The OSU Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center is pleased to announce the release of a complete finding aid for the papers of Charter Heslep, a newsman and member of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Charter Heslep, in profession and personality, is best examined through his complex and sometimes contradictory relationship with information. As a broadcast journalist, censor, ghostwriter, and government employee–Heslep was a conduit through which information flowed and, in some cases, was dammed. He began his career as a newsman in 1929 at the Washington Daily News and in 1941 was appointed night news editor for NBC. During World War II, Heslep served as chief radio censor for the Broadcasting Division of the Office of Censorship where he oversaw the filtering of wartime news as it passed to the public. After the war’s end, Heslep returned to commercial broadcasting, this time at the Mutual Broadcasting Company. In 1949, he joined the Atomic Energy Commission as Assistant to the Director where was asked to apply his talents to the problem of nuclear energy. In his position at the AEC, Charter facilitated information sharing among research and policy organizations, wrote speeches for public officials including Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and assisted in communicating the role of atomic energy—both peaceful and military—to the American public.

Among his many duties at the AEC, Heslep was charged with overseeing the broadcasting of several nuclear weapons tests. Many of the materials in the Heslep Papers—including correspondence, photographs, and ephemera—date from these assignments. Most notably, a series of letters between Heslep and his wife between 1950 and 1957 describe his participation in Operations Tumbler-Snapper, Upshot-Knothole, and Redwing—early nuclear tests staged at the Nevada Test Site and the Pacific Proving Grounds.

It is in this correspondence that Heslep’s talents as a storyteller shine through. His letters, written in a tone approaching wonderment, detail the almost unsettling cleanliness of Camp Mercury, the strange sites of the Marshall Islands, the complexities of broadcasting across the Nevada desert, and the tenseness of a nuclear bomb test. Letters to his children express a similar exuberance at an impromptu military airshow seen from the USS McKinley or the hermit crab races held by bored sailors on Kwajalein. Moreover, his accounts of life and work among scientists and military brass are punctuated by moments of real excitement. In May 1956, he began a series of letters chronicling the USS McKinley’s search for the pilot of a lost observer plane. He wrote,

Tonight, as never before in my life, I have an idea how big an ocean is, especially the Pacific Ocean. Because, somewhere in the thousands of square miles of dark blue water, a man may be fighting for his life.

Only days later, he witnessed the first airdrop of a thermonuclear weapon, describing it “as if a red hot Washington Monument was being thrust upward into an already fiery sky.”

The personal nature of his family correspondence is complimented by examples of Heslep’s professional interactions with the public. Included in the collection are speeches he authored on behalf of the AEC such as “Radio’s Role in Defense” and “Some Aspects of the Impact of the Nuclear Age in the United States.”  Others like “Ghosting: A Necessity, Not a Sin” defend Heslep’s own work and the sometimes circuitous route information takes.

The Charter Heslep Papers are an incredible resource for scholars interested in nuclear history and policy, history of journalism, the work of the Atomic Energy Commission, and the history of information sharing between the U.S. government and the American public.

Additional related materials can be found on our web site  in the History of Atomic Energy Collection, the Barton C. Hacker Papers, the Barton C. and Sally L. Hacker Nuclear Affairs Collection, and the Linus and Ava Helen Pauling Papers.

At first blush, the Ernst J. Dornfeld Papers appear to be the output of a career entomologist. The stacks of maps charting butterfly movement, the encapsulated wings, and the thousands of butterfly photographs all point to the work of a rank-and-file lepidopterist.

Encapsulated butterfly wings

But something doesn’t add up. Dornfeld’s Ph.D., minted at the University of Wisconsin, reads “Zoology” and his curriculum vitae is littered with references to cytochemistry and histology. Upon digging into the Dornfeld Papers, one will unearth lecture notes on cytology and histology, images of cellular mitosis, and a thick bundle of reprints with titles like “Structural and functional reconstitution of ultra-centrifuged rat adrenal cells in autoplastic grafts.” Dornfeld, as it turns out, led a double life.

Ernst’s fascination with butterflies developed during childhood and carried into his early scientific career. However, after taking a position at Oregon State University in 1938, he immersed himself in his teaching and cell biology work. He became interested in embryology and cytochemistry, began publishing his work on reproductive cells, and threw himself into his teaching duties. Consequently, his interest in lepidopterology faded into the background.

In the late 1950s, Dornfeld returned to his lapsed hobby with renewed vigor. He crisscrossed Oregon on scouting trips with his son, developed contacts with other lepidopterists, and amassed an astounding collection of specimens from the Pacific Northwest. He also redirected some of his teaching and writing efforts to butterfly work, publishing papers and giving talks on local butterfly biology and ecology. Moonlighting as a lepidopterist afforded Dornfeld the opportunity to work directly with other enthusiasts. His correspondence with colleagues includes discussions of new species, plans for collecting trips, and arrangements for specimen trading, all of it written in the intense tones of obsession.

