The Naval Research Lab (NRL) was an austere environment. It consisted of a central core of buildings in a U-shaped plan, with the main administrative office and library located at the base of the 'U'. Surrounding this complex were dozens of other buildings that had sprung-up since World War II which housed the new research Divisions and the computer center. There were a number of grassy lawns scattered here and there, but these were steadly displaced over the years as new parking places had to be found for the growing staff which now numbered 4000 scientists, engineers, secretaries and administrators. You entered the compound through one of two guard gates, wore photo ID badges, and generally felt like you were working in some prison gulag in Siberia. Curiously, despite all of the redious formality of security badges, car stickers and parking permits, the guards rarely checked the contents of anyone's briefcase, bookbag or even the cardboard boxes on your back seat. I could be stealing all manner of information in file folders or magnetic tapes, but all the guards seemed interested in was things they could understand.
The only time I ever got stopped by a Security guard was during one Saturday trunk inspection when I had accidently brought-in my car, some 2" galvanized pipe for a plumbing project at home. I had gone to a hardware store in Alexandria to pick it up, and decided to stop at NRL to pick-up the manuscript for a paper I was working on. The guards asked me to open my trunk, and got upset when they saw the pipe. "Where did you get that pipe? Do you have a sales receipt to prove it? Why did you bring it here?" They never checked the book bag or the box on my back seat. They actually wrote-up this infraction and on the following Monday I got a lecture from the head of Security about security rules at NRL. It seemed pretty stupid to me, and still does, that 3 feet of pipe could evoke stern lectures from the Navy, while boxes of file folders go unchecked. You figure it out!!!
I was hired by Sachs Freeman Associates, one of numerous 'body shops' or 'Beltway bandits' that hired scientists and engineers on short-term contracts for various government institutions in the Washington area. At NRL, as a "contractor", I was lumped together with the janitorial service, construction companies, and temporary secretaries. This was my first "re-calibration" into Society which impressed upon me that in the grand scheme of things, a Harvard Phd can get you about as much respect as a High School Diploma. This was especially true of the sleepy government workers in the Visitor's Center at NRL, who regarded all contract workers as the same motley group of individuals, and refused to acknowledge me as 'Doctor Odenwald' even though I carefully used this title rather than 'Mr' just to see what reaction I could get from them.
My stay at NRL would prove to be the longest period of work with a single institution since receiving my PhD. Upon starting work on October 15, 1982, this employment lasted until June 15, 1991. During this time, I was able to log a number of research successes and enjoyed a relatively unstressful period of 3 to 4 years before the climate of the work at NRL began to shift.
During the first few years, the Radio and Infrared Branch was a small group of people; not more than 13 people. Ken Johnston was the head of the Branch, and under his watchful eye we managed to maintain our share of the basic research money at NRL to keep our group solvent. There were also funds which came from various Defence Department coffers through Kandiah Shivanandan. For a two month stint during my second year at NRL, we go $100,000 to evaluate how much natural noise was present in the radio frequency band near 27 kilohertz for the GWEN Program; DoDs Ground Wave Emergency Network which was to operate in the event of a nuclear war. It was an interesting program, and we discovered that radio noise was seasonal, depending on how much lightning was going-on as far away as Ohio. We also became active in writing big proposals for such programs as NASA's Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), the Large Infrared Telescope (LAIRTS) and the Millimeter Atmospheric Sounder (MAS). Ultimately, the MAS program won and a few of us went on to build an instrument for the Space Shuttle. But this wasn't astronomical research, although it was a premonition of how the research tides at NRL would soon be turning.
As a group, we had pizza lunches every Friday where we all sat around an socialized; discussing science, but more often than not, hearing the latest gossip from Ken about the research climate at NRL and how it was affecting us. For myself, my salary was paid by a combination of Basic Research money "6.1" administered through the Office of Naval Research, and through money which Kandiah Shivanandan obtained for his DoD-sponsored work on infrared detector technology. He and I would continue to collaborate, until 1985, on developing sensitive far-infrared sensors which we flew on the Harvard Balloon-borne telescope. This would later evolve into work on infrared array technology beginning in 1986.
My own work during the early years involved analyzing the far-IR data we obtained from our balloon flights, and preparing it for publication in the astronomical literature. Also duting this time, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite had been flown, and by 1985, its data had been processed and publically released. This satellite, completely destroyed our far-IR balloon program since for 10 years the Balloon Program at Harvard had struggled to survey small chunks of the sky at far-IR wavelenghts. Once the IRAS data became available, there was no longer a need for our older brand of getting data. On October 15, 1985, we received a box of 26 magnetic tapes which contained images of the entire sky at FOUR wavelengths from 12 to 100 microns, and at a resolution almost as good as what our 1-meter balloon telescope was able to provide! Needless to say, I began immediately to explore this new data, and was able to extract from it many new discoveries in the next 5 years.
