How Ewen and Purcell Discovered the 21-cm
Interstellar Hydrogen Line
Karl D. Stephan
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Box 35110
Amherst, MA 01003-51 10 USA
Tel: +1 (413) 545-2104
Fax: + I (413) 545-461 1
E-mail: stephan@ecs.umass.edu
Keywords: Radio astronomy; history; hydrogen line
1. Introduction
T he technical challenges of radio astronomy call forth some of
the best efforts of radio and antenna engineers. To a large
extent, the history of radio astronomy is the history of state-of-the-
art reception techniques. The story of how Harold Irving (Doc)
Ewen and Edward Mills Purcell detected the first spectral line ever
observed in radio astronomy, in 1951, has been told for general
audiences by Robert Buderi, in his recent book on World War I1
radar research and its consequences [l]. This article has a different
purpose. The technical roots of Ewen and Purcells achievement
reveal much about the way science often depends upon borrowed
technologies, which were not developed with the needs of science
in mind. As Ewens photographs, records, and recollections show,
he and Purcell had access to an unusual combination of scientific
knowledge, engineering know-how, critical hardware, and techni-
cal assistance at Harvard, in 1950 and 1951. This combination
gave them a competitive edge over similar research groups in Hol-
land and Australia, who were also striving to detect the hydrogen
line, and who succeeded only weeks after the Harvard researchers
did. Nevertheless, the story also shows that Ewen and Purcell did
their groundbreaking scientific work in the small-science style
that prevailed before World War 11, while receiving substantial
indirect help from one of the first big-science projects at Har-
vard.
2. Hope for a handle on interstellar hydrogen
In the decades leading up to World War 11, astronomers
learned that the space between stars in our galaxy was not simply a
perfect vacuum. Observations had confirmed the presence of inter-
stellar dust grains and certain elements, notably hydrogen. Hydro-
gen atoms could be observed directly only near stars the radiation
of which heated them enough to absorb and emit visible light that
could be analyzed with Earth-bound spectrometers. But cold, neu-
tral (non-ionized) hydrogen atoms were invisible at optical and
near-infrared wavelengths. Since astronomers had no way to
observe such atoms, they were left with a big gap in astronomical
knowledge about the most abundant element in the universe.
By 1945, a few astronomers were also aware of the pioneer-
ing prewar radio-astronomy work of Jansky and Reber, who had
detected radio-frequency emissions from the galactic plane at 20
/Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, February 1999
and 160 MHz, respectively [2]. Karl Jansky, an engineer at Bell
Telephone Laboratories, became the worlds first radio astronomer
by accident, in 1931, when he determined that a certain source of
short-wave radio noise lay outside the solar system, in the direction
of our galaxys center. Grote Reber, an Illinois radio amateur,
eagerly seized upon Janskys discovery, and built a thirty-foot
parabolic reflector in his back yard, to receive cosmic static, as
he called it. With no institutional support of any kind, he produced
the first radio maps of the sky, and published his results in the
early 1940s. These early researchers were radio engineers and
radio physicists, not astronomers, and they were very unsure of
how to explain their observations in terms of known physical-
emission mechanisms, such as the Planck thermal-radiation law.
They simply told astronomers that the Milky Way was visible at
radio wavelengths. But the presence of the Milky Way was not
news to astronomers, and most remained unimpressed by, or sim-
ply unaware of, these observations.
In contrast, astronomy graduate student Hendrik van de
Hulst, while studying under the guidance of the great Dutch
astronomer, Jan Oort, came to believe that radio might provide a
window that astronomers could use to see cold, neutral hydrogen.
In 1945, encouraged by reading one of Rebers papers, which had
made it into wartime Holland, van de Hulst published a paper in a
Dutch physics joumal in which he speculated that a so-called
hyperfine spectral line of interstellar hydrogen might be observ-
able, with suitable microwave receiving equipment. Unlike the
more familiar optical spectral lines, which result from orbital tran-
sitions of the hydrogen atoms electron, this hyperfine line arises
from interactions between the spin-induced magnetic fields of the
electron and the proton. Just as two bar magnets held parallel with
their north poles adjacent will tend to flip around, so that one mag-
nets north pole is nearest the other ones south pole, a hydrogen
atom with electron and proton spins that are parallel is in a slightly
higher quantum-mechanical energy state than one having anti-par-
allel spins. When van de Hulst calculated the energy difference
from physical constants available to him at the time, he found that
the hyperfine splitting would cause the atom to absorb or emit a
photon at a wavelength of 21.2 cm (1410 MHz) [3]. In the years
immediately after the war, physicists and astronomers at several
locations in Europe, Australia, and the United States began to
explore the possibilities of using radio and microwave receivers to
observe meteors, the sun, and a few discrete astronomical sources.
But despite a few attempts, no one had yet been able to verify the
prediction that cold, neutral hydrogen might be visible at 2 1 centi-
meters.
1045-9243/99/$10.0oO1999 IEEE 7
 As Buderi recounts, either Ewen or Purcell heard of this pre-
diction at a conference at Yale, in the fall of 1949 [4]. The timing
was fortuitous, since Ewen was completing his course work for a
PhD in physics, and wanted to find a suitable research topic. After
his advisor, Purcell, discovered a paper by the Russian physicist I.
S. Shklovsky, which indicated that the hydrogen-line radiation
should be relatively easy to detect, the die was cast [5]. Ewen
would build a radiometer to see if he could get a handle on inter-
stellar hydrogen.
3. Resources
Purcell arid Ewen brought abilities to their search for the
hydrogen line which, in many ways, were complementary. The
careers of both men were molded by wartime experiences, but in
different ways. In 1941, Purcell interrupted his teaching and
research at Haward, in the field of quantum-mechanical magnetic
phenomena, to head the Fundamental Developments group at the
MIT Radiation Laboratory. There, he directed investigators such as
Robert Dicke and others in projects related to radar research and
development [6].Following the war, he retumed to Harvard to dis-
cover the RF-absorption method of nuclear magnetic resonance, in
1945. This disc.overy would lead to his sharing the 1952 Nobel
Prize in physics with Felix Bloch. Purcells ability to visualize and
