William Lowell Putnam any dramatic changes in the Observatory's staff or location. Thus, an Observatory expedition and possibly a permanent move to South America was postponed, effectively establishing the Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Despite his conviction that he should not make any major changes to the Observatory, Putnam did become embroiled in the controversy surrounding T. J. J. See. See was employed at Lowell Observatory at that time, but was both an extremely unpopular man and also regarded as a bad scientist. Three Observatory employees had already resigned due to See's poor treatment of them, and Douglass began working to remove See from
United States Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station complex. Attached to its large "hut" is the building housing NOFS' electronics and electrical engineering laboratories and clean rooms, where most of the advanced camera electronics, cryogenics and telescope control drives are developed and made. NOFS operates the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) in collaboration with Lowell Observatory and the Naval Research Laboratory at Anderson Mesa, south-east of Flagstaff. NOFS (the operational astrometric arm of USNO) funds all principle operations, and from this contracts Lowell Observatory to maintain the Anderson Mesa facility and make the observations necessary for NOFS to conduct the primary astrometric science. The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)