The Perfect Machine Read Free Page B

nature as he approached astronomy problems, carrying a notebook with him wherever he went. If he couldn’t be near the observatory and its instruments, he cataloged the species of insects or plants he found, writing notes as methodically as his logbook of observation runs on the sixty-inch telescope at Mount Wilson.
    On one nature walk in California he had stumbled on a colony of ants, scurrying to and from their nest. Shapley timed how fast they were moving. What factors determined the speed of their travel? he asked in his omnipresent notebook. He gathered enough data to hypothesize that the ants’ speed of travel was determined solely by the ambient temperature. Armed with a theory, Shapley needed data. Wherever he went he would search out an ant colony and accumulate more measurements to bolster his theory.
    Less than a day from Washington, on the east side of Birmingham, Alabama, the train broke down, close enough to the city that the passengers could still see the smoke-darkened skies from the steel mills. The conductors made the rounds of the cars, reassuring the passengers, but as the day went on and the train stood still under the broiling sun, the passengers grew restless and hot inside the cars. Curtis took one of his classical texts and lay down in the shade to read. As he read he could see Harlow Shapley—notebook, stopwatch, and thermometer in hand—chasing through the jasmine and the new kudzu vines that had been planted to control erosion, in pursuit of a colony of ants.
    For a while, the Scale of the Universe seemed far away.

2

Washington
    Washington was a sleepy town in 1920, more like the capital of a small state today than the full-time capital of a great nation. Congressmen and senators spent most of the year in their home districts, commuting to congressional sessions of limited duration. The staffs of Congress and the president each numbered a few people. It would take a dozen years before there would be a telephone on the desk in the Oval Office. The British Foreign Office classified the city as a semitropical hardship location. Even the press wasn’t there in droves yet: Washington politics weren’t considered important enough to attract permanent press bureaus or hordes of lobbyists.
    April was one of the better months, before the oppressive heat and humidity of summer. The hundreds of cherry trees around the Tidal Basin, a gift only eight years before from the mayor of Tokyo, were in bloom, a welcome relief from the dank mosquito infestations that had once marked the area. Relations with the Japanese weren’t as friendly as they had been in 1912, but most Americans, after the experience of the war to end all wars, weren’t interested in other countries.
    The headlines on the newspapers at Union Station were depressing. Warren Harding had replaced the ailing Woodrow Wilson, who had spent the last years of his presidency sequestered in the White House. Wags who had speculated whether Mrs. Wilson or Colonel House was running the Wilson White House now wondered whether anyone was running the government. The “Red scare” was in full swing. In the pages of the Dearborn Independent Henry Ford attacked what he called the “International Jews”; the revived Ku Klux Klan blamed the woes of the nation on the triad of Jews, Roman Catholics, and blacks; police chiefs like William Francis Hynes in Los Angeles sent squads of officers to break up union and leftist meetings; and almost everyone seemed willing to take a swipe at the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies.
    Fortunately there were diversions from the pall of politics. BabeRuth, who had pitched and played occasional outfield for the Boston Red Sox, was in his first season with the New York Yankees and proving he was worth the astonishing $125,000 they had paid to get him. Man o’ War was the Babe Ruth of the racetrack, and handsome, charming Jack Dempsey seemed equally unbeatable in the boxing ring.
    In the bookstores the talk was