predict quantum-mechanical phenomena gave him the confidence
to send his graduate student, Ewen, on what others might have
regarded as an unpromising wild-goose chase.
For his part, Ewen was accustomed to chasing prey of a more
dangerous kind. As the sole airbome radar officer attached to a
squadron of eighteen Liberator bombers, stationed in England in
1944, it was his duty to fly antisubmarine patrols in and around the
English Channcl. The noisy, cramped deck of a US Navy PB4Y
bomber is a far cry from a Harvard physics laboratory. But as he
worked with uartime urgency to keep his squadrons radar sets
running, Ewen leamed how to assemble and repair complex
equipment witt whatever facilities were at hand. When his repair
technicians became overloaded, he would sometimes help out him-
self on the bench. As the Radiation Laboratory developed newer
and fancier radar sets, with more accessories than Ewen considered
necessary, he t3ok it upon himself to strip them down to a stan-
dard, easily maintained version, despite regulations to the contrary
[7]. His short but intense stint as a radar officer prepared him for
his experiment11 research work at Harvard, in at least two ways.
The technical skills he learned as he worked with state-of-the-art
microwave and RF gear certainly helped him in the construction of
his radiometer. But just as important, he leamed to adapt available
resources to gel the job done.
In the fall of 1949, Ewen was working full-time for Harvard
physicist Nomian Ramsey, to obtain an external particle beam
from Harvard:; new 94-inch cyclotron. According to Ewen, post-
war funding for the project came from the Navy, in exchange for
Harvards donation of its prewar cyclotron to the Los Alamos
atomic-bomb project, during the war. Whatever the funding source,
Ramsey was able to offer Ewen more money than his previous
support as a National Research Council Fellow could offer. NRC
rules forbade 2. Fellow to accept employment, so in order to take
the job with R;msey, Ewen had given up his fellowship [8]. While
his full-time job in Harvards nuclear laboratory was interesting,
and familiarized him with the labs abundant equipment resources,
it was not, in itself, research work. This meant he had to pursue his
research project with Purcell only on nights and weekends.
8 /E Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, February 1999
Purcell evidently agreed with this way of proceeding. Having
taught physics at Harvard since 1938, he was used to the older,
small-science style of research, which rarely provided project-spe-
cific research assistantships for graduate students. He was also
accustomed to adapting existing equipment for new projects. As
Buderi mentions, the magnet Purcell used in his Nobel-Prize-win-
ning NMR experiment began its existence as a field magnet in a
large generator, used by the Boston Elevated Railway [9]. Never-
theless, Purcell knew that some parts of the hydrogen-line setup
would have to be built or purchased especially for the task.
In January of 1950, Purcell wrote a two-page letter to Harlow
Shapley, Director of the venerable Harvard College Observatory.
Purcell knew Shapley was involved in the administration of the
Rumford Fund, an endowment the income of which was controlled
by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The nominal pur-
pose of the fund, which was named for the American-British sci-
entist Count Rumford (1753-1814), was to encourage improve-
ments in the measurement of temperature. In his letter, Purcell
argued that a microwave radiometer was, in some sense, an instru-
ment for the measurement of temperature, and pointed out the sig-
nificance that the discovery of interstellar hydrogen-line radiation
would have for both astronomy and physics. He detailed the antici-
pated expenses as follows [ 101:
Construction and mounting of hom $150
Purchase of war-surplus transmitter (APT-5)
for use as local oscillator 100
Material for and construction of power supply
for oscillator 75
Construction of microwave mixer 100
Construction of special waveguide-circuit
elements 3
Total $500
Less than a month later, the Council of the A A A S granted
Purcells request [ 111. Harvards search for the hydrogen line was
in business.
By any financial mehsure, this was a small-scale effort. Nei-
ther Purcell nor Ewen received salary money for it, and even in
terms of 1997 dollars, the Rumford Fund grant amounted to only
about $3300. Ewens job at the nuclear laboratory was part of a
big-science effort that inadvertently subsidized his small-science
work on the hydrogen line in more than one way, as we shall show.
Still, the hydrogen-line project probably rates as one of the most
cost-effective radio-astronomy efforts of all time.
4. The machine
Purcells letter to Shapley shows how quickly he and Ewen
conceived the basic shape of the project, after leaming of van de
Hulsts paper earlier the previous fall. The letters specificity
shows that Purcell had a very clear idea of what they needed in
order to look for the hydrogen line. Ewen recalls being less certain
of his projects outcome, at least to begin with. One reason for his
doubts was that the theoreticians van de Hulst and Shklovsky dis-
agreed on the likelihood that the hydrogen-line emission was
strong enough to be detected. (It was later found that certain the aperture plane to the apex of 310 cm [14]. An independent cal-
assumptions upon which Shklovsky based his optimistic predic- culation of the antennas characteristics gives a gain of about
tions were in error.) Initially, Ewen planned on writing a negative 23 dB over isotropic, and 3 dB beamwidths of about eight degrees
thesis, as he describes in an interview about the project: in the E plane, and 14 degrees in the H plane. These beamwidths
are somewhat smaller than Ewens own estimate, in his thesis, of
Where is it? Not knowing the mechanism, you 15 to 20 degrees [15]. The homs appearance, in a highly visible
can just hope its optically deep everywhere, and its location on the Harvard campus in the spring of 1950, caused little
right in the solar system. So you can start looking for it comment, but its wide opening tilted up to the sky made it a
against the sun ...[in] absorption. But that would mean tempting target for the occasional snowball-thrower.
youd have to have some sort of steerable mount, unless
you wanted to do it twice a year ....So we said, Okay,
forget that. Well go for straight radiometric detection,
and the philosophy of approach in designing the
instrument will be that its ubiquitous, we dont really
know ....However, it should be an effort that focuses on
a negative thesis, in the sense that the design of the
instrument must be adequate to defend a level of sensi-
tivity so that you can at least finish off a thesis that
says, The next fellow has to jump this high. This is
not here at this level. [ 121

