Planetarian

Most audacious of astronomical showmen is James Stokley, director since 1933 of Philadelphia's Fels Planetarium. Big, stooped Mr. Stokley (rhymes with Annie Oakley) this week arrives in Pittsburgh to become director of the Buhl Institute of Popular Science and Buhl Planetarium (to open this fall).

A planetarium picture of stars in the night sky is breathtakingly spectacular at first sight, monotonous after repetition. Stokley, the greatest showman in planetariana, provides variety to keep planetari-addicts coming in. Three years ago he depicted the "End of the World"--a huge moon drawing close to Earth after millions of years, eventually breaking up and showering Earth with its fragments. Stuffy astronomers were shocked by this fiction but Stokley defended it as a product of imagination "guided by a knowledge of exact facts." This month Fels visitors were treated to an imaginary trip to the present harmless moon--takeoff in a rocket ship, sound effects, landing in a lunar crater--were even given "tickets" for the voyage.

Turning back the configuration of heaven to 7 B.C., when a conjunction of three planets occurred which may have been the guiding star of the Three Wise Men, was no Stokley invention. It was originated as a Christmas program by Director Philip Fox of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, but Stokley improved on it, added music, a creche, soft lights, a cardboard tableau of the wise men.

Born 39 years ago, the son of a Philadelphia umbrella maker, James Stokley is a jack of all sciences; puttered with chemistry and photography in boyhood, studied biology at the University of Pennsylvania, took an M.A. in psychology, taught general science in high school, wrote science articles for newspapers. In 1924 he met the late Dr. Edwin Emery Slosson, famed chemistry popularizer, who hired him as a staff writer for Science Service. As a Science Service writer Stokley hopped over to Germany to get his first look at a planetarium. He was thrilled. Since then he has directed two solar eclipse expeditions and two years ago, on a freighter in the Pacific with Astronomer John Quincy Stewart of Princeton, witnessed the longest total eclipse of the sun (7 min. 6 sec.) seen by man in more than 1,200 years.

When Soapmaker Samuel Simeon Fels financed a planetarium for Philadelphia, Stokley was the man to run it.

Mathematician Albert Einstein, Musician Jose^1 Iturbi and erudite Baseballer Moe Berg (Phi Beta Kappa) saw their first planetarium shows to the accompaniment of Stokley's deep, well-modulated lectures. Baseballer Berg became a frequent visitor, once herded all his Boston Red Sox teammates .into the Philadelphia tabernacle of the stars.

There are four planetariums already operating in the U. S.--the Adler in Chicago, the Pels in Philadelphia, the Hayden in Manhattan, the Griffith in Los Angeles. All were financed in whole or part by philanthropists. So also is the new Buhl in Pittsburgh, financed out of a $13,000,000 legacy left to the Buhl Foundation by Henry Buhl Jr., founder of Pittsburgh's Boggs and Buhl department store, who died in 1927.

Most conspicuous feature of a planetarium is the big, dumbbell-shaped projector. These are manufactured exclusively by the Zeiss works in Jena, Germany. The cost of such projectors varies with the rate of exchange; Pittsburgh got its instrument for $133,000. The building will cost $1,070,000, will seat 450 in the projection room, 250 in a lecture room. Sculptor Sidney Waugh of Manhattan is carving lo-ton limestone pedestals symbolizing the heavens, the earth, day and night.

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