Jekyll2026-09-29T18:07:47-07:00https://collopy.net/feed/research/California.xmlPeter Sachs CollopyPeter Sachs CollopyJoseph Gordon-Levitt Explores Where Film & Science Collide in LA2026-02-24T00:00:00-08:002026-02-24T00:00:00-08:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2026/gordon-levittArchitectural Digest asked a group of iconic Angelenos to share their favorite local places. This is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s love letter to LA. The actor joins Architectural Digest at Caltech to explore how science, technology, and Hollywood filmmaking intersect in one of the world’s leading research institutions. From founding the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which helped with the first moon landings, and NASA continues to manage today, to astrophysicist Kip Thorne’s collaboration with Christopher Nolan on Interstellar, discover why Joseph Gordon-Levitt believes the relationship between art and science makes Los Angeles one of the most important cities for science, and vital to its future.]]>Peter Sachs CollopyElectrifying Los Angeles2026-01-08T00:00:00-08:002026-01-08T00:00:00-08:00https://collopy.net/teaching/2026/electrifyingThis term we will be exploring the meteoric rise of modern Los Angeles through two lenses: the history of its energy infrastructure and of our own institution, Caltech. These two histories intertwine in multiple ways, in the form of big personalities, grand ambitions, and feats of technical bravado. But innumerable smaller, less-visible parts of Caltech and Southern California history also play vital roles in the shaping of this region and our home institution. To trace these stories, large and small, we will be turning to the Caltech Archives and the digital collections of The Huntington Library. You will be learning how to research and communicate the history of archival objects, culminating in a final “group exhibition” of your curated pieces.

Schedule of Class Topics and Readings

  • January 8: Caltech and Its Archives

    • Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Verso, 1990), 54–62.

  • January 15: Thinking Critically About Infrastructure

  • January 22: Electrifying America

  • January 29: Big Creek and the High Voltage Research Laboratory

  • February 5: Gordon Kaufmann at Caltech

  • February 12: Hoover Dam and the Technological Sublime

    • David E. Nye, American Technological Sublime (MIT Press, 1994), 133–142.
    • Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (Oxford University Press, 1992), 64–78.
    • Joan Didion, “At the Dam,” originally published as “A Piece of Work for Now and Doomsday,” Life, March 13, 1970, 20B.

  • February 19: Electric Los Angeles

    • Daniel L. Wuebben, Power Lined: Electricity, Landscape, and the American Mind (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 87–129.
    • Visit from Prof. Brian Jacobson.

  • February 26

    • No class: independent Archives visits

  • March 4: Chinatown screening

  • March 5: River Futures

    • Vittoria di Palma and Alexander Robinson, “Willful Waters,” Places, May 2018.
    • Visit from Dr. Nick Earhart.
]]>Peter Sachs CollopyThe Beckmans at Caltech, 1923–19392025-06-10T00:00:00-07:002025-06-10T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2025/beckmansPeter Sachs CollopyArt and Science at Caltech: Four Histories2024-12-14T00:00:00-08:002024-12-14T00:00:00-08:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2024/art-and-sciencePeter Sachs CollopyPassing in the Hallway: Art and Technology at Caltech, 1968–19722024-10-17T00:00:00-07:002024-10-17T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/writing/2024/passing-in-the-hallwayPeter Sachs CollopyCrossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–20202024-10-17T00:00:00-07:002024-10-17T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/writing/2024/crossing-overPeter Sachs CollopyCrossing Over: Art and Science at Caltech, 1920–20202024-09-27T00:00:00-07:002024-09-27T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/exhibits/2024/crossing-overHonorable mention for The Architect’s Newspaper’s 2025 Best of Design Award for Exhibition Design and finalist for the 2026 Architizer A+ Award for a Sustainable Interior Project, both for design by Tim Durfee Studio.]]>Peter Sachs Collopy“Video Is as Powerful as LSD”: Electronics and Psychedelics as Technologies of Consciousness2023-11-21T00:00:00-08:002023-11-21T00:00:00-08:00https://collopy.net/writing/2023/video-is-as-powerful-as-lsdIn the middle of the twentieth century, the invention and availability of new psychedelic drugs, and the growing cultural discourse around them, coincided with those of television, videotape, and computing. The technologies of psychedelics and electronics grew up together, and those using or thinking about one often implicated the other. When Sony and other Japanese manufacturers developed new portable videotape recorders in the late 1960s, for example, new communities of artists and tinkerers emerged around them, first in the US and Canada and then in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Latin America. For the first time, declared these enthusiasts, many people could make their own television, breaking the broadcast oligopoly. In describing the psychological and sociological implications of this new technology, many compared it to psychedelic drugs.