In other words, even if Ewen failed to detect anything, he wanted

to be able to say exactly how sensitive his setup was, so that future
researchers knew what level of sensitivity to surpass in order to
continue the search for weaker emissions. While not as exciting as
a discovery, this information would still be of scientific value, so
Ewen took special care to calibrate all the important specifications
of his system. In the next sections, we will describe the design and
construction of the experiment in detail, with special emphasis on
the means of frequency and noise calibration.

4.1 The antenna

The choice of antenna was dictated as much by space and

resource limitations as by theoretical factors. If hydrogen-line
radiation was truly coming from all directions of the sky, a simple
dipole antenna might have been sufficient. But to reject thermal
noise from the ground, and to provide some directionality, Ewen
and Purcell chose to build the biggest waveguide-hom antenna that
would fit in the space between the parapet on the roof of Lyman
Laboratory and the window of the room they were using. Conven-
ient design formulas for waveguide horns were available in the
recently published Radiation Laboratory series, and a horn was Figure 1. Ewen inspecting his copper-sheathed-plywood horn
fairly straightforward to build, out of plywood covered with copper antenna. This antenna is now on permanent display at the
flashing on the inside [13]. Figure 1 shows Ewen and his finished National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in Green Bank, West
hom, which had an aperture of 109 by 142 cm, and a distance from Virginia (courtesy of H. I. Ewen).

HORN
ANTENNA

,
WAVEGUIDE I420 MIXER 27 PREAMP
I SLOTTED LINE I MHz MHz
I I

I 27.51 I
i
I

COMMUNICATIONS
RECEIVER
II
1st I I
LO I I

INPUT
WAVE SOURCE

Figure 2. A block diagram of Ewen and Purcells hydrogen- line radiometer (adapted from Figure 1 of [14]).

/Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, February 1999 9

4.2 The radiometer
Ewen and Purcells radiometer was basically a dual-conver-
sion superheterodyne receiver, which used a modified Dicke-
switching scheme, for narrowband radiometric detection. Figure 2
shows the overall block diagram of the system. The antennas out-
put led to a waveguide slotted line, used for mixer-matching
adjustments. P, custom-built waveguide crossbar-type mixer was
driven by the output from a 1393 MHz first local oscillator (LO),
to convert incoming 1420MHz energy down to a first IF of
27 MHz. Following amplification in a low-noise preamplifier, the
signal entered a commercial communications receiver, where it
was down-converted a second time. Most of the systems gain
occurred in the communications receivers 455 kHz IF amplifiers.
Since anif uncompensated gain fluctuations would be indis-
tinguishable f-om the desired hydrogen-line emissions, Ewen
adapted the Dicke-switching concept to fit his circumstances. A
Dicke switch ideally cancels out gain changes, by switching the
radiometers input between the source to be measured and a second
source (typically a constant-temperature load), which provides a
known referense power. The switch works in conjunction with a
synchronous detector, the output of which represents the difference
between the measured power and the reference power. A Dicke-
switched radiometer allows the long integration times needed for
detection of wlsak emissions, by eliminating most of the problems
that gain drift would otherwise cause.
In 1950, developing a suitable low-loss microwave switch
and reference load for a full Dicke-switching system would have
amounted to a PhD thesis in itself, so Ewen took an easier route.
Instead of switching between his desired input and a physically
separate load, he frequency-modulated the systems second LO
(the one in the communications receiver) by an amount, Af , which
he hoped would shift the RF input frequency away from the hydro-
gen line. In th.s way, the RF noise at a frequency offset Af from
his desired input frequency became his reference-power source.
While this compensated for gain changes within the communica-
tions receiver, gain drift in the microwave mixer or the first IF pre-
amplifier was not eliminated by this modified system. Accord-
ingly, Ewen shock-mounted the preamplifiers vacuum tubes with
cotton, and operated them from a battery power supply, to stabilize
its gain.
radar-jamming transmitter, which was available on the war-surplus
market at a price far below what it cost the US government to
make.
Along with radar technology, the technology of electronic
countermeasures developed rapidly in World War 11. The need to
interfere with enemy radar receivers, so as to block their reception
of genuine echoes, led to entirely novel engineering requirements
for microwave oscillators used in jamming transmitters. Since
radar-receiver pass bands were fairly narrow, the jamming oscilla-
tors stability and spectral purity had to be very good, to maximize
the interference power delivered to the enemy radars pass band.
But since the frequencies used by hostile forces were not known in
advance, jammers had to be continuously tunable over a wide
range of frequencies. High-power operation, to increase operating
range, was also desirable. Finally, since many jammers were air-
bome, they had to maintain good frequency stability while
mounted on the vibration-prone deck of a bomber.
The mechanical designs of prewar microwave oscillators
were wholly unsuited for the demanding application of radar jam-
ming. Most of them used variations of parallel-wire transmission
lines as their frequency-determining elements. The long, thin,
unsupported rods in such circuits would have vibrated enough to
cause uncontrolled and unacceptable noise modulation of the car-
rier. During the war, several groups, notably Harvards own Radio
Research Laboratory, made striking advances in the field of elec-
tronic countermeasures. In the spring of 1944, the Harvard labora-
tory teamed with General Electric vacuum-tube specialists to
develop a line of jamming transmitters that used so-called light-
house triode tubes [18]. One of these, the 3622, was used in the
jamming transmitter Ewen obtained for his first LO. Figure 3
shows the rugged, cylindrically symmetrical construction, which

