The 12" reflector at Knox College. In the background is Old Main, on the steps of which Lincoln debated Douglas.  On that telescope is mounted my invention of a variable grating for photometry.  This resulted from my taking up harping as I left Harvard.  This was a reverse Herschel - he was fed up with the music profession and switched to astronomy. The explanation is too lengthy to be discussed here.

In October while looking for some ancient slides to be used for my infamous dedicatory speech at the Walter Barber Jr. Observatory (cancelled by lack of darkness) I ran across items which were quite surprising.  The box had been unopened for perhaps forty years, and I got some of the feelings of Howard Carter when he stuck his head into Tut's tomb.  Pictures of a telescope I had made put a lump in my throat. Its story and my sad parting with it might be of interest to amateurs.  

Astrologers tell us that the stars influence our lives.  They are so right! And when a telescope gets between us and the stars, the effects can be disastrous!

My dad bought a draw telescope of 1-11/16" aperture (1.6875" by my calculation but I had not heard of significant figures at the time).  From the tops of oak trees I could see the spires of a town 12 miles away, But the chief joy was the moon looking like rock salt on cold winter nights, (a pleasure forced on all neighbors).  The Orion Nebula, especially when seen while out on my skis, was terrific.  The library had a book, A Beginner's Star-Book by Kelvin McKready, which had excellent maps and accompanying lists of objects for opera glass, 2" telescope and 3".  There were even objects recommended for naked eye (for viewers not too prudish). One of the happiest days in my life was a Sunday afternoon when the book explained to me the mysteries of right ascension and declination.  The library could get me a copy of this (the best book on astronomy ever written, in my warped opinion) for $4.00.  So I waded through 5 miles of snow delivering papers each night for a month to get my copy. (The paper cost 12-cents a week, which took all Saturday mornings to collect.)  

Then came World War I. German subs were sinking our ships and an urgent request came for telescopes and binoculars. Sorrowfully we packed the 'scope and sent it off never expecting to see it again. However, at the end of the war it came back with a beautiful certificate; entitled "Eyes for the Navy" and a note of thanks, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy (which is more than the 200" ever got!). Whereupon I built an equatorial mount using the brassy covers of peanut butter jars (President Carter, please take note!) for circles. The course of my life was set.  

A scholarship and job offers sent me to a small but excellent college, but one with no formal courses in astronomy (but with a 3" refractor which later became mine). This was the golden age of collegiate horseplay and I had a wonderful three years, including such things as bumming on the railroad on weekends and playing bass drum in the band. The band, however, placed me at great risk, since it was the custom at the end of games for each college to try to kick in the drum of the opponent.  But I had taken all of the math and physics courses available and this brought the worst dilemma of my life.  I could finish the B.A. with ease and be fiddle soloist with the glee club on its tour, but I gave all this up and though prospects were grim I transferred to my state University of Wisconsin.  

I went up Observatory Hill where I got the brush-off by Stebbins because of my lack of formal courses in astronomy. (He was the pioneer in photoelectric photometry.) A few years later when I was active in that racket at Harvard, he asked me how I came up through the University of Wisconsin without passing through his hands. (I explained very bluntly). So I went down the hill to Sterling Hall, home of' the physics department, where I was treated kindly by one of the best men who ever lived. By bending things a bit he told me there was a possibility of finishing in a year, but this involved a nearly lethal dose of hard-core physics plus other general requirements. This was terrifying but I resolved to try it, and if successful I would buy one of the pretty red watch fobs with a big watch. (Pants don't even have watch pockets any more -- another sign of decadence.)  

Sterling Hall proved to be a hotbed of future Nobelists and fathers. I sat next to Karl Jansky in two courses. He was unaware that he would be involved in a paternity case (and immortality) as the father of radio astronomy.  In the class, Mathematical Theory of Heat Conduction, was John Bardeen who was always finding mistakes of the professor who had written the book. Bardeen later got the Nobel as father (or father-in-law?) of the transistor.  

On late Friday afternoons was the colloquium, usually on the new and abstruse subject of quantum mechanics, by J. H. Van Vleck, (Nobelized in '77 as "father of modern magnetism"). But it so happened that across the street was a nurses' dormitory, and at this time of day the future Nightingales were getting ready for the night shift (stepping into it or pulling it down over their pretty shoulders). The result was that all heads but one were turned towards the window (there was one girl in the audience). But this was not surprising. Mathematicians are trained to look carefully at significant figures since the time of Galileo and his falling bodies. Physicists are known to be a "broad-minded" lot. (This has nothing to do with telescopes, but is included as an aspect of higher learning.)  

But how high can that get? One afternoon there was a lecture by the world famous Herman Weyl. I happened to be sitting behind the more famous British physicist Dirac, long time Nobelist, and father of the electron hole concept, etc.  I was, as usual, despondent because the lecture was way over my head.  But feelings improved when at the end a man leaned over and asked Dirac if he understood the talk. Dirac replied that parts were comprehensible but that was because he had heard the lecture before.  

