The following are excerpts from “Converging Lines,” a genealogy and family history book researched and written by Norma McKinney, as well as oral recollections from her in 2011 and Charles’ remembrances to his grandson in 1990 for an eighth grade report.
Charles R. McKinney was born in Terre Haute, IN, on June 1,1922. He graduated from high school in June, 1940, and began studies at Rose Polytechnic Institute in his home town of Terre Haute, IN. He and his future wife, Norma M. Vrydagh, were studying together on December 7, 1941, when Norma’s parents called them downstairs to listen to the announcement on the radio.
Norma wrote: “Because of the war, Rose Poly began to accelerate classes so that students could graduate and either go into the service as officers or go into war-effort work. Consequently, Charles graduated October 3, 1943, as an electrical engineer, was employed immediately by General Electric in Schenectady, NY; we were married on October 6, 1943 and, after a short honeymoon in Chicago, left by train for New York. On the crowded trains (most were commandeered for use in transporting troops) we were only able to get one berth, a small upper, but of course this was not a concern to a newly -married couple, so off we went on the first adventure of our lives together.
“We rented two rooms in a house that had been a residence but was partitioned into four apartments. Our two rooms had been the dining room and kitchen with a bath off the kitchen shared by the two young men in the other two rooms on the first floor. Charles was to have worked three months as a test engineer and then be transferred to another facility for another three months. That was the typical pattern for a new engineer. But, instead he was kept in Schenectady for the second three months.
“Then in early 1944, he was offered a choice of three sites to go to in order to work for the US government: New York City, Oak Ridge or Hanford, WA. We did not want to go to New York City, and the state of Washington was too far ‘off the map’ for us as a young couple with all our family in Terre Haute.” The alternative, of course, was to be drafted into the war. So they chose Oak Ridge. Charles went there in March 1944, staying in a dormitory. Norma came in May when they had been assigned a house to live in.
Norma said that Charles never talked with her about what exactly he did, but since he came out of the experience knowing about mass spectrometers, she presumed that this is what he worked on.
Norma: “Raw, red soil was visible over the entire area (Oak Ridge) turning into mire during the rains. Boardwalks laced the area, buses crawled the streets….”
Keith Schreiner wrote: “General Groves, who was in charge of the whole Manhattan Project visited them a lot. One day when General Groves was walking from building to building, my grandpa saw a dog jump up on him, knocking him off the boardwalk into the muddy streets.”
Norma: “Many of the scientists had realized what they were producing. Charles was told to go to the site’s library and look at a particular book. The book had a page that had obviously been well-thumbed by many people. It told about splitting the atom and this is how the they figured out they were working on a bomb.
“Given Charles’ life-long pacifism, I would guess that he was not happy about this, but the alternative of actually going to war was worse. Charles was not very talkative about his beliefs; he just lived them.”
After the War
After the war, McKinney was accepted by Dr. Al Nier as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Unfortunately, due to all the available housing being given to the returning GIs, he had to give up, as he could not find permanent housing for himself, his wife and baby daughter. They returned to Oak Ridge for seven months before “Charles was offered at position at the University of Chicago working with Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Harold Urey, being responsible for the completion of the isotope-ratio mass spectrometers measuring the ratios of O16/O18 and C12/C13. Returning students with their families lived in the prefabs just across the Midway from the university and that is where we were housed. “(Quote from Norma.)
In assisting Dr. Urey as an engineer of mass spectrometers, McKinney was recognized by Urey in Science, November 5, 1948, Vol. 108, No. 2810, pages 489-496, “My colleagues in this case who have been partners with me in these researches over the past year are Mr. Charles McKinney, Mr. John McCrea, and Dr. Samuel Epstein, who have worked steadily on these subjects with me. Articles covering the scientific details will be published under our joint names…” That article was printed in The Review of Scientific Instruments, Vo. 21, No. 8, pages 724-730, August 1950, under all four names.
(Some of the following information was gleaned from Caltech Archives/ Oral Histories Online’s interviews with Samuel Epstein and Leon [Lee] T. Silver.)
Early in 1952, Linus Pauling at Caltech, desiring to expand the geology division, wrote to Harrison Brown, who was at the University of Chicago to ask him to come to Caltech and add a geochemistry department. He was allowed to bring other scientists – they were mostly postdocs – from Chicago. They included, Lee Silver, Sam Epstein, Clair Patterson, Gerry Wasserburg, Bob Sharp “and a man by the name of Charles McKinney. Charles McKinney deserves a very large amount of credit for producing a working mass-spectrometric laboratory, with a variety of state-of-the art machines, quicker than anywhere else in the country.” (Lee Silver) Sam Epstein said, “I knew McKinney very well. He was an excellent engineer; he was responsible for the building of many of these instruments here.”
Norma: “Charles built the mass spectrometers and the group began determining what isotopes were in certain rocks in order to measure their ages, thus helping to establish the age of the earth.”
Kathy Schreiner, Charles’s daughter: As his young daughter during the Caltech decade, I have memories of being brought to the campus many times. My father’s office was in the basement of what is now called North Mudd Lab. He also had many rooms in which to work and to house the instruments that he made. He would occasionally work at night, bringing my mother and me to keep him company. A lab table would be cleared off to make a bed for me to go to sleep on, with wafts of pungent chemicals and the steady noise of the vacuum pump in the next room. The mass spectrometer itself was huge; it filled a room. Like computers, they have evolved to be a tiny fraction of the size they were when my father first was building them.
I also recall being presented to the great man himself, Dr. Urey, after he had moved to La Jolla, CA. He was very gracious and welcoming to his former colleague and his family.
In October, 1959, while still active at Caltech, McKinney was assigned to participate in an Encyclopedia Britannica film, “Slow Ticks”, which described the work involved in discovering the age of the earth. The production photographs that I have show him in scenes explaining what half-life is, looking at the convoluted turns of the glass tubes that made up the sample preparation line, and sitting in his chair at the mass spectrometer.
In addition to his career, McKinney was accomplished in woodworking (making furniture), construction projects (he made a patio and a deck for two of his homes), backpacking and mentoring many young people. He could fix anything. He read science journals, supported a physics lecture series at Sonoma State University, supported and participated in the Sonoma County Astronomical Society, listened to short wave radio and loved to explore and travel. He was a curious and wise scientist as well as a peaceful man, a lover of the wilderness and a gentle guide.
Society Memberships: Society of Sigma Xi, AAAS, Mass Spectroscopy Society of America, American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Geological Society of America, American Geophysical Union
Patents:
#4,099,052, July 4, 1978: “Mass Spectrometer Beam Monitor”. Inventor, Charles R. McKinney, Assignee: E.I. DuPont Company
#3,699,332, October 7, 1972: Magnetic Mass Spectrometer with Shaped Uniformly Saturating Magnetic Poles”. Inventors, Charles W. Hull and Charles R. McKinney, Assignee: E.I. DuPont Company
#4,099,052, July 4, 1978: “Mass Spectrometer Beam Monitor”. Inventor, Charles R. McKinney, Assignee: E.I. DuPont Company
#3,699,332, October 7, 1972: Magnetic Mass Spectrometer with Shaped Uniformly Saturating Magnetic Poles”. Inventors, Charles W. Hull and Charles R. McKinney, Assignee: E.I. DuPont Company