One of the great pleasures of being a historian is finding important connections to the past. This is especially gratifying when you discover the many ways that history links not only the past to the present but also the future. Such was the case while doing research for my forthcoming book, Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Community Helped Launch Star Trek.
As the former Chief Historian of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and a devout fan of the original Star Trek television series, I was intrigued by the number of connections that I found tying the agency to the creation of the show. Documents showed not only how NASA helped bring Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the 23rd century to life, but also how other unexpected individuals and agencies influenced the creation of the show including the military.
Courtesy UCLA Library Special Collections.
One document caught my attention, not only for what it said but also who said it and when. The day after Star Trek first aired on network television on September 8, 1966, an Air Force officer was so impressed by what he saw that he sent Roddenberry a telegram. The telegram, which I found in the Gene Roddenberry papers housed at UCLA, reads: “TREMENDOUS THOUGHT PROVOKING EXCELLENT CAST AND SCENERY SUSPENSEFUL OUTSTANDINL [sic] PLEASE ACCEPT CONGRATULATION AND PLEA TO CONTINUE.” The telegram was signed “Dr. Jack L Hatley of the School of Aerospace Medicine US Airforce Brooks AFB Texas.”1
The telegram impressed Roddenberry enough that he apparently passed it along to others within Desilu Productions, the studio that produced Star Trek. After NBC formally announced it had renewed Star Trek for a second season, Desilu issued a full-page ad in the March 14, 1967, issue of Daily Variety, not only to congratulate the show but also to promote the series for Emmy consideration. The ad included a blurb from a Jack “Hackley” at Brooks Air Force Base, quoting an excerpt from the telegram: “… tremendous, thought-provoking. Outstanding…” Desilu ran the ad again on April 17 alongside a similar ad for Mission: Impossible, “respectfully submit[ting] these series for consideration by the Members of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.” Star Trek did not win an Emmy.
Daily Variety, March 14, 1967.
In any event, I needed to learn more about this officer. I searched the internet using both spellings of his name (“Hatley” and “Hackley”), but I found nothing. My wife Deana noticed a spelling error in another part of the telegram and thought that Hatley’s name may have also been misspelled. She reasoned that since Jack was a doctor, he probably had poor handwriting, which might have accounted for the spelling variants. She tried doing another internet search using the name “Hartley.” That worked.
During the 1960s, Air Force lieutenant colonel Jack L. Hartley served at Brooks Air Force Base, where he studied the problem of what to do if an astronaut got a toothache while in space. As a result, Hartley developed the science of astrostomatology (space dentistry), along with a portable astronaut dental kit for the Aerospace Medical Division of the Air Force Systems Command.
Hartley published numerous papers about his research, which got him noticed by the media. He also promoted astrostomatology and his astronaut dental kit through appearances on television shows like What’s My Line, To Tell the Truth, and The Tonight Show. When he presented Johnny Carson with a real human skull, to show how to give injections to the upper and lower jaws to make them numb, Carson couldn’t resist holding up the skull and intoning: “Alas, poor Yorick!”2
I was able to track down Hartley’s daughter, Patricia, a retired archivist who worked at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. Patricia explained her late father’s role in the creation of Star Trek: “He collaborated a fair amount with Roddenberry. He [Roddenberry] was really very good about trying to get things right, in spite of the fact that he had a very limited budget. And he didn’t have a lot of tools to show. But he created a whole lot of things. And Dad was just one of the ones that he was talking to help him design this stuff.”3
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jack L. Hartley is shown on March 2, 1966 with his astronaut dental repair kit. Dr. McCoy’s screen-used medical satchel or bag and hypospray pouch are shown along with various other medical instruments used in Star Trek. Photos courtesy of the author, Karl Tate, and CBS/Paramount.
Hartley’s input may have influenced the different designs of Dr. McCoy’s medikit on Star Trek. During the first season and occasionally thereafter, McCoy carried a large, commercially available black leather toiletries bag or “dopp kit.” Early in the second season, McCoy used a small leather pouch that was held to his belt or pants with Velcro. The small pouch was soon replaced with a long, tri-fold pouch, which was the one seen most often in the second and third seasons.
Patricia and other family members were pleased to hear that Jack Hartley’s story would be included in my book.4 Patricia sent me her dad’s papers. The house where he lived had been damaged by fire, and the papers still smelled of smoke. Some were visibly damaged by the heat and charred by the flames. The family kindly agreed to donate his original files to the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, where others can now sink their teeth into Hartley’s work.
- Jack Hartley to Gene Roddenberry, Western Union telegraph, September 9, 1966, Gene Roddenberry Collection, Correspondence/General Files, Correspondence, Miscellaneous, box 27, folder 17, Gene Roddenberry Papers (Collection PASC 62), UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- “National Publicity for Children’s Dental Health Week,” Journal of the American Dental Association 72 (June 1966): 1513–14; Jeanne Jakle, “Tonight Memories from S.A. Fan, Guest,” May 23, 1992, newspaper clipping provided by Patricia Hartley; January 10, 1966, episode of To Tell the Truth; February 7, 1966, episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
- Patricia Hartley, interview by Glen E. Swanson, November 8, 2020.
- Jackie Wiley Hartley, interview by Glen E. Swanson, January 29, 2023.