To compensate for the scrapping of the Harvard Balloon Program, Kandiah Shivanandan and I became involved in the development of mid-IR cameras using state-of-the-art array detectors that we obtained from Rockwell International as part of a Strategic Defence Initiative "Star Wars" research grant from the Pentagon.
What was it like to work at NRL? Well, apart from the daily attention to the research at-hand, I had time to investigate several other aspects of NRL. The Recreation Club had a swimming pool and weight room within the compound, so beginning in 1985, I would go to exercise at the weightroom about twice a week for lunch. It wasn't a pleasant walk across the NRL 'campus' because next door to NRL lived the Blue Plains Waste Treatment Plant. On a daily basis, NRL would be awash with some of the foulest odors imaginable. The stench of rotting organic matter was particularly inbelievable during the hot, humid summers when temperatures sored to 95 degrees, and the heaped-up excrement had a chance to really cook! Inside the buildings, thankfully, the air conditioning systems were closed cycle so we never smelled anything as we went about our work.
Another feature of the Lab was its Hooker Library which contained an extensive collection of physics and astronomy journals going back to the late 19th century. I read some of the early papers published by Einstein on relativity, and by the founders of quantum mechanics. It was there that I got the idea to write a book about the history of quantum field theory. For months during my lunchbreaks, I would pour through all the journals and assemble a timeline of where certain fundamental ideas in field theory had arrisen. I even wrote a number of chapters for a possible book manuscript. This was pure fun, and in the process, I managed to teach myself more about this facinating topic in physics than I had ever learned in graduate school. The graduate courses stressed the mathematical rigour of the subject, but never touched on the purely historical evolution of this field.
It was also during this time that I began to write for Astronomy magazine, taught courses at the Smithsonian Institution's Adult Education Program, and actually wrote a completed second book called "Astronomy: The Human Dimension" for Dodd/Meade Publishing Company. My adult education activities also landed me a consultant position with Time/Life Books in their 'Exploring the Universe' series.
But during the second half of the 1980's something began to change within our Branch as more people and post-docs came in, and research money began to get tighter. Between 1987 and 1991, I was thoroughly involved in the development and operation of the NRL Mid-IR Array Camera. It had been taken to the Wyoming Infrared Observatory (WIRO) three times, and eventually managed to produce some data of moderate astronomical interest. But by 1990, the SDIO office officially proclaimed that it was no longer interested in agressively moving forward with mid-IR sensors of the kind we had been working on. They now wanted near-IR sensors that didn't require cryogenic operating temperatures and complex refrigeration equipment.
This new policy change was translated into a rather precipitous curtailment of our research money in the IR group. Those with Government positions were able to keep their jobs, but those of us who were contractors were given our walking papers. At first it was the technicians that were curtailed. But by November, 1991 it began to look quite grim for the 'soft-money' scientists as well. Some of us were moved onto other 'open' contracts, but this avenue soon dried-up as even these open contracts eventually had to go too.
In a far-reaching decission, it was decided that DoD would place more emphasis on environmental monitoring and peaceful uses of its technology as the Cold War came abruptly to an end in the final months of the 1980's. Many research enclaves within DoD were 're-organized' including NRL. In an effort to make NRL more visible to outside DoD parties, it decided to create a new branch called the National Center for Advanced Space Sensing. It would be headed by Ken Johnston and consist of nearly 140 people who formarly worked in other NRL groups in such areas as infrared sensors, radar technology and the computer analysis of multi-wavelength imaging information. This lifesaving move beginning in 1988 resulted in a continuing series of re-thinkings about the roles that specific individuals would play in the new organization. In the organization charts, hats were changed frequently. But in positioning itself for continued financial stability, one of the things that was sacrificed in the formation of the new Division was the sense of being a small, intimate group of astronomers doing fun research. Beginning in 1988, research was no longer fun, and any astronomical research you wanted to do almost had to be done after- hours on your own time, as the pressure to do more applied work for NCASS mounted. They were, after all, paying our salaries.
Needless to say, it became a depressing place to work by 1990. There was no more talk about astronomy, or recent discoveries. Only the continued gossip about where our next installments of research money would come from seemed to matter. There were endless discussions of how we were to re-tool our group to serve the needs of some distant Cournal who had money to spend on some project or another. Each month, or so it seemed, Ken Johnston would issue a new 're-organization' of the NCASS Division. Everyone was informed that unless they could bring-in their own money, their research activities would have to stop, and they would be asked to join one of the other groups working on some non-astronomy remote sensing project. I was shielded from this while working on the camera project because we were fortunate enough to be bringing in our own money from the SDIO "Star Wars" office at the Pentagon. But by October, 1990 even this money ran-out and our camera project came to an abrupt end. I laid-off our last technician, John Smith, and a week later, Phil Schwartz who now headed the Radio and Infrared Group told me my own job was in jeopardy in 1991.