The systems frequency stability was even more important

than its gain sability. Although quantum theory predicted that the
intrinsic linewidth of the hydrogen-atoms emission was vanish-
ingly narrow, Ewen and Purcell reasoned, at first, that the Doppler-
shift broadening due to random thermal velocities would make the
line about 5 kl3z wide. In the five years after van de Hulsts pre-
diction, researchers using atomic-beam techniques at Columbia
University published the first direct measurements of the hyperfine
hydrogen-line frequency. In April of 1948, Nafe and Nelson
reported a frequency of 1420.410 i 0.006 MHz, which Prodell and
Kusch revised to 1420.4051 f 0.0003 MHz in September of 1950
[16, 171. In order to locate a 5 kHz-wide spectral line at
1420.405 MHz, Ewen had to know his radiometers input fre-
quency with an absolute accuracy of about three parts in lo5. This
imposed requirements on his first-local-oscillators short-term sta-
bility and absolute frequency accuracy that were extraordinary for
1950. (Since the second LO was at a much lower frequency- Figure 3. The 3C22 lighthouse tube, developed at GE, and
28 MHz versus 1393 MHz-its stability and accuracy were not used in the AN/APT-5 radar-jamming transmitter that became
limiting factcrs.) Fortunately, Ewen was able to obtain an Ewen and Purcells first local oscillator (taken from a General
extraordinary piece of equipment for his first LO: an AN/APT-5 Electric catalog).

10 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1 , February 1999
earned the lighthouse tube its name. In marked contrast to prewar
tube designs-which clung to the light-bulb model, which used
delicate wires and glass rods in a unit that was completely enclosed
by a glass housing and supported only at the base-the lighthouse
tube was designed to be an integral part of its coaxial-line cavity
oscillator. The greater proportion of metal to glass used in its con-
struction, and its consequent mechanical and thermal ruggedness,
led to an unprecedented degree of frequency stability in oscillator
circuits designed around the new tube. It is not clear whether radar
jammers using lighthouse tubes saw much combat, since they were
introduced after the phase of the war in which jamming played a
major role [ 191. But they appeared on the surplus market soon after
the war, and were used by the Columbia University group, whose
1948 measurement of the hydrogen-line frequency was mentioned
by Purcell in his letter to the Rumford Fund committee [20].
When Ewen built a suitable stabilized power supply and
operated his jamming-transmitter oscillator in a vibration-free,
constant-temperature environment, its output could be heterodyned
with a fixed-frequency crystal-controlled source to produce what
Ewen describes as just a golden tone. It was just like hitting a
bell [2 11. Before equipment to measure oscillator phase noise
became widely available, listening to heterodyne beats in this
way was a routine way to evaluate the spectral quality of an oscil-
lators output. The AN/APT-5 passed Ewens test, to become his
radiometers critical first local oscillator. Its combination of wide
tunability and excellent frequency stability could not have been
equaled, even by a crystal-controlled oscillator. Without it, Ewens
job would have been much harder, and almost certainly would
have taken more time and financial resources than it did.
4.3 Frequency determination
Today, advanced frequency counters can read the frequency
of a pulsed 94 GHz source instantaneously with an accuracy of a
few parts in 109 or better. Those who are accustomed to such ease
of frequency measurement may find it difficult to imagine what a
challenge it was in 1950 to measure a microwave frequency with
an absolute accuracy of a few parts in lo5. Ewen accomplished his
daunting task in the following way.
10 KC
MULTNIBRATOR
- HRO
7-15MC - SCR - 522
VHF
RECEIVER TRANSMITER
n
Figure 4. Ewens frequency-measurement system ([14], Figure 14).
IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1 , February 1999
At the time, standard-frequency broadcasts were transmitted
at various shortwave frequencies by the National Bureau of Stan-
dards, with an absolute accuracy better than one part in 107. One of
these frequencies was received on the Harvard campus periodi-
cally, by personnel who maintained the Molecular Beam Labora-
torys General Radio 1100 AP primary frequency standard. This
contained a highly stable 100-kHz crystal oscillator, and multi-
vibrator circuitry to divide down its oscillator frequency to 10 kHz.
Ewen states, in his thesis, that he ran a 250-foot cable from his
experiment to the GR standard, in order to use its 10 kHz output to
calibrate his own frequency-measurement gear [22].
Armed only with the fact that harmonics of an RF signal are
integral multiples of its fundamental frequency, Ewen used an art-
ful combination of a crystal-controlled oscillator and frequency
multipliers in a war-surplus communications transmitter, Lecher
wires (a kind of microwave transmission-line frequency meter), a
precision tunable oscillator called a heterodyne frequency meter,
an oscilloscope, various other oscillators, shortwave receivers,
mixers, and his ears, to determine his first LOS frequency (and,
hence, his input frequency) with an accuracy of a few kHz. Virtu-
ally all of this equipment was borrowed from Ramseys laboratory.
The following excerpt from his thesis gives some idea of the tedi-
ous nature of the process [23]:
(a.) Selection of the proper mode and approximate fre-
quency of the local oscillator was made by means of a
Lecher wire system coupled into the plate cavity.
(b.) A modified SCR-522 airborne VHF transmitter
output was fed into a crystal mixer and its harmonics
generated there produced beat frequencies with the
local oscillator which were fed into a Hallicrafter SX62
receiver ....
(c.) The frequency of the SCR-522 crystal to be used is
measured by coupling its output into an HRO [short-
wave receiver], and with the BFO (beat-frequency-
oscillator) off, measuring the audio beat with one of the
10Kc/sec standard markers by means of the General
- CRYSTAL
MIXER
-
HALLICRAFTER
S X 62
RECEIVER
11
 Radio type 1107 interpolator in conjunction with an shown in Figure 6. As tuning continued, the emission f, fell mid-
oscillosccipe. See Figure 14 [Figure 4 of this paper]. way between fhigh and A,,, resulting in a zero detector output at
time t3 in Figure 6. When howpassed over f,, a maximum nega-
(d.) 1den:ification of the proper 10Kc/sec marker is tive output resulted at time t 4 , and, finally, the output returned to
made by beating the SCR-522 crystal frequency against
the baseline again at t 5 . At least, that was how it was supposed to
the output of a General Radio 620-A Heterodyne fre-
work.
quency meter fed into the HRO. By this method the
SCR-522 crystal frequency is determined to within
1 cycle. The 200th harmonic is then known to within Instead, Ewen detected only a pair of slight bumps, going
200 cyc18:s, hence the beat frequency between the in the same direction, on his chart-recorder output. Now comes an
desired lccal oscillator frequency and that of the SCR- interesting twist to the story. Van de Hulst, who was visiting Har-
522 harm1x-k is known with this accuracy. vard at the time, used his astronomical knowledge to advise Ewen
and Purcell that the line might be considerably wider than the one
(e.) The 620-A is then set for this beat frequency measured in the laboratory, because hydrogen in different parts of
against the 10 Kc/sec harmonic standard by means of
the HRO, 1107 Interpolator, and scope combination.
t1:
(f.) With the BFO of the Hallicrafter on, the output of
the 620-A is located and brought to zero beat. The BFO
is then tumed off and the local oscillator tuned for a
zero beat 3f its beat frequency with the proper harmonic
of the SCR-522 (these are spaced approximately every
120 Mc/si:c) and the frequency of the 620-A, as moni-
tored at the output of the Hallicrafter with a pair of flow fhigh
[earlphonas. k A f 4