A mediados del siglo XX, la invención y disponibilidad de nuevas drogas psicodélicas, y el creciente discurso cultural en torno a ellas, coincidieron con los de la televisión, las cintas de vídeo y la informática. Las tecnologías psicodélicas y la electrónica crecieron juntas, y quienes usaban o pensaban en una a menudo implicaban a la otra. Cuando Sony y otros fabricantes japoneses desarrollaron nuevos magnetoscopios portátiles a finales de los años sesenta, por ejemplo, surgieron nuevas comunidades de artistas a su alrededor, primero en Estados Unidos y Canadá, y después en Europa, Asia, el norte de África y América Latina. Por primera vez, declararon estos entusiastas, mucha gente podía hacer su propia televisión, rompiendo el oligopolio de la radiodifusión. Al describir las implicaciones psicológicas y sociológicas de esta nueva tecnología, muchos la compararon con las drogas psicodélicas.

]]>Peter Sachs CollopyBehind the Book: Escape from Earth2022-03-24T00:00:00-07:002022-03-24T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/discussions/2022/escape-from-earthPeter Sachs CollopyIterating Infrastructure from High Volts to X-Rays to Nuclear Physics: Early Caltech Science in the Archives2022-01-13T00:00:00-08:002022-01-13T00:00:00-08:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2022/iterating-infrastructurePeter Sachs CollopyCaltech’s House of Lightning2020-10-08T00:00:00-07:002020-10-08T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2020/house-of-lightningPeter Sachs CollopySitting Down with Uncomfortable Things in the Caltech Archives2020-10-02T00:00:00-07:002020-10-02T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2020/uncomfortable-thingsPeter Sachs CollopyReady, Set, Spark2020-08-13T00:00:00-07:002020-08-13T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/writing/2020/ready-set-sparkPeter Sachs CollopyFrom High Volts to High Energy Physics2020-07-23T00:00:00-07:002020-07-23T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2020/from-high-voltsThe High Voltage Lab was a fabulous attraction. What is now the Sloan building then had no windows in it. It was deep down inside—just a great big basement-like room with no upper floors. And they had these big girders up at the top. The floor of this room was filled with all kinds of electrical equipment—enormous transformers, and condensers, and so on, big swooping insulators. It looked like Frankenstein’s laboratory. Great transformers topped with big mushroom rings, you know, they used to shoot sparks off of.… They’d have a “horn gap,” where a pair of wires would be close together at the top of the transformer and far apart at the top of the room. They would start an arc at the bottom and it would grow in length and rise to the ceiling. That was really impressive to watch as the arcs got up to the ceiling, and then crack, and disappear. They’d make this crackling noise as they’d go up. And then they’d charge up the condensers and shoot off big sparks, and blow up some blocks of wood, and stuff like that. According to the February 1949 issue of *Engineering and Science*, “these facilities have been used to aid Southern California Edison in the development of high voltage transmission lines, to furnish lightning protection of oil storage tanks for the oil industry, to test insulators for numerous utility companies.” The transmission lines tested at High Volts made it possible to transmit electricity to Southern California from the Hoover Dam in Nevada. Among the significant inventions of the lab was a vacuum switch designed by Sorensen and Millikan which was manufactured for aircraft and other industries. Going back to 1921, though, as Hale saw it in his letter to his fellow trustees, though, High Volts would have an entirely different benefit for the physicist he was trying to recruit. “Millikan,” he wrote, “would also have the advantage of using enormous voltage to bust up some of his atoms. This possibility, which no other laboratory could match, is what excites him.… When a man gets on the trail of the philosopher's stone, even if he isn't after gold, you can accomplish a great deal by offering it to him!” Millikan's interest did indeed come from his interest in taking apart atoms and discovering what they were made of. He was also seeking, as Hale's reference to the philosopher's stone suggests, to transmute matter from one element to another by reconstructing the nucleus. In 1904, Millikan had already written that “the dreams of the ancient alchemists are true, for the radioactive elements all appear to be slowly but spontaneously transmuting themselves into other elements.” In 1912, he believed he and his student George Winchester produced hydrogen ions from aluminum using high-voltage electricity. In 1919, Ernest Rutherford persuaded more physicists that he had caused nitrogen atoms to eject protons by bombarding them with alpha particles. Several scientists claimed they had turned various metals into gold in the 1920s using electricity—it was a renaissance of alchemy. Although Millikan submitted a grant proposal for support for this research in 1921, and although he, Hale, and Caltech as an institution occasionally referred to the High Voltage Laboratory as intended for investigations inside the atom, Millikan never published the results of his efforts to transmute matter at Caltech, nor can evidence of it be found in his surviving