Following his retirement from OSU in 1976, Dornfeld began developing a comprehensive guide to Oregon lepidoptera. In 1980, he completed Butterflies of Oregon, the definitive work on the subject. He also put in long volunteer hours cataloging the OSU Systematic Entomology Laboratory’s specimen collection—shaping it into a valuable teaching tool. To this end, he even contributed his own collection, the result of hundreds of hours in the field.
The Dornfeld Papers have been placed in the Special Collections & Archives Research Center for all the usual reasons. The collection is a rich resource for entomologists, ecologists, and historians of science. It’s also a part of OSU’s history—something we’re dedicated to preserving. But it takes only a few minutes with this collection to realize it’s more than the sum total of its research value. The Ernst J. Dornfeld Papers are a tribute to a labor of love.

The Ernst J. Dornfeld Papers and other related questions are available for access 8:30AM-5:00PM Monday through Friday at the Special Collection & Archives Research Center. For questions about the Dornfeld Papers or other holdings, please contact us at scarc@oregonstate.edu.

The Special Collections and Archives Research Center recently acquired an edition of Sir Hugh Plat’s The Jewel House of Art and Nature, published in London in 1653.

This collection of “diverse new and conceited Experiments” compiles recipes, household hints, and practical directions on an impressive variety of useful topics, including: “how to write a letter secretly,” “how to walk safely upon a high scaffold with danger of falling,” “to dry gun-powder without danger of fire,” “to help a Chimnie that is on fire presently,” “to prevent drunkenesse,” and “to help Venison that is tainted.” Mixed in among these trinkets are short treatises on “the Art of Memory,” “the Art of Molding and Casting,” a philosophical treatise on soil and marl, and even alchemical experiments. Intended to appeal to an audience as diverse as its contents, the book contains advices useful to travelers, farmers, housewives, soldiers, cooks, merchants, apothecaries, builders, distillers, and brewers, or indeed anyone who had “either wit, or will, to apply them.”

Plat frequently credits the source of his knowledge on these topics. Usually personal acquaintances, these range from seamen who shared various pieces of useful knowledge learned overseas, to clerics and barbers, to laborers and tradesmen.

Plat’s eclectic compilation provides a fascinating glimpse of the daily needs, desires, and concerns of people living and working in the mid-seventeenth century. It has an important place in the history of science, as it reflects what Deborah Harkness has called “vernacular science”—developments in engineering, chemistry, nutrition, medicine, botany, agricultural science, and physics as achieved by the common people as they  experimented and progressed within these areas. The Jewel House of Art and Nature joins other examples of this democratic genre in our rare book collections dating from the 16^th to the 20^th centuries.

The Special Collections & Archives Research Center is pleased to announce that the Guide to the John D. Lattin Papers is now publicly available online.

The collection represents the work of entomologist John Lattin during his four-decade career at OSU and includes extensive professional correspondence, research projects, publications, Entomology Department materials, biographical and employment records, and more.

John Lattin joined the staff of the Oregon State University Entomology Department in 1955. During his time at OSU, Dr. Lattin specialized in Hemiptera or “true bugs” and conducted research on the reaction of insect populations to evolving environmental conditions such as climate change, the appearance of invasive species, logging, and the introduction of pesticides. Much of this research was focused on Pacific Northwest forests and conducted in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest.

Lattin also served as the curator of the University’s entomology museum, a role that required him to manage and grow the university’s insect collections through cooperation with other universities, laboratories, and private collectors. In service of his students and colleagues, Lattin immersed himself in an international insect specimen trading network made up of museum curators, researchers, and hobbyists. His own field work gave him the opportunity to collect species of insects unique to the Pacific Northwest and trade them for exotic specimens from around the globe. Lattin’s correspondence is filled with records of his efforts in procuring samples for OSU and disseminating specimens from Oregon. Lattin’s research and collecting efforts took him all over the United States and abroad to the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

In a survey conducted in the mid-1970s, the OSU entomological collection was ranked in the top 25 collections of its kind out of almost 600 collections across the United States and Canada.  It grew to more than 2.5 million specimens under his guidance and was both a source of professional pride for Lattin and a valuable teaching tool for entomology, zoology, and biology students.

Jack Lattin’s instincts as a collector were not confined to insect collecting. Lattin began cultivating a personal collection of rare books on the history of entomology in the early 1950s. Though his collection was originally intended for personal research use, it became a crucial teaching tool when he began teaching an Historical Entomology class in 1955. Over the next forty years, his collection would grow to encompass hundreds of books, all carefully chosen from his worldwide network of rare book dealers specializing in entomology.

When Jack Lattin donated his entire research library to the OSU Libraries in the 1990s, the rare books of his collection were absorbed by Special Collections, where they established a strong foundation in historical entomology. Today, the collection is valued not only for its entomological content, but also as a rich source of examples in the history of printing. From gorgeous hand-colored engravings in the 18^th century to fine chromolithographs in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the collection showcases the change in scientific illustration techniques over time.

Related materials include the Entomology Department Records (RG 027), and the papers of Norman Anderson, Ralph Berry, Ernst Dornfeld, Louis Gentner, Paul Oman, Paul Ritchter, and Herman Scullen.