(g.) Frequent drift monitoring of the 620-A and SCR-

522 crystal frequencies are conveniently obtained with tz:
the HRO, 1 107 interpolator and scope combination.

While some of the procedures details are now obscure, even to

Ewen, he says of the importance of frequency determination in the
experiment, [Nlinety per cent of the job for me on hydrogen:
building the machine was nothing; making sure youre on the right fRF
frequency was everything [24].

5. The search begins t3:

Ewen first put his hydrogen-line radiometer into operation in

the summer of 1950. He was sure that his systems noise figure
was as good as he could make it with a special high-performance
1N21-B mixer diode, provided to him by H. T. Friis of the Bell
Telephone Laboratories [25]. Starting with an ordinary fluorescent-
light tube, E w m built a microwave noise source, which told him
that his system noise figure was 10.5 to 11 dB [26]. This included
the degradatior. from down-converted RF noise at the image fre- t4:
quency, which was not rejected by his broadband microwave
mixer. Because so much of his setup was borrowed, every Friday
he loaded what he needed into a wheelbarrow, trundled it over to
Lyman Lab, set it up for a weekend of searching, and tore it all
down again and returned the items, before Monday moming.

Despite Ewens efforts, the initial results that summer were

disappointing. To scan a range of frequencies, Ewen rigged a
motor to tune his communications receiver continuously over
about a 200 kHz range. As the synchronous detectors integrated 4:
output fed a chirt recorder, Ewen expected the system to receive a
narrow-band hydrogen-line emission, as shown in Figure 5 . As the
Dicke-switched receiver tuned through the expected hydrogen-line
frequency, f,, it received energy at two pass bands, labeled f,l,g,,
and A,,, sepa-ated by the frequency shift, Af, which performed
the modified D c k e switching, discussed above. At time t 2 , f, fell
within f h r g l land
, the chart recorders output went positive at t 2 , as
Figure 5. How Ewen expected to detect the hydrogen line.

12 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, February 1999
 Chart
Recorder
output

t
tl t2 t3 t4 t5

Figure 6. The chart-recorder output Ewen expected to see

from a narrow-band hydrogen line.

the galaxy might be moving at a considerable range of velocities

relative to Earth. Thus, its emissions might be Doppler-shifted over
a band many kilohertz wide, a prediction that turned out to be true
[27]. Ewen realized that if the hydrogen line was substantially
wider than his Dicke-switching frequency, Af, of lOkHz, both
pass bands would ride up and down the wide, gently sloping curve
of a broad line more or less together, and he would not obtain a
clear trace, such as Figure 6 shows. Buderi reports that Ewen tried
a wider separation of 25 kHz,but with no significant improvement Figure 7. Ewen and his hydrogen-line setup. He is leaning on
in his data. He could not use a larger Af without permanently an oscilloscope used for frequency measurements. The NBS-3
modifying the communications receiver, which was on loan from communications receiver, with its tuning motor, is the rack-
Ramseys lab. So Ewen asked Purcell for $300, to buy his own mounted unit with two semicircular dials. The oscillator cavity
new National Company NBS-3, which he could modify without of the radar-jamming transmitter is the cylindrical object to
qualms. Purcell handed him the cash from his pocket, and soon the left of Ewens right elbow. The brass waveguide mixer, in
Ewen was back on the air, with a Af of 75 kHz [28]. the background, connects to the horn, outside the window to
the right (courtesy of H. I. Ewen).
Figure 7 shows Ewens setup, with his new NBS-3 promi-
nently displayed at the center, and other items as described in the
caption. Figure 8 shows Ewen in a more typical pose, monitoring
his frequency-measurement system to guard against drift. With the
wider frequency shift of 75 kHz, the shape of his first IF ampli-
fiers pass band was beginning to show up, because it was only
about 2MHz wide, and superimposed its broad peak on the
incoming noise. This could cause an undesirable dc offset in his
chart-recorder output. To minimize this problem, he continually
readjusted his first LO, which then had to be checked with the
above frequency procedure. The photo of Figure 8 lacks certain
realistic details, since in operation, Ewen asked the janitor to raise
the heat in the room to above eighty degrees, over the weekend, to
provide a stable, draft-free temperature environment for his various
oscillators. Alone at his post in the wee hours, Ewen would some-
times get more comfortable by stripping down to his shorts.

