Public exposure

Iowa City was a rather small city. As the university’s program for exploration with balloons and rockets developed in the early 1950s, the local media took an increasing interest in the work. It enjoyed growing coverage in the Iowa City Press Citizen, the university’s Daily Iowan, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, the Des Moines Register and Tribune newspapers, and local radio stations KXIC and WSUI.

I enjoyed a unique outlet. Dad had a radio program over station KXIC six mornings each week. Although it focused on rural news and events, his natural interest in science and his pride in his son’s rocket and satellite work led to my appearance on his program on a fairly regular basis.

As the time for the opening of the IGY approached, there was a growing public awareness that entry into space was near at hand. As our cosmic ray instrument began to take visible form, more and more articles appeared to describe our work.4 In mid- 1957, there was a flurry of activity in the local press as our instrument package neared its final form.

Through lectures at service organizations, teachers’ and other professional con­ferences, industrial companies, and other universities and colleges, we described our evolving work to a wider audience. I even described the Vanguard program to a small group of farmers at a plowing match where I stood on a wagon to describe the prototype instrument. Many years later, I received a letter of thanks from one of that day’s attendees. He stated, “Your presentation enabled… us to avoid the paranoia that surrounded Sputnik armed with the confidence that our side was working on a satellite which would be more sophisticated than that of the Russians. Our confidence was well placed.”

Van Allen was, naturally, the focus of much of that attention. Our satellite launches and the discovery of the Earth’s high-intensity radiation belts thrust our campus group into the national and international scientific and public spotlights. To cite only a few examples of the coverage, Life magazine reporters interviewed Van Allen and took pictures of our handiwork on 9 May 1957 for major coverage in their magazine. On the occasion of the Explorer III launching on 26 March 1958, the Cedar Rapids Gazette featured an article on its front page that proclaimed, “A Son and a Satellite for SUI’s Ludwig.”5 At the end of March, a CBS television crew arrived, and Walter Cronkite interviewed Van Allen for his news broadcast. And so it continued throughout the rest of the time that I was in Iowa City.

Admittedly, I reveled in all the attention.