Dearborn Observatory. It is now in the Adler Plan- 

 etarium. The famous Lick Observatory 36-inch re- 

 fractor was completed in 1887, the year of Clark's 

 death, and his sons went on to build the 40-inch 

 Yerkes refractor, (1897) still the largest refractor ever 

 built. It is no reflection on Clark to note that he was 

 more fortunate than Fitz, in his longer life, his asso- 

 ciation with ^\'arner and Swasey in the construction 

 of mountings, and in the continuity given to his work 

 by his sons. 



Let us return for a moment to the 1840's and John 

 Brashear the 9-year-oId Pennsylvania boy who, was 

 given his first opportunity of looking through a small 

 refractor telescope by its maker. Squire ^Vampler of 

 McKeesport. Brashear became a professional ma- 

 chinist, but retained an interest in astronomy which 

 led him to make a 5-inch achromatic refractor in 1872 

 and subsequently to show the instrument to Samuel 

 Pierpont Langley,' then director of the Allegheny Ob- 

 servatory. With Langley's encouragement Brashear 

 went on to construct a 12-inch reflector and in 1880 

 decided to make a business of telescope-making. 

 He subsequently made, among other telescopes, a 

 30-inch refractor in 1 906 for the Allegheny Observatory 

 and in 1918 a 72-inch reflector, at Victoria, British 

 Columbia. Brashear's greatest fame, however, came 

 from his accessory instruments — spectroscopes and 

 the like. 



Not the least thrilling aspect of the story of the spec- 

 tacular ascendancy of American-made telescopes is 

 the story of their financing — of the big-telescope era 

 in American philanthropy and the financial giants 

 (Lick, Hooker, Thaw, Yerkes, and others) who peo- 

 pled it. In the biography of our third telescope- 

 maker, John Peate, we see at once the persistence of 



the amateur and the difficulty of his position at the 

 end of the 19th century. 



Peate, too, may have acquired his interest in astron- 

 omy during the years just before 1845. It has been 

 surmised that he was inspired by the sensation cre- 

 ated by the comet of 1843, but it is more likely that 

 his interest resulted from visits to European observa- 

 tories while he was on a walking tour in 1859. Unlike 

 our other amateurs, he did not change his profession 

 (he was a Methodist minister), being certainly at less 

 liberty to do so, but he adapted his hobby to it in an 

 interesting way. Peate was something of a poor man's 

 philanthropist, and his fame would have been no 

 greater than that role customarily brings had he not 

 undertaken in 1893 the astonishingly audacious proj- 

 ect of making the largest glass reflector that had ever 

 been built. In this project he assumes, like his English 

 contemporary A. A. Common, a position intermediate 

 between the makers of giant metallic specula, Herschel 

 and Rosse, and the makers of the California glass 

 reflectors of the 20th century.'" In a professional 

 telescope-maker of the end of the 19th century, 

 Peate's accomplishment would have been remark- 

 able. In an amateur it is amazing. It detracts 

 nothing from Peate to reveal, as does the sketch 

 printed here, that the accolade which this project 

 deserves (but has never received) belongs in part to 

 George Howard and the Standard Plate Glass Com- 

 pany. His example and theirs encourage us to hope 

 that the day of the amateur in science may not be at 

 an end. 



' Langley's work at the Allegheny Observatory, particularly 

 his invention of the bolometer, brought him international re- 

 known as a scientist. In January 1887 he was appointed 

 assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and later in 

 that year became its third Secretary, serving from 1887-1906. 



10 The giant mirrors of Herschel (1789) and Rosse (1842) 

 were made of an alloy of 71 % copper and 29% tin, and 68Ji% 

 copper and 3i;.2% tin, respectively. This alloy was known as 

 "speculum metal." The silvered glass mirror was pioneered 

 by Steinhill and Foucault in 1856. In England Dr. A. A. Com- 

 mon made considerable use in the 1870's of silvered glass 

 mirrors made by George Calver. About 1892—97 Common 

 himself made, but never finished, a 60-inch mirror. It was 

 later refigured and is still in use. 



On these matters see King, op. cit. (footnote 6). 



PAPER 26: THREE 19TH-CENTURV AMERICAN TELESCOPE MAKERS 



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