work. After this success, Donald Squires obtained funds 

 for a larger data system that might serve as a model 

 for other Museums. Shortly after this program started 

 he moved on, but the test was brought to a successful 

 conclusion.'* 



Convincing the Staff 



In 197U, when James Mello transferred to the Museum 

 to continue the Automatic Data Processing (ADP) pro- 

 gram, his first problem was to convince the staff in 

 general, not just the enthusiasts, that there was some 

 merit to a new approach. One technician who favored 

 leather-bound ledgers assured him that even though 

 they cost sixty dollars each, her handwriting was so 

 small that she could enter 50 percent more lines than 

 anyone and still have it legible. Mello still recalls his 

 first week at the Museum, when he was invited to have 

 lunch with the Fish Division. Just before Mello started 

 talking about his new program, Lachner wrote on a 

 blackboard in capital letters, "EXPENSE" "UN- 

 PROVEN TECHNOLOGY" "MISALLOCATION OF 

 RESOURCES," and said not a word during the pres- 

 entation. 



Despite some lack of enthusiasm, the program moved 

 forward. In 1972 Sinithsonian Year reported: "It is be- 

 coming increasingly evident that the care of such data 

 is, in its own way, as important as care for the specimens 

 themselves. The objectives are to capture, store, and 

 retrieve collection-based information more efficiently 

 than by conventional means and to produce ultimately 

 a versatile, easily searchable data base that will be more 

 responsive to scientific inquiry than are current records 

 in most of the departments."'" The program still has 

 not reached that goal, but records of millions of spec- 

 imens are not assembled easily. Each year there are 

 fewer problems with recording and retrieving data. 



One early success story was a sequel to the Endan- 

 gered Species Act passed by Congress in 1973. Fhe 

 Department of the Interior was required to produce a 

 list of endangered species of animals and to arrange 

 for the Museum to make lists of endangered plants. 

 The computer copy itself was eventuallv published in 

 1978, and the listing of plants was done far faster than 

 anyone had anticipated, thanks to automation. 



Smithsonian-wide Inventory Ordered 



B\ the later 197()s an Institution-wide inventory pro- 

 gram, discussed more fully in chapter 23, had been 

 ordered bv Congress. It officially began in the Museum 

 in 1978, although some work had been done earlier. 

 It made good sense for ADP to take on the chore for 

 the Museum, and a whole raft of young temporary 

 workers appeared to do the boring work of counting 

 and recording data, often to the tune of rock and roll 

 music. There was some trauma, but when the first phase 

 of the inventory was completed in 1983, the officials 

 were pleased." 



An inventory was an absolute necessity before col- 

 lections could be moved to the Museum Support Cen- 

 ter. The amount of computer paper required to make 

 lists of objects and to assign moving schedules and lo- 

 cations is enough to make any tree nervous, yet there 

 is no sense in storing an item that cannot be found on 

 demand, as the scientific staff would have to agree. 

 Naturally enough, the emphasis on automatic data 

 processing and modern trends in systematics has led 

 to widespread scientific literacy with computers. Not 

 only is almost everyone who was hired from 1970 on- 

 ward "into computers," some of the most senior cu- 

 rators use them. 



Word Processors Abound 



The most remarkable change in the Museum, and one 

 not predicted by the black-box specialists, has been the 

 spread of word processors. R. E. Grant recalls that when 

 he joined the Geological Survey in 1962 he asked for 

 a typewriter and was informed that because he did not 

 spend 50 percent of his time typing, he was not entitled 

 to one. In 1972, when he transferred to the Museum, 

 he was able to obtain a typewriter officially. No one 

 quite lecalls the history of electric typewriters, but it 

 took at least ten years for them to become moderately 

 common in the offices. Word processors, on the other 

 hand, swept the establishment in less than five years, 

 and virtually every other scientist now has one. The 

 Museum still requires justification for an electric type- 

 writer, but no such paperwork is needed for a word 

 processor, which for some reason is not classed as a 

 typewriter. Typing on a word processor, while not ex- 

 actly automatic data processing, is encouraged by the 

 pro-ADP climate at the Museum. Electronic machines 

 are here to stay. I hey have resulted in more sophis- 

 ticated analyses of data on plants and animals, and they 

 may provide the answer to the problem of linking sci- 

 entists at the Mall with collections at the Museum Sup- 

 port Center. 



Scanning Electron Microscope Laboratory 



The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) Laboratory 

 is a third shared facility. Developed at Cambridge Uni- 

 versity, the SEM brought a new dimension to science, 

 and has led to breakthroughs in many fields in which 

 the Museum is involved. The Museum acquired one in 

 1969 — "a major step in the planned research activities 

 of our staff," Smithsonian Year announced. "The mar- 

 velous new instrument is able to magnify the images of 

 tiny objects from 20 to 140,000 times and several hundred 

 times greater resolution than the conventional light- 

 optical system. ... In only four years since it became 

 commercially available, it has become a dominant re- 

 search tool in such diverse fields in biology as pollen 

 analysis, microfossil identification, and textile fiber-wear 

 studies. In one area of basic research being done at the 

 Smithsonian, Dr. R[ichard] H. Benson is using the SEM 



150 



The Museum 



