In my data collection efforts regarding the Farnsworth Fort Wayne period, I have now long been aware of a bizarre secret which I am not ready to release. This is due to the high probability of being misquoted, misunderstood or worse still, attaching to this interesting scientific effort an aura of weirdness that would smack of the wild and fanciful tales told about Tesla.
I will have to frame the story in my planned short work in such a way that there is little room for the hack, techno-dweeb, bottom-feeder writers to write in their own spin on the events. Most such writers make a living by magnifying, twisting, or spinning hearsay events into entire novels. Among these tales are the Roswell incident, the Philadelphia experiment (never happened), Tesla's possible triggering of the the Tunguska event (absurd), etc. The list is endless. I would just hate to have Phil Farnsworth's effort sullied by hype due to one or two incidents which are, and may forever remain, unexplained.
Now, I know that some of you would really like to know what all this is about, but let me say that the bizarre incidents appear to have absolutely nothing to do with fusion, itself, and it will, hopefully be worth the wait.
Most of the hidden tales also mentioned in this post's title are human stories. I was absolutely stunned at the rich and often sad and volcanic human side to this effort. Personality clashes, corporate intrigues, secret workarounds, jealousies, and other side notes which will enrich the telling of the very human side of this effort.
I often wonder at how many other interesting and complex interactions plagued or boiled away just below the surface in other major scientific efforts. The Manhattan project is a prime example.
I have talked at length about all of this with the Perfesser during his visit late last year. I think we both agreed that this tale of the Pontiac Street fusion effort is a story that needs to be out there. I think he was stunned to hear of the bizarre event I have mentioned and I played him the voice recordings of the principal parties involved to back up my claims.
The bottom line is that in ferreting out the true history of a worthy event, we often stumble upon things that should be told, but must wrestle with ourselves on just how much can be told. This is partially in deference to the living or in an effort to not overplay minor, but daily problems which acted to impede the effort.
So, I must continue to wrestle with these issues before I assemble a fleshed out outline of what I am going to tell and what needs to remain in the background.
The histroy of the Fusion effort in Fort Wayne is quite rich for a 6 man effort. It is interesting to note that Phil's part in this effort might be one of the hardest to really track. He can no long speak for himself. It is obvious that his thoughts drove the effort while at the same time, all the principal "on-line" doers agree that Phil was rarely directly involved in the technical minutia of the engineering effort. Most of the days he did unknown and unseen activities in his 2nd floor office a bit removed from the day to day toiling in the lab. It was agreed that he was certainly on hand for major tests and made final inspections and decisions, but was really never grinding away on the floor on a regular basis, especially from 64 onwards.
There are also a number of stories about Phil damaging equipment in the absence of the techs and engineers who actually assembled it. There are further tales of Phil taking data during runs and recording what he was certain should be there rather than what was actually on the meters and instruments. This really worries me as a scientific investigator and all agreed that the numbers for early neutrons were poor indeed (regardless of Phils notes). This was due to a difference in interpreting the neutron instrumentation. It is claimed Phil had his methods and the rest of the team had theirs!!! Naturally, only one can be correct. All agreed, to the man, that no one was a neutron metrologist on their team. None could remember how the Eberline meter data was actually interpreted at that time (long faded technical details). No one there had any prior history of working with neutron instrumentation.
Certainly the 4 year period 58-62 was more of a test and fabricate era than one of research and rewards. The electron based approach insisted upon by Phil held back the effort during this period until finally in late 1961 they reversed gears and moved to the ion approach. (something a lot of you may not have even known!)
Again, everyone, to the man, all respected Phil immensely, but they kept a close eye on him when he was actually in the lab with a gleam in his eye to twiddle and run experiment. It came just short of an edict forbidding him to run equipment without an engineer or technican present. I could go on and on, but you get the gist that while Phil was the guiding genius and in ultimate command, his methodology often baffled, worried and amused all of his co-workers. If anything, Phil has become more human to me after much investigation.
Richard Hull
Created on Friday, May 04, 2001 10:07 AM EDT by Richard Hull