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Making a meal of the big dish: the construction of the Jodrell Bank Mark 1 radio telescope as a stable edifice, 1946–57

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Jon Agar
Affiliation:
History of Science Unit, Physics Laboratory, University of Kent at Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NR.

Extract

From a distance the Mark 1 radio telescope at Jodrell Bank is an edifying sight. It is a steel structure of over 1000 tons, holding aloft a fully steerable dish of wire mesh which focuses incoming radio waves from astronomical objects. It is set in gently rolling Cheshire countryside. Its striking appearance can easily be recruited as a powerful symbol of progress and of science as the pursuit of pioneering spirits.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1994

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References

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3 The discipline of radio astronomy has attracted above average attention from the science studies community, for good reason: it is recent and therefore open to sociological inquiry, it is an example of the supposedly novel genre of ‘big science’ with its almost inevitable mix of governmental, military and institutional components, and it is contained, both in time and (conveniently for British researchers) space. During the 1950s, sizable groups existed only at Cambridge, Manchester and Australia. It was not until the 1960s that the huge resources of the USA were turned fully onto the subject. Sociological technique was applied with success in Edge, D. O. and Mulkay, M., Astronomy Transformed: The Emergence of Radio Astronomy in Britain, New York, 1976Google Scholar, and continued in Woolgar, S., ‘The Emergence and Growth of Research Areas in Science with Special Reference to Research on Pulsars’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1979Google Scholar. The subject is used as a case study of science policy in Martin, B. R. and Irvine, J., ‘Assessing basic research: some partial indicators of scientific progress in radio astronomy’, Research Policy (1983), 12, 6190CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Irvine, J., Martin, B. R., Abraham, J. and Peacock, T., ‘Assessing basic research: reappraisal and update of an evaluation of four radio astronomy observatories’, Research Policy (1987), 16, 213–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The history of British radio astronomy, in particular Jodrell Bank, is found in Lovell, A. C. B., The Story of Jodrell Bank, London, 1968Google Scholar, Lovell, A. C. B., Out of Zenith, New York, 1973Google Scholar, and contributions to The Early Years of Radio Astronomy (ed. Sullivan, W. T.), Cambridge, 1984CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For radio astronomy in the USA, see Needell, A. A., ‘Berkner, Lloyd, Tuve, Merle and the federal role in radio astronomy’, Osiris (1987), 3, 261–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The important Australian groups are covered in Robertson, P., Beyond Southern Skies: Radio Astronomy and the Parkes Telescope, Cambridge, 1992.Google Scholar

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13 PRO DSIR 2 501.

14 PRO DSIR 2 512. The mount needed to be stronger to support the heavier dish. The weight of the structure increased from 900 to 1177 tons, the total cost to £445, 046.

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89 Other urban activities, such as the use of microwave ovens, could cause controversy and interference. During the 1960s and 1970s, Jodrell Bank astronomers, to keep their inscription devices clear at the observatory's centre, had to seek to control the activities within the kitchens of Cheshire.

90 Anvil Films Ltd., op. cit. (1) (my emphasis).Google Scholar

91 Schaffer, S., ‘The Leviathan of Parsontown: Literary Technology and Scientific Representation’Google Scholar, unpublished paper, is a parallel discussion of the slipperiness of astronomical authority, when different actors within a telescope's context conflict.

92 Cahan, D. in ‘The geopolitics and architectural design of a metrological laboratory: the Physikalish-Technische-Reichsanstalt in Imperial Germany’Google Scholar, in James, F. A. J. L., op. cit. (7), 137154Google Scholar, says ‘The key concern in planning and designing metrological laboratories is the environmental control of both external and internal sources of disturbances.’ I suggest that such concerns are more widespread.

93 For such ‘internalist’ study of science see, for example, Hillier, B. and Penn, A., ‘Visible colleges: structure and randomness in the place of knowledge’, in Science in Context, the Place of Knowledge: The Spatial Setting and its Relation to the Production of Knowledge (ed. S. Shapin, A. Ophir and S. Schaffer) (1991), 4, (1), 2349.Google Scholar