I got the watch fob at the end of the semester and by further bending, management got me an assistantship as lab instructor, which involved working all the experiments and writing them up for approval. It was impressed upon me that this was the only case of such a position being given to an undergraduate.  With a beaner of an experimental thesis I worked seven days a week from 7 a.m. till midnight. June finally came and Charles Lindbergh and I drew the largest crowd in the history of' commencement at U.W.  (The Lone Eagle had laid some goose eggs in physics and was a dropout, but his travel to Paris was so broadening that he was given an honorary degree and membership in the glorious Class of '28.)  

Well, to make to make a short story long, I stuck it out for one more year.  I was led into a room full of high-vacuum equipment where some poor cuss had gotten a Ph.D., and told to do something smart for an M.A. By the end I was so fed up with physics that I had to get out. (Years later some terrorists bombed Sterling Hall - an original idea!) So I took a job teaching in a high school and got married.  I also taught a Sunday School class and started an orchestra that included all sects, agnostics and atheists.  It balled into symphonic size (but not quality), much to the consternation of organized music of the town.  

Then I got into mischief.  Probably nobody in our Club has seen the first edition of Amateur Telescope Making, a skinny but fascinating volume.  I got materials for a 6" mirror and began nightly grinding, walking around a barrel in a clothes closet.  Galileo had said that given a long enough lever he could move the world. I went further by saying that given a pound of rouge I could paint it red. Without finishing the 6" I ordered materials for a 12", (glass in those days., but O.K.).  A young electrical engineer joined in the fun. His old man was a machinist who made an equatorial head with 2" axles. We finished the mirror but I got the itch to go back to school, this time in astronomy.  

I wrote an earnest letter to Dr. Shapley at Harvard who was sympathetic and invited me to an interview in June. I arrived Saturday afternoon and not knowing any better, rang the doorbell at the Residence. I heard somebody thumping down the stairs about four at a time. The door opened and here was the great Shapley wearing sneakers and golf knickers! The upshot was that he gave me a stack of books on math and astronomy for summer study (I studied 8 hours a day) and I was to return in the fall.  

When Albert Ingalls learned I was to go to Harvard he wrote that he was delighted and that I would find Harvard like an old shoe. (True, but definitely a work-shoe!) In the autumn it is the custom at Harvard College Observatory (HCO) to give a written exam to two groups of graduate students; those presumably to receive their doctorates at the end of the year, and those entering, to see if there is any use in their going on. I hate to say it, but my private study seemed to pay off and I was in 7^th heaven. I inherited a desk at one time used by Henrietta Levitt, and did my work under a bronze plaque telling of her pioneering work which led to the Period-Luminosity law. I was given almost full-time use of the historic 15" Great Refractor, with which the first picture of a star was taken. The shop made me a double-slit interferometer with which I experimented with measuring the diameters of Jupiter's moons, etc.  

One frequent visitor was a retired capitalist of some sort, Charles Elmer. He had paid a dime to look through a street telescope in New York and was hooked on astronomy. He hired the chief machinist at HCO to make a mounting for a 12" reflector.  It had a beautiful open tube, with provision for the upper section containing, the secondary and eyepiece to be rotated.  This was just what I needed for my 12", and Mr. Elmer let me use the patterns so that I could have castings made for later use. Mr. Elmer joined with Richard Perkin to form the well-known optical company.  

When the new station (Agassiz) of HCO was built on a hill near the town of Harvard I was placed as the first resident astronomer. There were many famous visitors (too many), but one very useful friend was an amateur who was a machinist. A few rides on the elevator of the 62" inspired him to make a 12" ring gear and worm. Just what I needed for my telescope! Alas, four years of lonely night work (beastly cold and long in winter) was all I could take. I told the boss that I could not let the universe spoil this world and took a job at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.  

The telescope was finished in time for the 1939 opposition of Mars (but no life was found!) and mounted on the roof of the observatory beside the dome of the 6" Clark refractor. It really was a beauty. One student said that she could believe that the Hercules Cluster was 34,000 light-years away, but she was skeptical of seeing moths around a street light a mile away (as I had boasted). She was convinced, however.  

World War II came on and I went back to Cambridge for two very interesting projects. One involved the Harvard Optical Research Lab which had been set up to improve aerial photography. For once I got my fill of flying, mostly with my feet straddling a hole in the fuselage of a B-17 and the pilot banking so the sky was visible between them. When hostilities were over, Dr. Shapley asked me to set up a department of astronomy at Howard University in Washington. (He was as much concerned with people as with galaxies.) I took along my beloved 12" which was soon mounted on top of the roof of the Engineering building. We began a telescope-making effort. A picture of 17 finished instruments and their makers was included in Sky & Telescope, February 1948. When I left Howard to come to Agnes Scott, I did not have the heart to take the telescope, so I sold it at a flea market price. What has happened to it is not known, and I am afraid to ask.

A follow-up to this tale.

About Bill Calder.