March 26
TELESCOPE DAY
On this day in 1936, the first telescope with a 200-inch-diameter, reflecting mirror was shipped -- very, very carefully -- from Corning, New York to Mt. Palomar Observatory in California. The lens of the Hale telescope weighed 20 tons. It was dedicated at Mt. Palomar in 1948.
It is a far cry from the first telescope invented in 1608 by Hans Lippershey of the Netherlands. Hans made eye glasses and one day, while holding a lens in each hand, he looked through both lenses at one time. What he saw was an enlarged image at the end of the two lined-up lenses. Lippershey carried his accidental discovery one step further, mounting a lens at either end of a tube, creating the first telescope. Many experiments had been made with lenses magnifying objects, with documentation as far back as the 1200s. But, Lippershey has been given the credit, if not the patent. Galileo heard of Lippershey’s invention and built his own telescope in 1609. Its magnification power was a mere 33X about the same as that of opera glasses.
The Hale telescope at Mt. Palomar remains one of the most widely-used scientific telescopes on the planet -- as it looks at other planets and beyond. Galileo would be amazed!
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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