Now, the story you have heard is that Chas, with me helping along, tried to pedal a design for a modest 128 x 128, near ir camera to JPL, for use on the Palomar 200 inch telescope, which JPL scientists were then getting access to. But JPL, with its old, slow, expensive, but still good philosophy, wanted a kingÆs ransom, or way more than we had anyway, to manage and produce the camera. So Chas and I decided to build it ourselves. Chas designed the optics, his cousin-in-law did the mechanical design and we put it together with the help of the Caltech machine shop. JPL did supply the detector, electronics and a lot of encouragement in the end.

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