INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS DURING THE YEAR 1873. xxv 



Clark & Sons still lives ; and though he never enjoyed the 

 advantage of a technical education in his difficult art, he has 

 pursued it with a success entirely without parallel. We have 

 no doubt that the new Washington telescope is the most per- 

 fect ever produced. Whether it will fully equal in power 

 the great reflectors of Rosse and Lassell can only be deter- 

 mined by trial ; it is, however, certain that, while it can not 

 fall far short in this respect, it will be far ahead of them in 

 general convenience of management, and consequent effect- 

 iveness. 



The completion of the great telescope of the Xaval Observ- 

 atory is now at once to be followed by the construction of 

 an equally large instrument ordered by Mr. M'Cormick, to be 

 presented to the University of Virginia. 



Dr. Henry Draper, of the New York University, has finished 

 the construction of a silvered-glass reflecting telescope of 

 twenty-eight inches' aperture, which is now mounted equato- 

 rially at his country seat at Hastings, in a new dome adjoin- 

 ing that containing his sixteen-inch reflector, whose con- 

 struction was fully explained in a memoir published by the 

 Smithsonian Institution in 1864, and with which telescope his 

 well-known lunar photographs were taken. The new tele- 

 scope is so arranged as to be easily converted into either a 

 direct vision, a Newtonian, or a Cassegranian, as the astron- 

 omer may desire ; it is intended to be used especially in ce- 

 lestial photography, in all the details of which Di-. Draper is 

 an acknowledged expert. The method of depositing the sil- 

 ver film chosen by Dr. Draper gives one of unusual hardness 

 and reflecting power, such that the light or space penetrating 

 power of this telescope equals, if it does not surpass, that of 

 the great Clark refractor at Washington. 



The fires during the past two years in Boston and Chicago 

 have seriously crippled the resources of the observatories at 

 those two places, and we learn that the latter has virtually 

 ceased all scientific work. On the other hand, a small observ- 

 atory has been erected in connection with the Columbia 

 College of New York City. The Dudley Observatory at Al- 

 bany has undergone a complete change in its position, in 

 that it has become subject to the board of trustees of the 

 new university organized at Albany by the co-operation of 

 various colleges in or near that city. 



2 



