or correct chromatic aberration, the varying refraction or bending of light of different colors. Without correction of the aberration, it would be impossible to focus a sharp image of a star.
The flint-glass element for the Lick telescope was cast successfully, but the initial effort at a crown-glass blank cracked when it was packed for shipment. The Feil brothers worked for two years to cast a second satisfactory crown blank and ultimately went into bankruptcy before the elder Feil came back, took charge, and in 1885 shipped a satisfactory disk to be figured for the Lick telescope.
The mounting of the big telescope was entrusted to the firm of Warner & Swasey of Cleveland, Ohio. Worcester Reed Warner and Ambrose Swasey, both born on New England farms, met as apprentices and worked at Pratt and Whitney in Hartford, Connecticut, before starting their own business designing and manufacturing fine machine tools. Swasey’s skills were designing and building machine tools; Warner was a production line expert and amateur telescopemaker. Their first effort at a telescope mount, for Beloit College in Wisconsin, proved so successful that a Warner & Swasey mount became the mark of a fine telescope.
They were the high bidders on the mounting for the Lick telescope, but with an obviously superior design that the Lick Trust accepted. The mounting for a large refractor has to hold and point the long, heavy tube of the telescope with exacting precision and move it around a polar axis for east-west motion parallel to the axis of the earth, and a declination axis for north-south motion, so that the telescope follows the apparent movement of celestial objects as the earth turns during the night. The only practical design for a refractor was one that supported the long tube in the middle, which meant that as the telescope rose and fell in altitude from the horizon to the zenith, the eyepiece would swing in a large arc up and down. To allow for the motion the telescope had to be mounted on a tall pedestal, with ladders, a lift, and a movable floor provided to make the working end of the telescope accessible to observers and for the installation of cameras, spectroscopes, and other devices. To achieve the rigidity required for astrophotography with a structure this large was a considerable challenge of machine design and construction.
The third big decision about the telescope was location. This was in some respects the biggest innovation of the project. In a bold move the new observatory was sited not on a university campus in a large city, which had been the norm for telescopes, but on remote Mount Hamilton, a coastal peak near San Jose, far from the loom of light pollution of the cities and high enough for the night atmosphere above the observatory to be still and clear. Carrying the components of a huge, high-precision optical device up the steep paths to the mountaintop proved a greater challenge than anyone had anticipated, and it took longer to finish the observatory than even the pessimists prophesied. Lick died in 1879 without ever seeing the completed instrument that would bear his name. His body was interred beneath the pedestal of the telescope.
The telescope saw first light later that year and was an immediate success. Astronomers from eastern universities, hearing of the number of cloud-free nights, the quality of the seeing, and the light-gathering power of the new telescope, clamored for invitations to the observatory.
Hale heard about the Lick telescope from his mentor Sherburne Burnham in Chicago, but it was not until his honeymoon trip that he had a chance to visit the famed site. Access was by a rugged trail, six hours and 366 hairpin turns by horse-drawn stage from San Jose; the peak, even with the telescope and housing facilities, was bleak. But the skies were all that Burnham had described. Evelina was bored in California, eager to leave after a short visit, and frustrated when Haleextended their stay on the mountain.
The flint-glass element for the Lick telescope was cast successfully, but the initial effort at a crown-glass blank cracked when it was packed for shipment. The Feil brothers worked for two years to cast a second satisfactory crown blank and ultimately went into bankruptcy before the elder Feil came back, took charge, and in 1885 shipped a satisfactory disk to be figured for the Lick telescope.
The mounting of the big telescope was entrusted to the firm of Warner & Swasey of Cleveland, Ohio. Worcester Reed Warner and Ambrose Swasey, both born on New England farms, met as apprentices and worked at Pratt and Whitney in Hartford, Connecticut, before starting their own business designing and manufacturing fine machine tools. Swasey’s skills were designing and building machine tools; Warner was a production line expert and amateur telescopemaker. Their first effort at a telescope mount, for Beloit College in Wisconsin, proved so successful that a Warner & Swasey mount became the mark of a fine telescope.
They were the high bidders on the mounting for the Lick telescope, but with an obviously superior design that the Lick Trust accepted. The mounting for a large refractor has to hold and point the long, heavy tube of the telescope with exacting precision and move it around a polar axis for east-west motion parallel to the axis of the earth, and a declination axis for north-south motion, so that the telescope follows the apparent movement of celestial objects as the earth turns during the night. The only practical design for a refractor was one that supported the long tube in the middle, which meant that as the telescope rose and fell in altitude from the horizon to the zenith, the eyepiece would swing in a large arc up and down. To allow for the motion the telescope had to be mounted on a tall pedestal, with ladders, a lift, and a movable floor provided to make the working end of the telescope accessible to observers and for the installation of cameras, spectroscopes, and other devices. To achieve the rigidity required for astrophotography with a structure this large was a considerable challenge of machine design and construction.
The third big decision about the telescope was location. This was in some respects the biggest innovation of the project. In a bold move the new observatory was sited not on a university campus in a large city, which had been the norm for telescopes, but on remote Mount Hamilton, a coastal peak near San Jose, far from the loom of light pollution of the cities and high enough for the night atmosphere above the observatory to be still and clear. Carrying the components of a huge, high-precision optical device up the steep paths to the mountaintop proved a greater challenge than anyone had anticipated, and it took longer to finish the observatory than even the pessimists prophesied. Lick died in 1879 without ever seeing the completed instrument that would bear his name. His body was interred beneath the pedestal of the telescope.
The telescope saw first light later that year and was an immediate success. Astronomers from eastern universities, hearing of the number of cloud-free nights, the quality of the seeing, and the light-gathering power of the new telescope, clamored for invitations to the observatory.
Hale heard about the Lick telescope from his mentor Sherburne Burnham in Chicago, but it was not until his honeymoon trip that he had a chance to visit the famed site. Access was by a rugged trail, six hours and 366 hairpin turns by horse-drawn stage from San Jose; the peak, even with the telescope and housing facilities, was bleak. But the skies were all that Burnham had described. Evelina was bored in California, eager to leave after a short visit, and frustrated when Haleextended their stay on the mountain.
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