Guide to the George Wilbur Moffitt Papers 1908-1965


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Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Descriptive Summary
• Information on Use
• Access
• Citation
• Biographical Note
• Scope Note
• Related Resources
• Related Resources
• Subject Headings
• INVENTORY
• Series I: Personal Material
• Series II: Notebooks
• Series III: Yearbooks and Diaries
• Series IV: Teaching Materials
• Series V: Publications
• Series VI: Yerkes Observatory
• Series VII: Moffitt vs. Perkins-Elmer Corporation
• Series VIII: Lantern Slides
• Series IX: Consultation Files
• Series X: Miscellaneous

Acknowledgments

Descriptive Summary

Information on Use

Access

No restrictions

Citation

When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Moffitt, George Wilbur. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Biographical Note

George Wilbur Moffitt was a physicist active in the first half of the twentieth century; his career was chiefly centered upon the design of lenses, lens systems, and optical instruments.

Moffitt was born to Joab and Stella Moffitt, a prosperous farm couple of Pleasantville, Iowa, in 1887. After attending rural schools, he enrolled in 1906 at the State University of Iowa, majoring in mathematics and minoring in physics. In 1910, he received a bachelor of arts degree and enrolled in the physics department of Stanford University, where he held a teaching assistantship, and from which institution he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1913. From 1913 to 1917 Moffitt taught undergraduates in the physics department at Washington University (St. Louis), from which he was separated rather bitterly. For the next four years Moffitt served as a research physicist at the Kodak Lab in Rochester, working on photographic lenses, military work, and a home projection lens, as well as other work. From 1922 to 1926 Moffitt was civilian head of the optical laboratory of the Frankfort Arsenal in Philadelphia, where he concentrated upon design and criticism of optical instruments to control weapons fire.

In the latter year Moffitt was appointed to the rank of research associate (with precedence of assistant professors) at the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago at Williams Bay, Wisconsin. There he had few teaching responsibilities, but a heavy program of observation in stellar parallax and other less significant projects. During this period he designed the chief auxiliary instruments of the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas, including the spectrograph camera; and he also consulted with a number of other clients. In 1937 Moffitt's appointment was terminated, in part due to the fact that the Observatory's parallax program ended, and in part due to the fact that Moffitt was judged not to have published enough. (He had published 17 scholarly articles prior to his appointment at Yerkes, and ten more during his eleven years there, primarily in optics and astronomy; for a dated list, see APPENDIX).

Upon leaving Yerkes, Moffitt entered into an uneasy partnership with the proprietors of a New York optical firm, as Perkins, Elmer, and Moffitt. Perkins and Elmer controlled the capital of the partnership and directed the manufacturing aspect of the firm; Moffitt provided technical advice to the firm and design consultation to the clients of the firm, receiving a guaranteed drawing account in lieu of salary. During this period Moffitt designed a hunting scope, a spotting scope, and other instruments, in addition to work done for outside clients. In 1940, Perkins and Elmer dissolved the partnership and incorporated without Moffitt's consent or participation. This action precipitated a long and bitter suit by Moffitt for a share of the capital gains and goodwill of the partnership, which failed.

Thereafter, Moffitt established himself as an independent consultant, operating from his Ridgewood, New Jersey, home. During the next decade and a half he had a successful practice, providing advice and designs for camera manufacturers, optical companies, war contractors, and other firms. In the period from 1955 to 1956, Moffitt served as a vice-president of the Smith-Dietrich firm, for whom he helped design the lens system for their multi-image "Cinemiracle" movie technique. In his later years, Moffitt gradually reduced his consulting, working on his clients' projects only a few hours a week, as his diaries testify. He died in 1965, survived by his wife of 23 years, Ada Rogers Moffitt.

Scope Note

The collection has been divided into ten series. Series I: Personal Material, Series II: Notebooks, Series III: Yearbooks and Diaries, Series IV: Teaching Materials, Series V: Publications, Series VI: Yerkes Observatory, Series VII: Moffitt v. Perkins-Elmer Corporation, Series VIII: Lantern Slides, Series IX: Consultation Files and Series X: Miscellaneous.

At various times in his life Moffitt was extremely careful to preserve his papers; from other periods little documentation is included in this collection. The collection includes copious personal and family correspondence for the period 1908 to 1931, but very little of it subsequent to that date; notebooks from his student and professorial days, as well as from his observatory days; notes for teaching; manuscripts and reprints of his published articles, 1913-1947; technical reports; "yearbooks" (diaries), 1938-1965; lantern slides for testing instruments and illustration of talks; and other varied papers.

The bulk of the collection, however, 10 out of 20 boxes, is comprised of consultation files, dealing with over 50 institutions, dating from the 1920's to the late 1950's. These files exhibit a very considerable diversity in form. Some files are comprised of only a formal report of work undertaken, typed and bound; but most include rough sketches and drawings; detailed mathematical computations; technical correspondence with the client, and with the manufacturers and suppliers of elements of the system being designed; blueprints; invoices for consultation services; and the like. These files are complicated in structure, since Moffitt's projects usually required several months to bring to completion, and often several years - and Moffitt frequently had several projects in course for a single client at the same time, and yet the papers are not segregated by instrument, nor always could they be, since individual papers often deal with more than one instrument. The papers are not usually dated, and the dates of projects often must be inferred only by correspondence included with them. It is clear that the consultancy files preserved are only fragmentary. Among other things, the papers make it clear that telephone conversations constituted an important element in Moffitt's relations with his clients; and these conversations are rarely minuted in his files.

It is evident that Moffitt was inclined to preserve all his scientific and technical papers, including the most rough sketches and confused working papers. Only infrequently did he label and date these working papers and drafts, so that arrangement of them on a strictly chronological basis would be impossible, and assignment of papers to specific subjects is particularly risky. Moffitt's habit of indiscriminate preservation of notes and papers therefore gives rise to a certain number of miscellany files, which can only roughly be associated with various period, e.g., "Yerkes Miscellany," and "Smith-Dietrich Miscellany."

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Subject Headings

• Moffitt, George Wilbur.
• McDonald Observatory.
• Yerkes Observatory.
• Lenses.
• Optical industry.
• Optical instruments.
• Optical instruments - Design and construction.

INVENTORY

Glass lantern slides or transparencies. The slides include photographs of instruments; astronomical bodies, comets, etc.; lens systems diagrams; test patterns for testing instruments; miscellaneous slides to illustrate lectures, etc. About one third of the slides are unidentified.