laboratory notebooks. In his article on the subject, historian Robert Kargon, suggests that “these efforts may have in fact been made but were unsuccessful,” adding that Millikan “preferred to bury quietly unfruitful enterprises; he position as fundraiser for an exciting new research center made such unpublicized interment a practical necessity.” Ultimately, then, the new lab would find other uses. Charles Lauritsen, who received his PhD from Caltech in 1929 and remained here for the rest of his career, made High Volts a key site for high-voltage X-ray research, building the first million-volt X-ray tube there in about 1930. Lauritsen soon became interested in the medical applications of this device, writing in his patent application that “radiations substantially the frequency of the gamma radiation from radium may be obtained from the tube” and that “such tubes can therefore be employed as the full equivalent of radium in the treatment of disease, or for therapeutic purposes.” Although Caltech biologists steered clear of medical applications at this time, its physicists did not. Millikan enlisted local physician Seeley G. Mudd, whose mother was already donating a geology building to the Institute in memory of his father, mining tycoon Seeley W. Mudd. That building is now typically called North Mudd, as the younger Mudd later donated an associated building named after himself as well, South Mudd. I for one didn't realize until I was preparing this talk that the two buildings are named after two different men. To return to our story, Millikan enlisted the younger Mudd in a partnership researching the therapeutic effects of Lauritsen's million-volt x-ray tube compared to lower voltage radiation already available in hospitals, and the Los Angeles County General Hospital began to bring cancer patients to High Volts for radiation therapy. Although he was independently wealthy and didn't receive a salary, and indeed donated money as well as his time to the project, Caltech appointed Mudd became Research Associate in Radiation, and later, in 1935, Professor of X-Ray Therapy. Physician Clyde Emery was made Assistant Professor of X-Ray Therapy at the same time. Caltech's medical physics research was so active that it became one of the main reasons for the Institute to construct a new building, Kellogg Radiation Laboratory, in 1932. Meanwhile, Lauritsen’s students, funded by their work maintaining x-ray tubes for radiation therapy, began modifying High Volts equipment for nuclear physics, making Millikan's vision of deconstructing the atom there a reality; H. Richard Crane, for example, produced neutrons by ion beam for the first time in the early 1930s. “The transmutation of the elements, now an accomplished fact,” wrote Millikan to their funder, W. K. Kellogg, “plus artificial radioactivity, plus neutron beams—all three effects producible by Lauritsen tubes—plus the manifold uses of ultra-short wireless waves, therapeutic and otherwise, open up endless opportunities.” As with many research programs, radiation therapy came to an end at Caltech when funders—not only Kellogg but also the National Academy of Sciences’ National Cancer Advisory Council and the Childs Foundation, decided to stop funding it. In the early 1940s, Kellogg was dramatically repurposed for research on rocketry as the US prepared to enter World War II. High Volts retained its unusual, single-room architecture until 1960, when Caltech renovated it into the Alfred P. Sloan Laboratory of Mathematics and Physics, producing a more conventional internal structure, with windows and five floors of space, including new basements, rather than a single large room. By this point, it had had a storied career contributing to electrical engineering, nuclear physics, radiation therapy, spectacular public demonstrations, and even science we might call alchemy.]]>Peter Sachs CollopyInfluenza Comes to Throop2020-06-11T00:00:00-07:002020-06-11T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2020/influenza-comes-to-throop The first men to fall before the disease were sent to the Pasadena Hospital, but the facilities there were soon over-crowded, and the necessity of equipping our own hospital was apparent. It was at this time that the Red Cross came to our aid.… From October 11th to October 19th a steady stream of hospital supplies flowed from the Red Cross headquarters, in the old Throop Institute buildings, to our hastily improvised hospitals.[^8] Around October 17, the college’s military commanders decided to send all students home, only to receive orders from Washington a few hours later prohibiting them from issuing passes or furloughs. “As a result,” reported the *Los Angeles Evening Herald*, “a large number of students who had already left the college were recalled, some of them from as far away as San Diego.… No quarantine will be placed on Throop College, and parents will be allowed to visit their sons. But none of the students will be issued passes or allowed off the grounds during the epidemic.”[^9] “The influenza epidemic,” wrote students, “completely demoralized the routine of the post, as it was necessary to suspend all class work, and most of the formations, during the quarantine period. At one time, there were over eighty men in the dormitory, which had been turned into a hospital.” Twelve nurses, all women, staffed the hospital. In an effort to raise morale, the YMCA organized film screenings three nights a week in a tent; according to electrical engineering professor Royal Sorensen, a fellow engineering professor operated the projector and “passed the hat after each movie in order to rent another film.”