Frank's Story

In the Beginning

Why the Alvarez's came to Frank Asaro

Draft Lottery

Walter and his father Luis Alvarez asked Frank Asaro to join their research team for a number of reasons. One was that Frank had impressed Luis during the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam conflict. There had been a draft lottery that decided which young men would serve in the armed forces, and Frank noticed that there appeared to be an unusual bias against young men whose birthdays were at the end of the year. This concerned Frank directly, because his son's birthday was in November. Frank sent a letter to the editor of the Oakland Tribune along with a graph demonstration the bias. The letter to the ended up with an Oakland Tribune reporter, Fred Garretson, who had some previous experience with graphs. Much to Frank's surprise, the contents of the letter appeared as a news article in the Oakland Tribune the next afternoon rather than a letter to the editor. The staff of the San Francisco Chronicle saw the article and had a reporter call Frank. The next morning an article appeared on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. Frank also wrote letters to many of his congressmen, and another letter to the editor saying that the ladies of a church bazaar could have held a better lottery. The reporter, Fred Garretson, however, was able to find out exactly how the lottery was held and how the bias likely occurred. He found that the people in charge of the draft lottery placed all of the days of the year in a shoebox, adding the days to the box month by month. As the box became full, the numbers at one end would be pushed back towards the other end and the new month's dates added. When the hand was removed, the old dates would slide back over the new. This was repeated until all of the days in a year were in the box. Then the box would be shaken and turned over, the numbers falling into a second container. As the box was quite full, shaking might not have mixed the things up very much. The result was that the dates from the end of the year could have been enriched in the top of the second container. At some later time someone would pick a number, probably off the top. This explanation impressed the physicist Luis Alvarez, who commented to Frank "It looks like you were right ".

Top

Testing the authenticity of the Plate of Brass

The Alvarez's had also been impressed by the work of Helen V. Michel and Frank on the Plate of Brass. This plate was a brass artifact, in the custody of the U.C. Berkeley Bancroft Library, which had thought to be left by Sir Francis Drake when he refitted his vessel, the Golden Hinde on the coast of Northern California in 1579. The Plate was carefully described in a 1626 publication called "The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake". University professors had discussed the Plate with their students and encouraged them to go and find it. In 1936 a brass plate with lettering on it was discovered in Marin County in California by Beryle Shinn. It was carefully studied and tested and declared to be the authentic Plate of Brass left by Francis Drake by a special committee of two, C.G. Fink and E.P. Polushkin. There was considerable controversy, however, about the authenticity of the Plate. For example, in 1974, Samuel Eliot Morison, in the second volume of his two books, "The European Discovery of America" called the Plate of Brass a student hoax.

In 1997, in preparation for the 1979 quadricentennial celebration of Drake's landing in California, Professor James D. Hart, Director of the Bancroft Library, which had custody of the Plate of Brass, decided to implement a new round of studies of the authenticity of the artifact. Among many studies he wanted to have the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at Oxford University in England make chemical abundance measurements on drilled fragments from several parts of the Plate. He asked Professor Glenn T. Seaborg, who was head of the Nuclear Chemistry Division at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, later called the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), if some of his staff could do the drilling. Professor Seaborg asked Frank if he would do it. Frank said yes and he put Helen in charge of the project. Helen and Frank said that they wanted to make measurements as well as doing the drilling, and that was acceptable to Professor Hart.

Professor Hart instituted some ground rules. The Plate would be drilled in three places, which would not mar its appearance. Half of the material from each hole would be sent to the Oxford Laboratory in England, and there would be no communication between the laboratories prior to submission of reports to Professor Hart. There was also to be no publication of results prior to Hart's Bancroft Library publication.

The surfaces of the sides of the artifact (which were where the drilling would take place) were carefully cleaned, and holes were drilled so as not to mar either the front of the back of the artifact. Members of the Bancroft Library staff were almost always present when the Plate itself was being drilled handled or measured. The metal pieces, form each of the three drillings, were divided into two equal parts and half of each was sent to England. The Berkeley portion of each was divided into two parts making six samples, and neutron activation analysis (NAA) studies and other measurements were made on these. When the work started out, Helen and Frank believed the Plate to be authentic, and their six samples were referred to as DRPL-1 to DRPL-6, where DRPL stood for Drake's Plate. Brass is principally an alloy of copper and zinc, and each element will contribute impurities into the brass. In their initial NAA studies, Helen and Frank studied the impurities in the Plate of Brass that were expected with zinc. They found that those were much lower in abundance than the anticipated for old brass, but similar to what was expected for relatively modern brass. These data suggested that the Plate was not authentic, but Helen and Frank did not consider them conclusive.

After a few months, the Oxford Laboratory completed their measurements and sent a four-page report to Professor Hart. He held a meeting of many of the faculty participants in authenticity study, and asked Frank to read and evaluate the Oxford report in the front of them. This was especially difficult since intimidated Frank at that time, and also he liked to read and enjoy papers in his field in a very leisurely manner. The report by the Oxford scholars, indicated they thought the Plate was not authentic, but they could not be sure. Frank felt the results of the two laboratories were consistent, except that the English reported a Fe content of 0.2% was too large for modern brass, and so there was a problem. They asked Robert D. Giauque of LBNL to try and measure the Fe content by X-ray fluorescence, but he could only obtain a limit, <0.2%. Then they tried measuring it by NAA and also could only obtain a limit, <0.1%. Neither measurement was adequate to quarrel with the English result of 0.2%. Then one of the other participants in the LBNL program, George V. Shalimoff was able to measure the Fe content by emission spectroscopy and found a value of 0.027%, which was consistent with modern brass. In later years it was found that the discrepancy did not arise from a measurement problem, but a typographical error in the process of transferring the information from the University of Manchester * where the Fe measurements were made) to Oxford and then to Professor Hart. The University of Manchester Fe contents were given as <0.2% not 0.2%!

As Helen and Frank's measurements proceeded, it became increasingly evident that the amounts of many impurities in the Plate of Brass were much smaller than anticipated and the Plate was also much more homogeneous in composition than expected for old brass.

Professor Hart wanted very much to obtain the LBNL final report. He wanted about a four-page report like the Oxford Laboratory had sent to him. But Helen and Frank wanted to be very sure of their findings and it took them about 2 years to turn in the report, which was 46 pages long. Their conclusions from the homogeneity of the composition of the Plate based on the impurities expected in old zinc and copper, the brass making procedures employed in the late 16th century, and the homogeneity in the thickness of the Pate of Brass each indicated the Plate was not authentic. They deduced that most probable period for the manufacture of the Plate was the late 19th or early 20th century. Although an 18th to the 20th century date was possible, a 16th century was not. The Bancroft Library published 16 pages of Helen and Frank's report in a very limited distribution, and the complete report was published in the journal Archaeometry along with e the report from the Oxford Laboratory. The Plate was studied by other workers by many different methods with the resulting view that the Plate was probably not authentic. Of particular note was the work of the world famous metallurgist, Cyril Stanley Smith, who deduced the Plate had been cut with guillotine shears, which were not available in Drake's time. Smith's first works when he viewed the Plate under a microscope are noteworthy. He said, "This is a damned fin piece of brass."