T(^ KNOW THE STARRY IIKWKXS 



21 



short trails, while the asteroid, if there is 

 one within the region of the photograph 

 will photograph itself as a single point, 

 or dot. of light. Figure 2 shows a photo- 

 graph obtained by the first process, the 

 faint, new asteroid having photographed 

 itself at A. 



The Housewife Who Built a Tele- 

 scope. 



In western Pennsylvania, thirty miles 

 or so south of Pittsburgh, is the little 

 town of Brownsville. Here, shortly after 

 1840, Phoebe Stewart was born and here 

 she grew up, a simple country girl, hard 

 working, frugal and poor. 



Phoebe Stewart married a lad of the 

 village, and as Airs. John Rrashear went 



MRS. BRASHEAR AS A GIRL. 



From a daguerrotype taken just before her marriage. 



with her husband to Pittsburg in search 

 of fortune. Brashear got a job in a roll- 

 ing mill grinding tools. 



The Brashears were too poor to buy 

 a house, and so they built one with their 

 own hands. They added a little machine 

 shop with a tiny steam engine, where 

 John Brashear might play with lathes and 

 tools of his own. 



Neither husband nor wife had had 

 much education, hut they spent their 

 spare time in study. Their special inter- 

 est was astronomy. They wanted a tele- 

 scope and were too poor to buy one ; so 

 they made one instead. 



In their little shop they turned the brass 

 and ground the lenses. While her hus- 

 band was at the rolling mill, Phoebe Bra- 

 shear cleaned and oiled the little engine, 

 set the shop in order and made ready the 



tools and materials for the evening's 

 work. After supper, she worked at her 

 husband's side, often until midnight. 

 Whenever she could snatch an 'hour or 

 two during the day, she started the 

 machinery and worked by herself. Few 

 men were better mechanics. 



Lens grinding is slow and difficult. It 

 took the Brashears three years to make 

 their five-inch glass, which they set up 

 in the attic of their cottage. Other bouse- 

 keepers, as they become more prosperous, 

 aspire to larger houses. Phoebe Brashear 

 wanted a larger telescope, one with a 

 twelve-inch glass. It took only two years 

 to make that, for the Brashears were 

 getting skillful. But just as they finished 

 the glass, it broke. 



The husband was completely discour- 

 aged. He went back to the mill resolved 

 to try no more. Not so the gallant wife. 

 "Never mind," she said. "We'll make a 

 better one." And the very next night, 

 when the husband came home from work, 

 he found the best of suppers awaiting 

 him, steam up in the engine as usual, and 

 a fresh block of glass in the lathe. He 

 took heart again ; and that time the work 

 went through to completion. 



That was the turning point of the 

 family career. The Brashears became 

 known, both for their skill in grinding 

 lenses and for the discoveries they made 

 with their telescopes. The Allegheny 

 Observatory began to send them repair 

 work that had hitherto been done in Paris. 



With more experience came more skill 

 and more work. Twenty-one years after 

 John Brashear entered the rolling mill, 

 he left it to set up a shop for the manu- 

 facture and repair of telescope lenses and 

 other optical instruments. The business 

 grew. "The little shop under the hill" 

 became one of the famous optical facto- 

 ries of the world. Langley, who con- 

 structed the first aeroplane that ever 

 actually flew, had his models made at the 

 Brashear works. Here were ground the 

 glasses for the range finders that our 

 navy used in the Spanish War. They 

 were, at the time, the most accurate range 

 finders in tbe world. The Brashears 

 built for the Allegheny Observatory one 

 of the largest telescopes in the world ; its 

 lenses alone cost forty thousand dollars. 



Phoebe Brashear lived to see her hus- 

 band director of a great observatory, a 

 professor in the University of Pittsburgh 

 and for a time its acting head, and trus- 

 tee of educational funds amounting to 



