Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

From 1888 to 1893 the Lick telescope, with its 36-inch object-glass, was the largest refracting telescope in the world. The Yerkes telescope, with its 40-inch object-glass, is now the largest in the world. It is on the shore of Lake Geneva, Wis., seventy-five miles from Chicago, and belongs to the Chicago University. It will be remembered by those who visited the World's Fair at Chicago, and saw it in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. Professor George E. Hale is the director of this great observatory. The glass was furnished by Mantois of Paris, from which the lenses were made by Alvan G. Clark, the sole survivor of the famous firm of Alvan Clark & Sons. The crown-glass double convex lens weighs 200 pounds; the plano-concave lens of flint glass, nearest the eye end of the telescope, weighs over 300 pounds.

The telescope and dome were made by Warner & Swasey, who made also the 26-inch telescope at Washington, the 18-inch at the University of Pennsylvania, the 10½-inch at the University of Minnesota, the 12-inch at Columbus, Ohio, and others. Of this firm Professor C. A. Young, in the North American Review for February, 1896, says, "It is not too much to say that in design and workmanship their instruments do not suffer in comparison with the best foreign make, while in 'handiness' they are distinctly superior. There is no longer any necessity for us to go abroad for astronomical instruments, which are fully up to the highest standards."

The steel tube of the Yerkes telescope is 64 feet long, and the 90-foot rotating dome, also of steel, weighs nearly 150 tons. The observatory, of gray Roman brick with gray terra-cotta and stone trimmings, is in the form of a Roman cross, with three domes, the largest dome at the western end covering the great telescope. Of the two smaller domes, one will contain a 12-inch telescope, and the other a 16-inch. Professor Young says of the Yerkes telescope, "It gathers three times as much light as the 23-inch instrument at Princeton; two and three-eighths as much as the 26-inch telescopes of Washington and Charlottesville; one and four-fifths as much as the 30-inch at Pulkowa; and 23 per cent more than the gigantic, and hitherto unrivalled, 36-inch telescope of the Lick Observatory. Possibly in this one quality of 'light,' the six-foot reflector of Lord Rosse, and the later five-foot reflector of Mr. Common, might compete with or even surpass it; but as an instrument for seeing things, it is doubtful whether either of them could hold its own with even the smallest of the instruments named above, because of the reflector's inherent inferiority in distinctness of definition."

Professor Young thinks the Yerkes telescope can hardly hope for the exceptional excellence of the "seeing" at Mount Hamilton, Nice, or Ariquipa, at least at night. The magnifying power of the Yerkes telescope is so great, being from 200 to 4,000, that the moon can be brought optically within sixty miles of the observer's eye. "Any lunar object five or six hundred feet square would be distinctly visible,—a building, for instance, as large as the Capitol at Washington."

Since the death of Mr. Lick others have added to his generous gifts for the purchase of special instruments, for sending expeditions to foreign countries to observe total solar eclipses, and the like. Mrs. Phœbe Hearst has given the fund which will yield $2,000 or more each year for Hearst Fellowships in astronomy or other special work. Colonel C. F. Crocker has given a photographic telescope and dome, and provided a sum sufficient to pay the expenses of an eclipse expedition to be sent from Mount Hamilton to Japan, in August, 1896, under charge of Professor Schæberle.

Mr. Edward Crossley, a wealthy member of Parliament for Halifax, England, has given a reflector and forty-foot dome, which reached Mount Hamilton from Liverpool in the latter part of 1895.

Mr. Lick's gift of the telescope has stimulated a love for astronomical study and research, not only in California, but throughout the world. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific was founded Feb. 7, 1889; and any man or woman with genuine interest in the science was invited to join. It has a membership of over five hundred, and its publications are valuable. The society holds its summer meetings on Mount Hamilton. Very wisely, for the sake of diffusing knowledge, visitors are made welcome to Mount Hamilton every Saturday evening between the hours of seven and ten o'clock, to look through the big telescope and through the smaller ones when not in use. In five years, from June 1, 1889, to June 1, 1894, there were 33,715 visitors. Each person is shown the most interesting celestial objects, and the whole force of the Observatory is on duty, and spares no pains to make the visits both interesting and profitable.

James Lick planned wisely when he thought of his great telescope, even if he had no other wish than to be remembered and honored. Undoubtedly he did have other motives; for Professor Holden says, "A very extensive course of reading had given him the generous idea that the future well-being of the race was the object for a good man to strive to forward. Towards the end of his life, at least, the utter futility of his money to give any inner satisfaction oppressed him more and more."

The results of scientific work of the Lick Observatory have been most interesting and remarkable. Professor Edward E. Barnard discovered, Sept. 9, 1892, the fifth satellite of Jupiter, one hundred miles in diameter. He discovered nineteen comets in ten years, and has been called the "comet-seeker." He has also, says Professor Holden, made a very large number of observations "upon the physical appearance of the planets Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn; upon the zodiacal light, etc.; upon meteors, lunar eclipses, double stars, occultations of stars, etc.; and he has discovered a considerable number of new nebulæ also." Professor Barnard resigned Oct. 1, 1895, to accept the position of professor of astronomy in the University of Chicago, and is succeeded by Professor Wm. J. Hussey of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

Sir Edwin Arnold, during his visit to the Observatory, at the suggestion of Professor Campbell, looked through the great telescope upon the nebula in Orion. "I saw," he writes, "in the well-known region of 'Beta Orionis,' the vast separate system of that universe clearly outlined,—a fleecy, irregular, mysterious, windy shape, its edges whirled and curled like those of a storm-cloud, with stars and star clusters standing forth against the milky white background of the nebula like diamonds lying upon silver cloth. The central star, which to the naked eye or to a telescope of lower power looks single and of no great brilliancy, resolved itself, under the potent command of the Lick glass, into a splendid trapezium of four glittering worlds, arranged very much like those of the Southern Cross.