One sundrenched afternoon during the summer of 1961, a group of formally dressed men vigorously attacked the soft earth of a sweet potato patch with shiny‐bladed spades. Although their cultivating activity appeared rather uncoordinated, their purpose was clear to the group of onlookers gathered in the beautiful Manoa Valley, a mile inland from famed Waikiki Beach on the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii. The diggers, who were breaking ground for the Research Center of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, had expressed belief earlier in the importance of the project they were symbolically setting underway; many of the spectators remembered long years of planning and steady local scientific developments which had preceded the ceremony and guaranteed the venture's succes