400 Years of the Telescope

We reached Cambridge by 3 PM on Thursday, quite tired after our abbreviated sleep and filming at Stonehenge, parked our cars at the backs across the Cam from Trinity College, and did a couple of hours of inspection of filming sites and possibilities before taking three of the crew (Scott the director of photography, Krista the intern/all-around assistant, and Anita the videographer) to the local Holiday Inn before Kris Koenig the producer and I drove on to the home of Richard Hills, where we met my friend Hallam Murray, our Isaac Newton, arriving from London with his newly-rented costume, and Beverly Bevis, Richard's wife, whom I also met at Berkeley forty years ago, arriving at the same time. The five of us had a fine Chinese dinner, then acquired some much-needed sleep before arising for a good day's work. We picked up the rest of the crew across town and went, with minimal directional difficulty, to the Whipple Science Museum, where Lisa Kemble, whom I had met in June and has not quite yet left for Stanford and her new curating job, allowed us to film Newton's telescope model: Hallam robed himself as Newton, and a fine looking specimen he made too (see photo). After the usual adjustment of the lighting, background, and similar matters, we obtained our footage and returned to our cars, happily parked nearby (because the term starts only in a month, downtown Cambrige is relatively quiet.) From the museum we drove our cars into the rear of Trinity College and dropped off our gear, parked by college sufferance on the lane across the bridge, and set ourselves up in the room where Newton once made chemical experiments to film him holding a prism--by good fortune, with the sun out, I was able to use a pocket mirror to shine a beam of light from outside onto the prism to produce a happy effect in the image. We were forced to break for lunch by the porters' union rules, and after a quick meal returned for the arrival of Rob Iliffe, head of the Newton Project, a professor at Sussex University and husband of Sarah Dry, whom I met long ago as the girlfriend of my friend Michael Soule's son Aaron. Iliffe was happy to cooperate with our enjoyable, if not totally original plan--to film him in a punt on the river Cam as he discoursed in mellow phrases on aspects of Newton's career. We had made arrangements with the boathouse operator by the Trinity bridge the day before, a fellow who seemed recognizable as a long-haired former hippy sort, quite familiar in Berkeley, 27 years renting punts on the Cam, but with a deep Scots accent from Paisley. Our little conceit was to pull back from a tight shot to reveal that the punter with his long pole was in fact Newton (see photo). Getting the interview on the water took more than a couple of hours, because quite naturally every passing punt had a comment or expressed a desire to be in the shot (I learned that when the film about Sylvia Plath was being filmed in this location, the company paid good money to close the river. They also threw camouflage netting over the new footbridge, and when the cows in the field did not appear sufficiently photogenic, arranged for a better-looking bunch of cows to replace them. We lack this sort of budget and time.) The punt contained Newton at the rear, Iliffe in the cockpit, Kris asking questions, Scott doing the photography, and Krista holding the sound boom and doing the sound recording. While I performed my key task of sitting by the river to guard the equipment, who should appear to say hello but Sir Martin Rees, Master of Trinity College, Astronomer Royal, and President of the Royal Society--a triple-barreled threat and by far the most powerful scientist in the UK.
Although he had told me previously that he would not be in town, he was just back from a cosmology conference in Venice, schmoozing with (among others) my friend Catherine Cesarsky, whose last day as the director of the European Southern Observatory and European head of the ALMA radio telescope project in Chile was today--we plan to film her at the ALMA site (16,000 feet up in the Andean "foothills") at the end of September. Martin spoke in a friendly way, as befits our more than four decades of acquaintance, but was not interested in appearing in the program--he certainly has plenty to do, starting with next week's ceremony at Trinity College awarding the million-dollar Gruber prize to the two teams of astronomers who discovered the dark energy. Once the team had safely landed and Rob Iliffe had taken off to return to Sussex, we managed to steal a bit of time (the porters having grown sympathetic to our efforts) filming Newton on the bowling green, tossing a few bowls (not easy found, but they were) to symbolize his researches into dynamics, then walking in the Great Court, deep in thought with his book, and finally tossing and eating an apple.

(We had also filmed, just for fun, Newton with his iPhone--actually Kris's--which, if sent to Steve Jobs, might result in a big contract, or at least iPhones for everyone.) Happy with our day's work, even though were forced to miss a few scenes--for example, filming in the great hall, where Newton took many a meal, rich in portraits from Henry VIII on down (that monarch having founded the college)--we returned in good spirits to dine by invitation at the home of Richard and Bev, who prepared a most marvelous meal, featuring--after a rich mix of appetizers--guinea fowl, red pepper and aubergine salad, small potatoes, and summer pudding. Also there were my high-school classmate Jo Hoffman and her husband Mark, up from London because September marks their time to return to the house they rent in Cambridge, under renovation during August. The conversation flowed like wine, which was also present in abundance, which might be
involved in the unfortunate end to the evening, when Bev slipped and hurt her wrist. She and Richard are now at the hospital, and we await the news from the National Health Service. Kris and Hallam most efficiently cleaned up the kitchen to the best of their abilities, while I heartily approved. Tomorrow we'll assess how things stand--our plan had been, and may still be, to film Richard at the Cambridge radio telescopes, before going to Gatwick to take our flights to Pisa. So life has its ups and downs--easy to be philosophical when it is not one's own wrist causing the pain and upset. May all go well and yield a better world, richer in astronomical knowledge.