SCIENCE 
IS 
KNOWLEDGE. 
KNOWLEDGE 
IS 
POWER. 
J PRACTICAL JOURNAL OF 
HOME ARTS 
Vol. ni. 
NEAV YORK, JANUARY, 1880. 
No. 1. 
Home-Made Telescopes and Micro- 
scopes.— I. 
HERE is probably 
no art that gives 
so much pleasure 
to the young be- 
ginner, or that ex- 
cites so much 
wonder and ap- 
plause amongst 
his friends, as that 
of making optical 
instruments, and 
the foundation of 
this art is the 
ability to work 
glass into the various forms that are re- 
quired. The conversion of a piece of glass, 
which has perhaps been thrown into the 
■ash box as useless, into an instrument 
which will increase our power of seeing 
things twenty or even fifty times, is a feat 
which any smart boy may accomplish. 
Such a magnifier or microscope will afford 
a great deal more pleasure than can be 
obtained from a far better instrument 
f 
which has been purchased, and when the 
skill which has accomplished this simple 
undertaking has been so far improved 
that microscopes and telescopes of fair 
quality are the product of one's own 
labors, we feel that the result more than 
pays for all the labor and study that has 
been expended. 
To most persons the construction of a 
microscope or a telescope seems to require 
wonderful skill and a very long course of 
training, but while this may be true in 
regard to the very highest departments, 
it is not true of ordinary optical work, 
very much of which is performed by boys 
and girls. It does not require any extra- 
ordinary mechanical genius or any very 
expensive tools to make a microscope 
which will show the most beautiful of the 
ordinarily invisible objects about which 
we hear so much. Neither does it require 
a long apprenticeship or very elaborate 
tools to enable an earnest lad to make a 
telescope which will show the moons of 
Jupiter, the moon-like phases of Venus, 
or even the rings of Saturn. The con- 
struction of a microscope or a telescope 
which will equal those turned out by 
famous makers will, of course, tax his ut- 
mo.st eJTorts, and probably be far beyond 
