our bedrooms, I guess she was the one-- they hired her then to provide meals for us. And so she provided meals over there for a while until they got the cafeteria going and that sort of thing. I think for the rest of the time I had lived as a bachelor here, we had a cook there. The very next day after we made that mess, or Grote made that mess, we had a cook. [laughter]

Kellermann: 01:18:06

And one of the things he did when he was here was to quote, "supervise" the reconstruction of this antenna. Is any of that original parts?

Crews: 01:18:25

I would say it has to be. I know the machinist in the machine shop down here who worked with Grote. Now, this guy, the machinist, I'm talking about, is mainly a woodworker. But anyway, Grote went down there with drawings. And he would show up every morning. And he had scheduled this guy as to what to do next. In other words, Grote acted as his boss, so to speak.

Kellermann: 01:19:00

Right. He was good at that.

Crews: 01:19:02

And that's right. And so this guy made that and all that stuff. And this guy is still living. His name is Troy Lusk. And he can tell you a lot of stuff. And I'm going to do the this if you don't mind. Is this the microphone?

Kellermann: 01:19:19

Yep.

Crews: 01:19:20

Troy says that he built the Observatory. He said the Observatory would not be here if it weren't for him. And he worked with Grote Reber and he built all the stuff. And he was it. And I've heard him speaking in-- like in the doctor's office about this and everything else. And he's still living, but he's not with us hardly at all.

Kellermann: 01:19:50

But the-- so what happened-- I mean, the telescope is mostly built out of wood?

Crews: 01:20:01

Mm-hmm.

Kellermann: 01:20:02

And--

Crews: 01:20:03

Oh, I asked Grote at one time. This is interesting. That telescope is 33.2 feet in diameter, measuring across the top of it. And I thought, "That's odd." And I asked him one time, I said, "Grote, how come you settled on 33.2 feet?" And he said, "Now think about it." He said, "If you go down to the lumber yard and you buy two-bys, then the-- what's the biggest one you can buy?" And I said, "Well, standard? 20 feet." He said, "Okay. That's what I used." He said, "When you put that all together and you put it in my design, you wind up with a dish 33 feet in diameter."

Kellermann: 01:20:41

Well, it had a square backup structure, it was 30 feet, which means 28 feet across the diagonal. And he added a foot and a half or so.

Crews: 01:20:52

Yeah.

Kellermann: 01:20:53

Yeah, that's right. I heard him tell that story.

Crews: 01:20:55

And I just found the other day - I don't know if I told you about this - our local paper comes out weekly.

Kellermann: 01:21:03

Yes. You were going to get me a copy of that.

Crews: 01:21:05

Oh, I forgot that. I better get that. I'll give you mine and I'll get another one.

Kellermann: 01:21:17

Well, we'll just copy it.

Crews: 01:21:18

Okay, I should--

Kellermann: 01:21:20

It'd be good to have an original. Maybe we could get it from the Pocahontas Times. If you could tell me the date, if you could look that up when you get home?

Crews: 01:21:31

I'll have to get Margeurite to look at that. Well I can go home to look it up, but. Yeah, I'll give you a call.

Kellermann: 01:21:37

Because then maybe [inaudible] for the Pocahontas Times.

Crews: 01:21:43

Yeah. And I can have them get it to me somehow. Or I won't be down there, and then I could see you or send it to you somehow.

Kellermann: 01:21:54

Yeah, that'd be interesting. It's often claimed-- the Jansky antenna of course is a complete reproduction. But it's often said that is the original Reber telescope. But it's not, is it?

Crews: 01:22:18

Well, I'm sure that Grote had them replace parts that were worn.

Kellermann: 01:22:23

I mean, the wood--

Crews: 01:22:24

Yeah. And I would say that he would overdo it. If he had a piece of wood that looked bad or they had bolt holes and stuff like that in them, that he would have them replace them. I'd say there's more new than there is using again.

Kellermann: 01:22:43

Do you know what happened to the original?

