Oomph For Science

When vigorous Major Lenox Riley Lohr left the presidency of the National Broadcasting System last month, one NBCer said: "He never took a drink, never talked about women, always made you feel he was a better guy than yourself." The Major in fact enjoyed hunting butterflies, said that it provides excellent exercise together with large doses of fresh air and sun, as well as relaxation of the body and spirit. But youthful, balding Major Lohr is a highly capable businessman. As general manager of the Chicago Fair, he boosted it to financial success. From NBC he stepped into the presidency of Chicago's great Museum of Science & Industry. There last week, he was the centre of a teapot storm.

The Chicago Museum was founded in 1926 by the late philanthropic Julius Rosenwald (Sears, Roebuck), who modeled it after the famed Deutsches Museum in Munich. Into an $8,000,000 shell, he got industry to donate an estimated $5,000,000 worth of equipment. Besides push-button demonstrations of the basic laws of pure science, it featured a life-size working model of a coal mine, which gives the impression of being 500 feet below the surface, a diorama of Boulder Dam, a duplicate of Stephenson's "Rocket" (one of the duplicate first of Stephenson's locomotives). To run the museum, Waldemar Kaempffert, New York Times science editor, was picked. Dr. Kaempffert placed as much emphasis on university-like research facilities, a fine library and highly trained scientists to present "the technical ascent of man and the social implications of science" to the public as on push-button spectacles. By the time the museum opened in 1933 for the Chicago Fair, Rosenwald was dead. Kaempffert had resigned, but the exhibit rooms still gave out an air of educational refinement.

When Businessman Lohr came in fortnight ago, he decided it was high time for the museum to make ends meet. He fired 19 staff members, including the librarian, asked the director, Astronomer Philip Fox, to resign. Said Lohr: "The museum was operating on a budget more than twice its annual income. By reducing the staff . . . I have cut the deficit in half." Since the museum gets no income from admissions the Major planned to make up the rest of his deficit radio-wise, by charging industry space rates on donated exhibits. "The museum," argued Lohr, "can sell an idea to the public that a manufacturers' association cannot because the public might think that it had an ax to grind." First prospect for this sales talk was Illinois Bell Telephone, which, after conversations with Lohr, preferred to think of their exhibit as a contribution to the museum for educational purposes, not an advertising venture.

Showman Lohr also decided to put science & industry across to the public. "The average man" he decided, "is not interested in things over his head." Since "people are most attracted by exhibits they may operate themselves" he wanted lots more action. For the children: "I'd let them have an old airplane and wreck it, and then put in another one." Plans for a spectator-operated $70,000 model railroad were under way, and Nathaniel A. Owings, specialist in amusement buildings, said he had been consulted on ideas for more "oomph."

But Lohr's ideas of popular science were unpopular with many top-notch scientists. Coldly received last week was his definition of the object of science & industry: "to supply better goods cheaper." Sniffed scholarly Nobel Prizewinner Dr. Arthur Holly Compton, dean of physical sciences at University of Chicago: "Faraday, as he discovered the laws of electricity, which are basic to electrical engineering, was not concerned with making better things cheaper. . . . A tragedy has occurred in the cultural life of our city."

Dr. Compton, after a meeting with Lohr, decided museum troubles were due more to financial problems than Lohr management. But Dr. Philip Fox still wondered whether the people of Chicago wanted their museum handled in such a "brazen manner." But there was no mass uprising. Bad sign for Dr. Fox and his 19 ousted colleagues came when the Major bought a $100,000, 14-room mansion in Evanston. Major & Mrs. Lohr planned to move in by Sept. 1 with their five children, a large butterfly collection.

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