HERSCHEL'S INGENUITY 117 



own making, which was to have lasted me all my life- 

 time." 1 



The ingenuity of the appliances for ensuring stability 

 and lightening labour in consulting the telescope was a 

 monument to the mechanical genius of Herschel, in 

 keeping with the greatness of the mirror. These 

 appliances are now things of the past, not to be re- 

 peated by any future adventurer in the fields of 

 research, but none the less worthy of respectful regard 

 even in this age of engineers. They were not successful 

 in making a cumbrous machine so light and easy to 

 handle as science required, but that is only saying that 

 the necessity for this preceded the discovery of the 

 means of doing it, and that the first attempts were 

 inferior to those made later. The iron tube, at the 

 bottom of which lay the colossal eye that looked 

 heavenwards, was 39 feet 4 inches in length and 4 feet 

 10 inches in diameter. It was an unwieldy and far 

 from necessary addition to the structure, enough to 

 cause error in observations by its ton-weight and 

 instability. He had also to make arrangements for 

 conveying observers and visitors from the ground to 

 the gallery, 30 feet high or more, to whom ladders 

 would have been difficult or dangerous. A chair-lift 

 was devised, but was never erected. So easy did he 

 find the ladders, and such was his agility at sixty and 

 seventy years of age, that he preferred to reach or 

 leave his post of observation by running up or down 

 them. Among other requirements was a means of 

 communicating readily and at once from his lofty 

 perch both with the recorder of observations, whose 



1 March 1831, Memoirs, p. 244. Compare this with the "hot-headed 

 old Welshwoman " of 1772, p. 33. 