Crews: 01:22:46

No. I'm sure it was carted off and burned.

Kellermann: 01:22:47

That's too bad.

Crews: 01:22:50

And actually, there was a fellow name of Claude Bare.

Kellermann: 01:22:59

Oh yeah, I know Claude well.

Crews: 01:23:00

And he got really interested in that antenna and he put some equipment on it. He was a ham. And he put some equipment on it and observed. Now I never heard what he came out with, but I do know that not too much longer after that he died but--

Kellermann: 01:23:18

Oh, no, that was a good while ago. It was after I came because I worked with him. He died in about 1968. His wife, I'm trying to remember her name, Sandy. Well, I should tell you first that maybe seven or eight years ago I had a telephone call from somebody whose name was-- I don't remember his first name. That was something Bare. And he said he was a student at the University of Virginia. His father used to work at NRAO, and then I remember him. And he came over and we had a nice talk. And when he graduated, a few years ago, about four, maybe five years ago already, Sandy, has since remarried, she came up and the Hoggs had them over for an afternoon. We went over and met her. Claude worked on the first VLBI system, Barry Clark and myself, and yeah, I remember he fooled around [inaudible]. Well, maybe that's enough for a day, Fred. Anything else you can think of?

Crews: 01:24:59

Oh, the interferometer is six stations, like you said last night, 300 meters apart, but there was one later. They built one that's only 100 meters. And it took two bulldozers to move that. And there's a track which is made out of gravel and the thing they call around here, they call chert. If you dig into the side of these mountains, they have a material that makes good roads, and they haul that and put it onto the roads individuals, more farms, individuals like that. But it makes a good road, just like gravel, only it compacts better. And so it doesn't fly so bad and that sort of thing. And so that’s what that thing was made of down through there. And Bob Elliot, who was in charge of plant maintenance there when he was living, and they would have two bulldozer operators, both of those fellows are dead now, and they would drive along like this. The antenna itself was a tripod in a sense. But it was this way, and that was the front of the antenna, which pointed toward north. And so it moved along the track like that. It had tires and they rolled it on these tires. And I'm not sure I got the number of those wheels. I wrote 80 wheels, I think.

Kellermann: 01:26:43

I think they were 24 on each corner and so there's 72 altogether. I think.

Crews: 01:26:51

Well, it's not quite right because the southern one had more load. It was longer. I'm going down to check that by the way.

Kellermann: 01:27:02

Okay. Yeah, it's still there.

Crews: 01:27:03

Still there. I'm going down to check it, but I remember we started having-- oh, this guy is still living. He lives on Back Mountain and he worked in plant maintenance. And among the things he had to do was to keep those tires filled with air. And they started blowing up. They failed and they started blowing up. And we were between moves, and just sitting there. And we would have one explosion after another.

Kellermann: 01:27:33

These are the tires with tubes and everything, right?

Crews: 01:27:36

Yeah. And we had trouble getting them because at that time, I don't know, it was a World War problem or there was some kind of problem there was a scarcity of them. And we had trouble getting those tires.

Kellermann: 01:27:47

These are big truck tires, am I right?

Crews: 01:27:48

Yeah, yeah. And plus the fact that-- I mean, people told me that worked in plant maintenance, they said you go down there and one of them would blow up while you were standing there. You couldn't even want to be close to it. And they were scared because when they started taking them off, well get yourself a long stick and stick it down in the valve.

Kellermann: 01:28:08

Deflate it first.

Crews: 01:28:09

Deflate it first. But they had to replace all of them now. Of course, it hadn't been moved forever. I don't know what condition they're in. I'm sure that it wouldn't work very well. Well, I can't think of anything else.

Kellermann: 01:28:33

Okay, well maybe that's enough for one day, and we'll both take--

Crews: 01:28:36

I'll get you a copy of the local paper.

Kellermann: 01:28:38

Yeah, that'd be good. I'd like to see that.

Crews: 01:28:41

All right. Good. By the way I'm impressed with your machine.