Grote Reber and the Amateur Spirit

It is clear to me from studying Grote Reber's work that if you have really good intellectual property, nobody has any idea of what you are talking about. Imagine being a man in 1936 that has embarked on a backyard project to build an exceedingly complicated dish antenna that was bigger than a house and cost a years salary-just to try to hear a hiss of radio noise from outer space (Figure 1). There has not been a contemporary man since that has been willing to look like a fool for what he loved - for Grote Reber, his love was radio.

Young Grote (Figure 2) built his own amateur radio equipment and spent most of his radio time listening for and transmitting to DX- long distance radio contacts. The early 1930's were a time of minimum solar activity which meant that Grote had the opportunity to observe conditions that allowed for long distance communications on the lower frequency's. During the mid 1930's, Grote was in his early 20's, and felt there were "no more worlds to conquer" in amateur radio. This was also the time that Karl Jansky was publishing his first papers on cosmic radio noise which Reber read with great interest and was stunned by the rebroadcast of Jansky's star noise on NBC radio.

It was obvious to Reber that Jansky had made a fundamental discovery, and realized the limit of Jansky's equipment had been reached, and he realized different techniques would be required to make progress in understanding what this cosmic static really was. Grote Reber wrote to Jansky and asked for a job working with him at Bell Labs, but was surprised and disappointed to learn that Bell Labs was not interested in pursuing Jansky's discovery of extra terrestrial radio noise. Reber contacted a number of observatories and universities but none were interested in cosmic star static.

Reber describes, "The astronomers were afraid of it because they didn't know anything about radio. The radio people weren't interested because it was so faint it didn't even constitute an interference. Nobody was going to do anything. So, alright, if nobody was going to do anything, maybe I should do something. So I consulted with myself and decided to build a dish!"

And build an dish antenna he did-the very first radio astronomy dish was built by an amateur, Grote Reber. After deciding on a design, Reber got a quote from the American Bridge Company to build the dish-$7000- in 1936 dollars!-several years worth of salary, and this didn't include the electronics! Reber decided to undertake building the dish, which was bigger than a house, and needed to have a surface accuracy of 1/8 of an inch! A deep framework of bolted and gusseted 2x4 timbers would support the 72 hand cut parabolic rafters that would support the sheet metal skin. The surface accuracy of the metal skin needed to be maintained as the antenna was tilted up and down which required tremendous design and support structure. Rumors flew that the contraption was built for controlling the weather, and the rumour it was a ray gun played well into that era of early science fiction (Figure 6).

Figure 6 (World's First Radio Astronomy Dish-note two story house in background)

It took Reber 4 months to complete his dish during the summer of 1937. It would be another year until he had all the highly advanced and specialized electronics built, and in the spring and summer of 1938, he listened and observed, without ever encountering any radio noise of celestial origin. Reber did his radio observing from midnight till dawn. When morning came, he would prepare for a full day's work as a radio engineer in Chicago. After returning home in the evening to eat, he would sleep until midnight and then would resume listening for the faint radio hiss of the cosmos throughout night. It would take Reber almost another year of trying every new radio technique he could imagine, and observing countless nights to finally detect the Milky Way as it passed through the beam of his antenna in April of 1939.

Reber quickly realized that the frequency he chose was 160 times higher than Jansky's, and he should expect to hear radiation 26,000 times more intense, but he heard nothing. This was contrary to the prevailing science of the time-Plank's Black Body Radiation Law. This cosmic radio static was being produced by some new and unknown phenomenon. His constant failures were actually the catalyst for one of the biggest discovery's man has ever made-discovering a major component to the energy in The Invisible Universe, synchrotron radiation, and the field of Radio Astronomy/Radio Astrophysics!

The increase in radio noise as the center of our Galaxy passed through the beam of his dish antenna is clearly shown on the paper recording below (Figure 8). The bottom line is with the antenna pointed at the horizon, the dark line is noise, and the spikes are from interference. The next 3 lines are for the antenna pointed 10, 20 and 30 degrees above the horizon.

Reber went on to plot the first radio contour maps of the Universe! His landmark work was published in the Astrophysical Journal in 1944, clearly showing the strong radio noise coming from the regions around Cygnus, Cassiopeia, and the center of our galaxy in Sagittarius (Figure 9).

Because Reber had "...no academic connection and unclear credentials..." his paper drew little attention from the astronomy community. He soon became discouraged by the lack of support for his work and his vision to build a large radio telescope. Reber describes..."First, the astronomers had a nearly complete lack of knowledge of electronic apparatus, viewing it as black magic. Second, and more important, the astrophysicists could not dream up any rational way by which the radio waves could be generated, and since they didn't know of a process, the whole affair was at best a mistake and at worst a hoax." Grote described the scientific community as "self appointed pontiffs looking over my shoulder giving bad advice. Fundamentally, the kind of things I want to do are the kind establishment men will not have any part of."

Rebers contempt for the "intelligentsia" came to fruition when in 1946 he left for vacation in Hawaii from his job at the National Bureau of Standards and never returned. Reber would later move to Tasmania in the hope of exploring fluctuations in the ionosphere that would create narrow holes and open high resolution windows to the Universe.

At the time of Grote Reber's passing on December 20, 2002, his close friend, radio, and radio astronomy great John Kraus, W8JK of the "Big Ear" radio astronomy telescope-WOW Signal" fame noted, "He was a one man self supporting laboratory. He was bold, individualistic, curious, outspoken, meticulous, brash, perseverant, and a colorful maverick."

Figure 10 is an image of a Parallel Universe - A view of the invisible watery radio sky as seen by the 300 foot NRAO radio telescope.

It is in this spirit of amateur discovery that Funkfinder Radio Labs works to promote positive change in the human condition through empowering amateur ideas and the root meaning of the word amateur - doing it for the love of it - Amore!

Figure 2, 3, 5 are from; The New Astronomy: Opening The Electromagnetic Window And Expanding Our View Of Planet Earth (c) Springer 2005

Figure 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 are from; The Early Years Of Radio Astronomy (c) Cambridge University Press 1984

Check out the Grote Reber story about his take on our transportation fuel situation on Fuel Guru Blog