While at National Bureau of Standards, Grote Reber participated in Naval Research Laboratories solar eclipse expedition to Attu, Alaska, August-September 1950. The weather was terrible but, because they were making radio observations, Reber was able to write in a 5 November 1950 letter to Dutch radio astronomer Jan Oort, “This was probably the first total eclipse which was successfully observed during a torrential downpour of rain in a gale!”