How Felix Pirani launched the effort to detect gravitational waves

Felix Pirani's talk at the Chapel Hill Conference launched the effort to detect gravitational waves. Joe Weber was in the audience, and began his lifelong quest immediately after the conference. Rai Weiss read the paper on which Pirani's talk was based, and cited it as inspiration for his own proposal for what became LIGO. The talk will summarize the evidence (from the Conference Proceedings and from other sources) that supports these claims.