American Institute of Physics. Center for History of Physics. Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations. Phase III: Ground-Based Astronomy, Materials Science, Heavy-Ion and Nuclear Physics, Medical Physics, and Computer-Mediated Collaborations.

A documentation research project to study the complex issues facing the historical documentation of multi-institutional collaborations in physics and allied sciences. Phase III focused on four disciplinary areas of ground-based astronomy, materials science, heavy-ion physics, and medical physics, and a category named computer-mediated collaborations. VLBI was a consortium of MIT (Haystack), Harvard (Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory), the California Institute of Technology (Owens Valley Radio Observatory), the University of California, Berkeley (Hat Creek Radio Observatory), and the University of Iowa with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, and the Onsala (Sweden) Space Observatory as "associated members" to regularize the use of these observatories for very long baseline interferometry at centimeter wavelengths. As many as 80 scientists attended open meetings for consortium members and external users. NSF and collaboration members provided the (very modest) funds the collaboration needed. The consortium was formed in 1975 and disbanded over time as the stations of the Very Long Baseline Array came on line, beginning in 1989.