6. Success and what came afterward

With his wider frequency shift, Ewen first saw a part of the
S-shaped curve he was looking for on Good Friday evening, March
23, 1951. But the Earths rotation moved his south-pointing horn
antenna away from the galactic plane, before he could retune his
system to get the complete curve. As Buderi describes, Ewen man-
aged to shift his input frequency to 1420.6MHz in time for the
next window of opportunity, which gave him what he sought in the
early hours of Easter Sunday, March 25: a complete S-shaped Figure 8. Ewen monitoring frequency changes with head-
curve that was unmistakable evidence for the hydrogen line [29]. phones. The GR 620-A heterodyne frequency meter is above
his head, to the right; the Hallicrafter SX-62 receiver is visible
Despite his delight, Ewen puzzled over two aspects of the behind his right knee; and the GR 1107 interpolation oscillator
data. One was the 150 kHz difference between the accurate labo- is probably the unit visible behind his back (courtesy of H. I.
ratory measurements of the hydrogen-line frequency and the fre- Ewen).

/E Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1 , February 1999 13

quency Ewen was actually detecting from space. It occurred to him
that the Earth:; motion around the sun might cause a Doppler shift
that would explain the difference. Ewen recalls what he did next:
...I called Harvard Observatory and asked some kid there, you
know, who else is up at two oclock in the moming except grad
students, and asked him what the velocity of the earth was around
the sun. I figured, Im not gonna sit here and figure out 365 days
and all that jazz and astronomical units, you guys must have it at
the tip of your finger. He said, What are you doing? I said,
Well, you know, Im looking at interstellar hydrogen. Bing! that
phone goes on the hook ....So much for astronomy! [30] Eventu-
ally, Ewen was able to calculate the Doppler shift due to the
Earths orbital motion, which did account for much of the observed
frequency shift.
There remained a second mystery, however: why was the line
so wide? As van de Hulst had predicted earlier during his visit,
Ewens antenna beam was wide enough to pick up hydrogen emis-
sions from different parts of the galaxy, the motions of which rela-
tive to the Earth differed by several kilometers per second. A typi-
cal hydrogen-1ine-emission spectrum, observed with modem tech-
niques, is shown in Figure 9 [31]. Although this line was observed
with the fractional-degree beam of the Arecibo radio telescope, the
line is still some 150 kHz wide. The smeared-out spectrum Ewens
15
8 50
r
25
0
DOPPLER SHIFT &E)
Figure 9. The hydrogen-line emission spectrum reported in
1988 by Cliftlm et al. [31]. The horizontal axis has been con-
verted from ii:s equivalent Doppler-shift velocity back to a fre-
quency shift. This figure was adapted from Figure 4 of [31],
with 4.74 k d s used for 1 kHz,per [42].
Figure 10. An actual tracing of the chart-recorder output. showing the hydrogen-line frequency of 1420.569 MHz, meas-
ured on April 9,1951 (taken from Figure 18 of [14]).
14 /E Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, February 1999
hom picked up from the Milky Way was undoubtedly much wider,
at times.
Still, his 75 kHz frequency shift revealed the wider line quite
well, as some typical data in Figure 10 show. At the same time he
was giving Ewen and Purcell astronomical advice, Van de Hulst
had been taking note of their receiver techniques, notably the fre-
quency-switching scheme, and had written about them to engineer
C. Alexander Muller, in Holland, who was assembling a hydrogen-
line setup similar to the Harvard system [32]. After Ewens suc-
cess, van de Hulst cabled the news to the Dutch group, and seven
weeks later they confirmed Ewen and Purcells results. A group in
Australia also cabled in further confirmation before Purcell sub-
mitted a paper to Nature, with all three reports in it [33]. Unlike
Ewen and himself, the other researchers were primarily astrono-
mers. whose names would carry considerable weight within the
astronomical community.
The paper in Nature brought acclaim, not only from astrono-
mers, but from the popular media, as well. Purcell and Ewen were
Figure 11. This picture appeared in Life magazine on Novem-
ber 17, 1952, p. 138, over the following caption: PIONEER
RADIO ASTRONOMERS who located the hydrogen clouds
are Edward M. Purcell (feff)-who last week won a 1952 Nobel
Prize for work in nuclear physics-and H. I. Ewen (right), here
meeting with Australias E. G. Bowen. Striped flask is crude
model showing earths tilt away from plane of our galaxy.
(Courtesy of H. I. Ewen.)
portrayed in the November 17, 1952, issue of L f e magazine as
they explained details of their discovery to E. G. Taffy Bowen,
another radio astronomer visiting from Australia (Figure 11) [34].
After a short tour of active duty in connection with his Naval
Reserve obligations, Ewen went on to found the Ewen-Knight
Corporation, the main business of which was the manufacture of
radiometers and related equipment for scientific and military cus-
tomers. The subsequent story of Ewens involvement in Harvards
early efforts to establish a significant presence in radio astronomy
is too complex to summarize here. When Ewen-Knight closed,
around 1980, Ewen consulted for industry and government until he
joined Millitech Corporation in 1988, where he is now Vice Presi-
dent in charge of special projects. Purcell went on to win the 1952
Nobel Prize in physics for his work in nuclear magnetic resonance,
and remained with the Harvard physics department until he retired,
in 1977. He passed away in Cambridge, Massachusetts on March
7, 1997, at the age of 84.
7. Conclusions
Although Ewen and Purcell were the first to detect the inter-
stellar hydrogen line, it is virtually certain that the Dutch, the Aus-
tralians, or perhaps another American group would have detected
it, if the Harvard team had not. In a book entitled Multiple Discov-
ery, philosophers David Lamb and Susan Easton argue that all sci-
entific discovery is inherently multiple, and that the causes of
every scientific development can be found in historical circum-
stances, available knowledge, and resources of support and instru-
mentation [35].They criticize the popular tendency to award praise
and honor only to the first person or group who discovers some-
thing. Their picture of discovery can be likened to leaves budding
on a tree. In springtime, one leaf is bound to bud first. However,
others will soon follow because the conditions are right, and the
first leaf to bud deserves no special honor.
Like many sociological theories of science and technology,
this one has some truth in it. But science is done by people, not
plants. Ewen and Purcell combined their talents and mounted an
all-out effort to succeed in the race to the hydrogen line, despite
their relatively meager financial resources. In an undated news
clipping, which probably comes from an intemal Harvard publica-
tion in the mid-l950s, Ewen is quoted as saying of their collabora-
tion, Purcell provided the brains, I just the brawn [36]. While
this statement was perhaps excessively modest, it captured essen-
tial features of the complementary roles Ewen and Purcell played
in their achievement. Purcell was thoroughly familiar with the
quantum-mechanical behavior of atoms in magnetic fields, and
knew that if enough cold, neutral hydrogen was out there, he could
detect it. As his letter to the Rumford Fund committee showed, he
also knew that the state of the microwave art had advanced to the
point where it was now possible to search for the hydrogen line
with a receiver of unprecedented sensitivity.
In Ewen, Purcell found a type which has not received much
attention in the history of science and engineering. In Thinking
Through Technology, a work on the philosophy of technology,
Carl Mitcham has termed this type the bricoleur [37]. He adapted
this term from the French anthropologist Claude L6vi-Strauss, who
used it to refer to those who use whatever is at hand, and adapt
both the material and their purposes to existing circumstances.
Ltvi-Strauss contrasts the bricoleurs approach with that of the
conventional engineer, whose first step is to procure whatever
materials and tools are needed to do the job in the standard way. A
bricoleur, on the other hand, responds to a situation of limited
IEEEAntennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, February 1999