[^10] Meanwhile, outside of campus the city of Pasadena passed a number of ordinances to slow infection. “The Crown City,” commented the *L.A. Times*, permitted outdoor gatherings “provided those present are seated at least two feet apart.”[^11] In 1978, Alice Stone of the Caltech Women’s Club interviewed several women who had been part of Throop in these early years. Among them was Elizabeth Swift, who had served as assistant to the secretary in 1918. Three students, all freshmen, passed away within a period of a few weeks: chemistry major John B. Drive on October 26, general engineering major John Perham Webster on November 1, and chemistry major Russel David Forney on November 13.[^12] Meanwhile, World War I’s armistice came on November 11. According to Sorenson, “most of Pasadena headed for Marengo and Colorado Streets to join the unorganized but orderly parade which continued for hours. Some had their masks as required by law, but they were off the face hanging by a loop over one ear.”[^13] As far as I can tell, Pasadena hadn’t actually legislated mask-wearing—that came a couple months later—but one of the challenges in history is that memory is fallible. As the disease subsided, campus returned to action by November 21, when Throop held its first assembly of the term.[^14] With the war over, SATC dissolved and the college became a civilian institution again. As in many places, though, the flu had a second wave at Throop. In the new year of 1919, the institution suspended classes from January 18 to February 3. Pasadena began requiring masks in public on January 18 as well. On January 20 a fourth student died: Warren C. Mansur, a sophomore mechanical engineering major.[^15] In some ways, it was immediately after this traumatic period that the history of Caltech as we know it today began. In 1919, chemist Arthur Amos Noyes resigned his position at MIT and came to Throop full-time. In 1920, after spending much of a year on leave due to depression and nervous breakdowns, President Scherer oversaw the institution’s renaming as the California Institute of Technology, then resigned. He went on to work as a screenwriter, as president of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, and as a guide offering tours of Asia, while publishing books on the histories of both Japan and California. In 1921, physicist Robert A. Millikan also came to Caltech full-time, replacing the presidency with the role of Chairman of the Executive Council, which he would hold for 24 years. [^1]: James A. B. Scherer, *The Nation at War* (New York: George H. Doran, 1918), 14–18. [^2]: Scherer, *Nation at War*, 28. [^3]: Imra W. Buwalda, “The Roots of the California Institute of Technology III,” *Engineering and Science*, December 1966, 19. [^4]: Buwalda, “Roots,” 19. [^5]: Buwalda, “Roots,” 22; Advisory Board, *Committee on Education and Special Training: A Review of Its Work During 1918* (Washington: War Department, 1919), 31. [^6]: *The Throop Tech* (Pasadena: 1919), 40; James A. B. Scherer, “The President's Ninth-Tenth Annual Report,” *Throop College Bulletin* 28, no. 83 (May 1919): 14–15. [^7]: “Influenza Breaks Out in Pasadena,” *Los Angeles Times*, October 9, 1918; “[Los Angeles, California](https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-losangeles.html),” in *American Influenza Epidemic of 1918–1919: A Digital Encyclopedia*, ed. J. Alex Navarro and Howard Markel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine and Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2016). [^8]: *Throop Tech*, 48. [^9]: “Furloughs Recalled and Cadets Return to Camp at Throop,” *Los Angeles Evening Herald*, October 17, 1918. [^10]: *Throop Tech*, 40, 46, 48; Royal Sorensen, quoted in Buwalda, “Roots,” 22. [^11]: “The Two-Foot Rule,” *Los Angeles Times*, November 7, 1918. [^12]: Scherer, “President’s Ninth-Tenth Annual Report,” 14–15; Throop Tech, frontmatter. [^13]: Sorensen, quoted in Buwalda, “Roots,” 22. [^14]: James A. B. Scherer to Arthur Fleming, November 21, 1918, 1918 file, Outgoing Correspondence subseries, Correspondence series, James A. B. Scherer Papers, California Institute of Technology Archives and Special Collections; Scherer, “President’s Ninth-Tenth Annual Report,” 14–15. [^15]: Buwalda, “Roots,” 22; Scherer, “President’s Ninth-Tenth Annual Report,” 14–15; Throop Tech, frontmatter.]]>Peter Sachs CollopyBecoming Caltech, 1910–1930: Presentations from the Archives2020-06-11T00:00:00-07:002020-06-11T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/presentations/2020/becoming-caltechPeter Sachs CollopyBecoming Caltech: Building a Research Community, 1910–19302020-02-10T00:00:00-08:002020-02-10T00:00:00-08:00https://collopy.net/exhibits/2020/becoming-caltechPeter Sachs CollopyWhen Caltech Was Throop University2017-11-01T00:00:00-07:002017-11-01T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/writing/2017/throop-universityPeter Sachs CollopyThe Revolution Will Be Videotaped: Making a Technology of Consciousness in the Long 1960s2015-07-13T00:00:00-07:002015-07-13T00:00:00-07:00https://collopy.net/writing/2015/revolution-will-be-videotapedPeter Sachs Collopy