Newton's Telescope

1895

Newton fashioned a concave mirror from a mixture of copper and tin, which gives a surface with almost the luster of silver. An image of the star was produced in the focus of this mirror, and then this image, when examined by a magnifying eyepiece, permits the astronomer to study the star at what is equivalent to a greatly reduced distance. Such is the principle of the famous erecting telescope which bears the name of Newton.

The little reflector which he constructed is still preserved as one of the treasures of the Royal society. The telescope tube had the very modest dimensions of an inch in diameter. It was, however, the precursor of a whole series of magnificent instruments, each outstripping the other in magnitude, until at last the culminating point was attained in the construction of Lord Rosse's mammoth reflector of 6 feet in aperture. — Good Words.

Signals To Mars

1901

What a British Scientist Thinks of Their Possibility

In a London newspaper Sir Robert S. Ball writes of the futility of human endeavor to attract the attention of possible inhabitants of Mars. He says: "If the whole extent of Lake Superior was covered with petroleum and if that petroleum was set on fire, then I think we may admit that an inhabitant of Mars who was furnished with a telescope as good as that which Mr. Percival Lowell uses at Flagstaff might be able to see that something had happened. But we must not suppose that the mighty conflagration would appear to the Martian as a very conspicuous object.

"It would rather be a very small feature, but still I think it would not be beyond reach of a practical observer in that planet. On the other hand, if an area the size of Lake Superior on Mars was to be flooded with petroleum and that petroleum was to be kindled we should expect to witness the event from here not as a great and striking conflagration, but as a tiny little point of just discernible light. The disk of Mars is not a large object, and the conflagration would not extend over the three-hundredth part of that disk.

"It is sufficient to state these facts to show that the possibility of signaling to Mars is entirely beyond the power of human resources."

Vancouver to Have Largest Telescope

Feb. 1920

Its 10-foot Lens Said to Be the World's Greatest

VANCOUVER, B.C. — The largest telescope in the world is being erected on the Vancouver exhibition grounds, and will be one of the big attractions of this year's fair.

The lens of this powerful spyglass is ten feet in diameter, this being six inches larger than the world-famous telescope at Leipsig. It has been in the possession of T. S. Sherman, Vancouver's meteorologist and weather man, for nearly six years, but construction of the telescope was deferred owing to war conditions.



Tests His 150-Pound Airplane

Midget Flier Has 22-foot Spread and 9 H. P. Engine

REDWOOD CITY, Cal. — New aviation history was written here when a 22-foot airplane, driven by a nine horse power motorcycle engine and weighing only 150 pounds, flew for four or five minutes at an altitude of not more than 50 feet.

The plane was constructed by C. F. Flinger of Palo Alto, who said he has been working for two years on it.

L. E. Melandy piloted the plane, which Flinger calls the "Flivver of the Air."

Melandy drove the mosquito plane for about four miles and upon his return to the flying field here declared that everything worked perfectly.

Telescopic Lenses Now Complete

Massachusetts, 1896

The great lenses, forty inches in clear aperture, for the Yerkes telescope, are now complete in the workshop of Alvan G. Clark at Cambridgeport, Mass.

An observatory, to be under the control of Chicago University, has been equipped for the reception of the great telescope, and it will soon be in use. The tube, which is of steel and sixty-three feet long, was made in time for exhibition at Chicago during the Columbian Exposition, and is said to be equal to all the demands for strength, rigidity and easy movement.

The two lenses composing the objective are of the simplest form. One is of crown and the other of flint glass, each being forty and a half inches in diameter. An inch and a half is cut off in mounting, giving a clear aperture of forty inches. The crown lens is double convex, three-quarters of an inch thick at the edge and two and three-quarters of an inch thick at the center. Being well supported about the circumference, this thickness gives sufficient rigidity, although the weight is nearly two hundred pounds. The flint or negative lens is plano-concave, two inches thick on the edge and about an inch and a quarter in the center, weighing 3000 pounds. These lenses have been tested for months by Mr. Clark, and local imperfections have been corrected in the most careful manner.

The production of the rough disks of glass was a labor of great difficulty, and the final success of the makers in Paris marks a great advance in the manufacture of optical glass. One of the disks was completed and delivered at Cambridgeport long before the other was perfected, and it was necessary to await the production of both before the labor of grinding and polishing could be undertaken.

It would not be surprising if a telescope of forty-eight inches aperture were constructed within the next ten years and perhaps earlier. Of course, the possible sagging of the glass from its own weight may become perceptible in a glass of fifty inches. But the perfection of the forty-inch glass shows that the limit has not been reached, and no one can tell whether properly proportioned glass of forty-eight inches will sag or not until the experiment be tried. — Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Telescope Reveals Ice Caps on Mars

1920

Question as to Whether Place Is Inhabited Is Declared Beyond Human Solution

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sending wireless messages to Mars and Venus, and the possibility of projecting a rocket to the moon, are subjects of recent speculation which have excited keener interest in the solar system.

"Mars always challenges interest," says William Joseph Showalter in a communication to the National Geographic Society.

"Its day is about the same length as ours, but its year is nearly twice as long. Although astronomers generally take less interest than laymen in the surmise as to whether the other planets and stars are inhabited, since they, more than laymen, realize that that is a problem that must in all human probability remain unsolved, the question is more often asked about Mars than any other planet.

