Happily, some years before a savant of the Institut de France, Léon Foucault, had just invented means by which the polishing of object-glasses became very prompt and easy by replacing the metallic mirror by taking a piece of glass the size required and plating it.
It was to be fixed according to the method invented by Herschel for telescopes. In the great instrument of the astronomer at Slough, the image of objects reflected by the mirror inclined at the bottom of the tube was formed at the other extremity where the eyeglass was placed. Thus the observer, instead of being placed at the lower end of the tube, was hoisted to the upper end, and there with his eyeglass he looked down into the enormous cylinder. This combination had the advantage of doing away with the little mirror destined to send back the image to the ocular glass, which thus only reflected once instead of twice; therefore there were fewer luminous rays extinguished, the image was less feeble, and more light was obtained, a precious advantage in the observation that was to be made.
This being resolved upon, the work was begun. According to the calculations of the Cambridge Observatory staff, the tube of the new reflector was to be 280 feet long and its mirror 16 feet in diameter. Although it was so colossal it was not comparable to the telescope 10,000 feet long which the astronomer Hooke proposed to construct some years ago. Nevertheless the setting up of such an apparatus presented great difficulties.
The question of its site was promptly settled. It must be upon a high mountain, and high mountains are not numerous in the States.
In fact, the orographical system of this great country only contains two chains of average height, amongst which flows the magnificent Mississippi, which the Americans would call the "king of rivers" if they admitted any royalty whatever.
On the east rise the Apalachians, the very highest point of which, in
New Hampshire, does not exceed the very moderate altitude of 5,600 feet.
On the west are, however, the Rocky Mountains, that immense chain which begins at the Straits of Magellan, follows the west coast of South America under the name of the Andes or Cordilleras, crosses the Isthmus of Panama, and runs up the whole of North America to the very shores of the Polar Sea.
These mountains are not very high, and the Alps or Himalayas would look down upon them with disdain. In fact, their highest summit is only 10,701 feet high, whilst Mont Blanc is 14,439, and the highest summit of the Himalayas is 26,776 feet above the level of the sea.
But as the Gun Club wished that its telescope, as well as the Columbiad, should be set up in the States of the Union, they were obliged to be content with the Rocky Mountains, and all the necessary material was sent to the summit of Long's Peak in the territory of Missouri.
Neither pen nor language could relate the difficulties of every kind that the American engineers had to overcome, and the prodigies of audacity and skill that they accomplished. Enormous stones, massive pieces of wrought-iron, heavy corner-clamps, and huge portions of cylinder had to be raised with an object-glass, weighing nearly 30,000 lbs., above the line of perpetual snow for more than 10,000 feet in height, after crossing desert prairies, impenetrable forests, fearful rapids far from all centres of population, and in the midst of savage regions in which every detail of life becomes an insoluble problem, and, nevertheless, American genius triumphed over all these obstacles. Less than a year after beginning the works in the last days of the month of September, the gigantic reflector rose in the air to a height of 280 feet. It was hung from an enormous iron scaffolding; an ingenious arrangement allowed it to be easily moved towards every point of the sky, and to follow the stars from one horizon to the other during their journey across space.