340 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



At each conference a member of the scientific staff of the Observatory 

 would release the news that had occurred since the preceding one 

 and give reporters a chance to ask questions. All the papers received 

 this material on an equal basis and handled it as they wished. There 

 also was established the standard practice of permitting a reporter to 

 see anybody working on a special project; by this means he could 

 obtain not a news scoop but a color or angle story. If another reporter 

 asked for the same story, he would be told that someone else was on 

 it but that if he still wished to pursue it he could. 



Over the months the confidence of press, radio, and television 

 gradually grew. In time they cut down their "death watch" to one 

 man, and each wire service took a turn at night, usually sleeping on 

 the table in what had once been the ladies' lounge in Kittredge Hall. 

 Here, "Chief" Peterson had set up a battery of telephones as another 

 step to preserve fair competition among the newsmen. The final 

 result of these policies was that the reporters left the staff pretty much 

 alone except when the Observatory really had some news to release. 



Sputnik I was certainly the best and most widely publicized achieve- 

 ment of modern science. Leafing through the thousands of news- 

 paper clippings on file at the Observatory, one is again and again 

 impressed with the accuracy and the thoroughness of the reportage. 

 And in view of the scarcity of solid information in those first weeks 

 after October 4 it can be said that never was so much known by so 

 many about so little. 



THE FIRST TRACKERS 

 MOONWATCH 



Although the Observatory had planned to have Moonwatch fully 

 operational by March 1958, the program was in fact sufficiently ready 

 when Sputnik I was launched to begin supplying observations almost 

 immediately. On October 6 a dubious observation was reported by 

 the team in Terre Haute, Ind. The first confirmed Moonwatch ob- 

 servations were made on October 8 by groups in Sydney and Woomera, 

 Australia; the first in the United States on October 10 by the team 

 in New Haven, Conn. 



During those first weeks, essentially all the observational data from 

 visual sightings were furnished by Moonwatch, and from these the 

 Observatory derived such orbital elements and predictions as were 

 then possible. 



Here again. Dr. Whipple's conviction, founded upon a profound 

 knowledge of astronomy and a no less profound understanding of 

 human nature, proved to be correct. He had earlier insisted that the 

 Moonwatch program be an effort of amateur astronomers and science 

 enthusiasts, at a time when the military services and other Government 

 agencies felt that amateurs could not be trusted to carry on such a 