Venus' Day 224 of Ours

Venus was an unusually interesting object in the sky during July of last year. Not again until February, 1921, will it appear as bright and fair in the evening sky. It has phases like the moon, and these can be seen even through a good field glass. Its day is believed to be the same length as its year, which is 224 of our days.

"It is quite generally believed that Mars has ice-capped poles. The telescope reveals white spots at the poles that have every appearance of being like our ocean Polar region. They advance toward the equator in winter and retreat in summer. In the summer of 1916 Pickering, who, with Lowell, has led the school of astronomers who believe they can see canals on Mars, said that he found the white caps stretching farther down toward the equator than he had ever seen them before.

He said that if there was any connection between the weather of Mars and that of the earth, the winter of 1916-17 would be the coldest in many years. And it was. May it yet be possible to do long-range weather forecasting on the earth by studying the waxing and waning of the ice-cap of the South Pole of Mars?

The Siderostat — A Wonderful Instrument to Magnify, View the Moon

1895

Moon at Close Range

A Wonderful Instrument Will Limn Her Figure

Magnified for Us — And at Last We Shall See If She Has Any Queer People on Her — A Frenchman's Hope May Be Realized

Not only to-day but in all ages men have been anxiously endeavoring to solve the mystery of the moon. The ancients made her their goddess, and entered upon no new undertakings without first asking her advice and consulting the probabilities of the influence with which even to-day many superstitious persons endow her.

The lens has long been regarded as the means by which we will be enabled, if at all, to study the moon's mysteries. The only question has been how to make a lens large enough. It seems to have been recognized that there is a limit to what may be called the carrying power of a lens. Alvin Olark, of Cambridge, is the man who makes big lenses, and he has about reached his limit.

Two of these record-breaking lenses are in the great Chicago telescope, and two more are about to be set in the recently mounted telescope in the Paris Observatory. A French scientist, M. Deloncle, proposes to use these lenses for a novel purpose. The plan is said to be more than three-fourths realized. It will require glasses of over forty-nine inches in diameter. A famous French lens-maker is at work on these glasses for an instrument which M. Deloncle calls the siderostat.

With this M. Deloncle hopes to interview the moon and to establish once for all whether that interesting and much-discussed planet is inhabited. It will tell us whether the moon has cities, monuments and larger buildings and also explain its signals to us, if it has any.

Says a French writer of it: "The invention is an ingenious one and demands for its perfection a man, convinced he is right, having, so to speak, plenty of 'pluck.' It is the natural outcome of all that has gone before, from Metius to Mantois; but it belongs especially to the particular genius of its author, because no one before him, not even the most learned astronomers, had dared to imagine so strange and yet so useful an instrument for stellar observation. It is the cannon of 103 tons, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Eastern of optics. The Siderostat surpasses anything of its kind. It does not even bear any resemblance to existing telescopes.

"The spectators will stand and it will lie, pointing its long horizontal tunnel at a mirror fourteen inches in thickness and weighing 13,000 pounds. The image of the satellite will be reflected, and coming out of the ocular will be projected on a screen upon which two, three, five hundred spectators may see the moon. A magnifying glass will enlarge the image to enormous proportions and a very delicate mechanical contrivance will set the mirror in motion, so that it will follow the apparent movements of the planet. The scheme will be gigantic; it will truly be 'Twentieth Century!' The question arises among the doubtful: Will it be practical? After all, negat alter!

"Unfortunately Mme. Moon, the indispensable prima donna of this lunar theater, often disappoints us. In the first place, there will be many evenings when, following in the footsteps of her capricious human sisters, she will decline to come forth from the shadows of her cloudy boudoir. Photography may be brought into requisition, and, like the understudies on the real stage, take the role of the sulking prima donna. In which case the siderostat will be vulgarized to the mean part of a huge magic lantern, which misfortune, for the sake of science, it is to be hoped will never transpire."

—The Perry Bulletin, Perry, IA, Oct. 16, 1895, p. 2.

Three Wonderful Mirrors, Mount Wilson Observatory

1916

Used In Place of a Telescope In Mount Wilson Observatory.

From Los Angeles by trolley car and burro back up through the pine forests one reaches the Wilson observatory. No dome or gigantic telescope greets the visitor when he gains the summit. A huge Noah's ark of canvas destroys all preconceived ideas of what an observatory should look like, and within three wonderful mirrors take the place of the great tubular telescope of other observatories.

The observatory building is constructed of canvas, the sides being set in the form of tiers of steeply overlapping eaves. This arrangement is calculated to allow for perfect ventilation and is re-enforced by a vertical wall of canvas, which can be raised or lowered at will to obtain an even temperature.

The peculiar arrangement of mirrors that replaces the familiar telescope is the center around which all interest in the observatory revolves. These mirrors are constructed at the Yerkes observatory and are the finest products of the optician's manufacturing skill. The enlarging mirror, which is supported by a pier of stone at the farther end of the building, is of concave glass four inches thick, and the scientists tell us it is of twenty-four inch aperture by sixty foot focus.

The glass is polished ever so often with jewelers' rouge upon pads of chamois skin and is burnished every week or ten days, in order to remove all possible dust. In addition a galvanized cover is kept over it when it is not in use. — Christian Herald.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.