The Project Advances

Abstract

During the project preparation phase in 1974 Gordon Carpenter, assisted by Janice Murray, was gathering together the people he would need to carry it through and, as things began to develop, this team started to expand. Gordon Adam was included in 1974 as was Alex McLachlan who became the project co-ordinator in October. Alex was not an astronomer but he had been trained to use the observatory’s 36 inch telescope which, at the time, was used every clear night during the winter. In the autumn of 1976 Colin Humphries was asked by Vincent Reddish, by then Director of the ROE, to provide extra support to the UKIRT project because the number of ROE people working on it at that time was so small and, in any case, the project would need extra manpower during the construction phase. Colin was a research physicist who had been working on the results from the European TD-1A satellite’s ultraviolet telescope, having previously been UK project manager for its photometric calibration. He remembers that he ‘Did not know nearly enough about the project, but over the next three weeks or so he had several meetings with Gordon Carpenter both at ROE and at his home in Craiglockhart’. Carpenter explained the flux collector concept, the contractual arrangements already in place with Dunford Hadfields and Grubb Parsons and outlined the plans for the building and dome in Hawaii. Colin’s main interest was in the optical work and the performance of the telescope so, since it was clear that Carpenter wanted to continue developing the various arrangements that he had already started in Hawaii, it was agreed that Humphries would be responsible for the UK side of things, notably the optics and the telescope structure.