She didn’t realize that George Hale had found his destiny.
Hale declined an offer to stay and work at Lick. He had already planned a career as an independent astronomer, his father had agreed to build him a private observatory in Chicago, and the equipment had been ordered: an excellent twelve-inch refractor from the fine firm of John Brashear, with a mounting from the same Warner & Swasey shop that had built the mounting for the Lick telescope.
When they returned to Chicago, George and Evelina moved in with George’s mother, now a recluse in her darkened upstairs room. George spent all his time at his new observatory, leaving Evelina to care for his mother. Evelina proposed that they set up housekeeping on their own, but George’s mother wouldn’t hear of it. Other people, she said, would think she had thrown them out.
About the time that George’s Kenwood Observatory was almost finished, William Harper, the president of the new University of Chicago, was taking advantage of the seemingly limitless backing of Rockefeller money to recruit the finest talent in every field to his faculty. He proposed that Hale and his observatory join the University as the nucleus of an astronomy department. Put off by Harper’s aggressiveness, Hale turned down the offer.
Harper could be as stubborn as George Hale. He negotiated with George’s father, and after he persuaded the famed physicist Albert Michelson, the first American recipient of a Nobel Prize in physics, to accept the chair of physics at the new school, he used the prestigious appointment as leverage to strike a deal that would give George Hale a year to evaluate a university appointment before his father gave the Kenwood Observatory and $25,000 to the University of Chicago. A clause of the agreement specified that the University would subsequently raise $250,000 for a larger observatory facility. William Hale was a good enough businessman to expect a proper return on his investments, including those he made in his son’s career.
George was so absorbed in his work at the observatory that he begged off almost all social engagements and other distractions. It was months before Evelina could drag him away for a vacation at Lake Saranac, New York. Even on holiday George couldn’t relax away from his telescope. He finally abandoned the pretense of fly fishing to sneak off to Rochester and a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There he overheard Alvan Clark talking about a pair of glass blanks—the largest ever cast—which were in his shop.
Clark explained that shortly after the opening of the Lick Observatory, a group of supporters of the University of Southern California, anxious that Southern California not be outdone by anything in Northern California, had made plans for an even larger telescope. They organized their publicity before their funding and made sure that Scientific American reported that although the new telescope would be only one-ninth greater in diameter than the Lick telescope, its light-grasp would be one-fourth greater and that “the existence of a large city on the moon would readily be detected by the telescope.” They ordered two forty-inch glass blanks from the Paris firm of M. Manto is—there was still no American firm that could pour large glass castings. The blanks were successfully cast and shipped to Alvan Clark, who had built George Hale’s first telescope, to be ground and figured. Warner & Swasey got the contract to build a mounting for the new telescope.
Before Clark began grinding the disks, the crash of 1893 popped the real estate bubble in Southern California. The businessmen who had pledged funds for the telescope decided that they had other priorities more important than beating Northern California in a telescope race, and the huge glass disks, unground and unpaid-for, languished in Alvan Clark’s Massachusetts shop.
Hale excitedly pulled Clark aside. What, he asked, would it take to figure
Hale declined an offer to stay and work at Lick. He had already planned a career as an independent astronomer, his father had agreed to build him a private observatory in Chicago, and the equipment had been ordered: an excellent twelve-inch refractor from the fine firm of John Brashear, with a mounting from the same Warner & Swasey shop that had built the mounting for the Lick telescope.
When they returned to Chicago, George and Evelina moved in with George’s mother, now a recluse in her darkened upstairs room. George spent all his time at his new observatory, leaving Evelina to care for his mother. Evelina proposed that they set up housekeeping on their own, but George’s mother wouldn’t hear of it. Other people, she said, would think she had thrown them out.
About the time that George’s Kenwood Observatory was almost finished, William Harper, the president of the new University of Chicago, was taking advantage of the seemingly limitless backing of Rockefeller money to recruit the finest talent in every field to his faculty. He proposed that Hale and his observatory join the University as the nucleus of an astronomy department. Put off by Harper’s aggressiveness, Hale turned down the offer.
Harper could be as stubborn as George Hale. He negotiated with George’s father, and after he persuaded the famed physicist Albert Michelson, the first American recipient of a Nobel Prize in physics, to accept the chair of physics at the new school, he used the prestigious appointment as leverage to strike a deal that would give George Hale a year to evaluate a university appointment before his father gave the Kenwood Observatory and $25,000 to the University of Chicago. A clause of the agreement specified that the University would subsequently raise $250,000 for a larger observatory facility. William Hale was a good enough businessman to expect a proper return on his investments, including those he made in his son’s career.
George was so absorbed in his work at the observatory that he begged off almost all social engagements and other distractions. It was months before Evelina could drag him away for a vacation at Lake Saranac, New York. Even on holiday George couldn’t relax away from his telescope. He finally abandoned the pretense of fly fishing to sneak off to Rochester and a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There he overheard Alvan Clark talking about a pair of glass blanks—the largest ever cast—which were in his shop.
Clark explained that shortly after the opening of the Lick Observatory, a group of supporters of the University of Southern California, anxious that Southern California not be outdone by anything in Northern California, had made plans for an even larger telescope. They organized their publicity before their funding and made sure that Scientific American reported that although the new telescope would be only one-ninth greater in diameter than the Lick telescope, its light-grasp would be one-fourth greater and that “the existence of a large city on the moon would readily be detected by the telescope.” They ordered two forty-inch glass blanks from the Paris firm of M. Manto is—there was still no American firm that could pour large glass castings. The blanks were successfully cast and shipped to Alvan Clark, who had built George Hale’s first telescope, to be ground and figured. Warner & Swasey got the contract to build a mounting for the new telescope.
Before Clark began grinding the disks, the crash of 1893 popped the real estate bubble in Southern California. The businessmen who had pledged funds for the telescope decided that they had other priorities more important than beating Northern California in a telescope race, and the huge glass disks, unground and unpaid-for, languished in Alvan Clark’s Massachusetts shop.
Hale excitedly pulled Clark aside. What, he asked, would it take to figure
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