resources by adapting equipment and facilities, modifying them,
and using them in ways for which they were not originally
designed [38].
No one is a perfect example of a pure type, and Ewen showed
he was also a highly competent engineer, as he designed and built
his hom antenna and the waveguide components of his system. But
when he tumed a fluorescent light bulb into a microwave noise
source, converted a commercial communications receiver into a
radiometer back-end, and scrounged a jamming transmitter on the
postwar surplus market for use as a local oscillator, he employed
his talents for bricolage, which he developed during his wartime
experiences as a radar officer. He has continued to show this trait
throughout his career. For example, one of the many projects he
has pursued over the last few years involves steerable millimeter-
wave parabolic antennas, made from surplus World War I1 search-
lights [39].
Both fundamental science and routine engineering call for a
varied mix of talents on the part of those who do them well. Indi-
vidual talent and the will to succeed can be lost to visibility, in the
shuffle of increasingly complex activities that comprise science
and technology research today. In the decades following the war,
big science came to define the way research was done in many
fields, including radio astronomy. The quantity of funds expended,
and the number of research papers published, came to the fore as
measures of research quality. Judged simply by money expended
and papers generated, projects of the scale Ewen and Purcell pur-
sued might well be overlooked in todays research environment. It
is interesting to note that Purcells 1945 Nobel-Prize-winning
paper was only his sixth since joining the Harvard faculty, seven
years earlier [40]. But standards of all kinds have risen since then,
and the research community of the 1990s cannot be compared
directly to the smaller one that returned from the experiences of
World War 11.
Whatever the causes and however the credit should be given,
Ewen and Purcell broke new ground in the science of radio astron-
omy with their discovery. In a paper on the significance of radio
astronomy to science in general, Owen Gingerich concluded that
its development led to no paradigm shift or fundamental revolu-
tion in the way we look at the world [41]. Instead, radio astronomy
opened another window in the electromagnetic spectrum, onto an
astronomical world we already knew something about. Many of
the most significant discoveries in radio astronomy have been for-
tuitous, in the sense that the experimental data has come first, and
the theory, afterward. But Ewen and Purcell were the first to con-
firm an astrophysical prediction that had implications for observa-
tional radio astronomy: the prediction that cold neutral hydrogen
might be observable at 21 centimeters. Their work helped to make
radio astronomy a respected activity for astronomers. Although
neither Ewen nor Purcell remained in the field for long, their
efforts during a few short months in 1950 and 1951 changed the
course of scientific history, and gave us all more cause to wonder
at the marvels of the heavens.
8. Web site
Shortly after the hydrogen-line discovery, Ewen took color-
transparency photographs of the setup with a stereoscopic camera.
Eight of these photos can be viewed (in two dimensions only,
unfortunately!) on the following Web site:
index.htm1.
http://www-unix.ecs.umass.edu/-stephadewedewen
15
9. Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Doc Ewen for his enthusiastic help, which
was essential to the preparation of this article. I also wish to thank
Woodruff T. Sullivan I11 and the anonymous reviewers for their
careful reading of the manuscript, which resulted in the correction
of several errors and omissions; Larry Owens for valuable guid-
ance on the his:ory of science and technology; Sander Weinreb for
helpful sugges.ions; Tom Vales of GENRADs General Radio
Museum for information on the 1100 AFfrequency standard; and
my wife, Pamela Stephan, for graphic assistance with several of the
illustrations.
10. References
1. Robert Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World: How a
Small Group ojRadar Pioneers Won the Second World War and
Launched a Technological Revolution, New York, Simon &
Schuster, 1996, pp. 291-307.
2. For an excellent account of the early history of radio astronomy,
see W. T. Sullivan I11 (ed.), The EarZy Years of Radio Astronomy
(Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1984), especially
W. T. Sullivan 111, Karl Jansky and the discovery of extraterres-
trial radio waves, pp. 2-42, and Grote Reber, Early radio astron-
omy at Wheatcn, Illinois, pp. 43-66. Also, W. T. Sullivan 111s
Classics in RaaioAstronomy (Dordrecht, Holland, D. Reidel Pub-
lishing Co., 1982) contains translations of refs. [3] and [5] of this
article, as well as reprints of ref. [33] and several of Janskys and
Rebers origina. papers.
3. H. C. van de Hulst, Radiogolven uit het Wereldruim. 11.
Herkomst der F.adiogolven, Nederlands Tijdschrqt Natuurkunde,
11, 1945, pp. 210-221.
4. Buderi [l], pp. 291-292.
5. I. S. Shklovsky, A Monochromatic Radio Emission of the Gal-
axy and the Possibility of Observing It, Astronomicheski Zhurnal
SSSR, 26, 1, 1948, pp. 10-14.
6. Buderi [ 13, p 260.
7. H. I. Ewen, transcript of interview with the author at Millitech
Corp., January 28, 1998, p. 9. A copy of this 25-page single-spaced
transcript has been filed with the American Institute of Physics
Center for the History of Physics, College Park, MD.
8. H. I. Ewen interview [7], pp. 17-18.
9. Buderi [ 11, p. 268.
10. Copy of lelter dated January 12, 1950, Edward M. Purcell to
Harlow Shapley, in possession of H. I. Ewen.
11. Copy of letter dated February 28, 1950, John W. M. Bunker,
secretary of AAAS, to E. M. Purcell, in possession of H. I. Ewen.
12. H. I. Ewen interview [7], pp. 12-13.
13. Samuel Silver (ed.), Microwave Antenna Theory and Design
(vol. 12 of Radiation Laboratory Series), New York, McGraw-Hill,
1949, pp. 586-589.
16
14. H. I. Ewen, Radiation from Galactic Hydrogen at 1420 Mega-
cycles per Second, PhD thesis, Harvard University, May 1951,
Figure 3.
15. H. I. Ewen, PhD thesis [ 141, pp. 10 and 40.
16. J. E. Nafe and E. B. Nelson, The Hyperfine Structure of
Hydrogen and Deuterium, Physical Review, 73, April 1, 1948, pp.
718-728.
17. A. G. Prodell and P. Kusch, On the Hyperfine Structure of
Hydrogen and Deuterium, Physical Review, 79, September 15,
1950, pp. 1009-1010.
18. Paul Robbiano, QRIv-The Electronic Lifesaver: How Enemy
Radar was Foiled by Jamming, QST, 30, January 1946, pp. 12-18.
19. James P. Baxter 111, Scientists Against Time, Boston, Little,
Brown, & Co., 1946, pp. 166-167.
20. Nafe and Nelson [16], p.723.
21. H. I. Ewen interview [7], p. 10.
22. H. I. Ewen, PhD thesis [14], pp. 35-36. Interestingly, it was
Norman Ramsey who later conducted hydrogen-maser experiments
on the Harvard campus, which led to a new frequency-standard
method used around the world. See R. H. Beehler, A Historical
Review of Atomic Frequency Standards, Proceedings of the
IEEE, 55, June 1967, pp. 792-805.
23. H. I. Ewen, PhD thesis [14], pp. 34-35.
24. H. I. Ewen interview [7], p. 10.
25. Buden [l], pp. 300-301. Although Buderi refers to the bal-
anced crystal mixer, Ewens thesis makes no mention of a bal-
anced mixer, and its Figure 6 clearly shows a single-diode configu-
ration. This would make low phase noise from the first LO even
more critical in the system design.
26. H. I. Ewen, PhD thesis [14], pp. 30-33.
27. Woodruff T. Sullivan 111, chapter entitled The Discovery of
the Twenty-one Centimeter Hydrogen Line, from unpublished
manuscript of A History of Early Radio Astronomy. Sullivan cites
letters written by van de Hulst, which confirm these interchanges.
28. Buderi [l], p. 302
29. Buderi [l], p. 304.
30. H. I. Ewen interview [7], p. 11.
31. T. R. Clifton, D. A. Frail, S. R. Kulkami, and J. M. Weisberg,
Neutral Hydrogen Absorption Observations Toward High-Disper-
sion Measure Pulsars, Astrophysics Journal, 333, October 1,
1988, pp. 332-340.
32. Sullivan, chapter from unpublished manuscript [27].
33. Harold I. Ewen and E. M. Purcell, Observation of a Line in
the Galactic Radio Spectrum, Nature, 168, September 1, 1951, p.
356.
IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, February 1999
34. Anonymous, Radio astronomy, Life, 33, November 17, 1952, Introducing Feature Article Author
p. 138.

35. David Lamb and Susan M. Easton, Multiple Discovery, Ave-

bury Press, 1984.

36. News clipping in possession of H. I. Ewen.

37. Carl Mitcham, Thinking Through Technology, Chicago, Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 213.

38. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, Chicago, University of

Chicago Press, 1966, p. 17.
39. H. I. Ewen, personal communication.
40. Buderi [ 13, p. 271.
41. Owen Gingerich, Radio Astronomy and the Nature of Sci-
ence, in W. T. Sullivan I11 (ed.), The EarZy Years of Radio
Astronomy, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1984,
pp. 399-407.
42. Burke and Graham-Smith, An Introduction to Radio Astron-
omy, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 121.
Karl D. Stephan received the BS in Engineering from the
California Institute of Technology, in 1976. Following a year of
graduate study at Comell, he received the Master of Engineering
degree in 1977, and was employed by Motorola, Inc., and Scien-
tific-Atlanta. He received the PhD in electrical engineering, in
1983, from the University of Texas at Austin. Since that year, he
has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, where he is currently Associate Professor and Associate
Department Head. His research interests have included microwave
and millimeter-wave oscillators, and quasi-optical power combin-
ing and switching. He has also published articles on a variety of
subjects in the history of technology, including refrigeration, teleg-
raphy, and microwaves. Ak

E, = Eo Flm

Pxx P x y 0
P, = Po PYX PYY O H i m

Damaskos, Inc.
P.O. Box 469
Concordville, PA 19331 USA
610-358 0200 fax 610-558 1019
& Po acintosh e-mail damaskos@aol.com

/E Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, February 1999 17