Following links at the bottom of a very unpleasant article posted in these pages I found this one. A generally wonderful one so much different from the majority of unhappy news we see too frequently these days.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. It takes me back 50 years ago to my last family vacation including a visit to Deerfield Village where I engaged the old fellow running the steam power plant two hours while the family tired to find me. The quiet elegance of this old machinery from our heyday of industrial revolution when we could do anything captures evokes certainty, serenity and confidence of a nation lost. Watch the video as the 35 ton observatory floor quietly moves up to the lens of the telescope. Just audacious to move the whole floor instead of a platform. Chutzpah in engineering straight out of a Jules Verne novel.
I am amazed and gratified the funds to restore the facility were raised and the work is still on going. Thank you to the benefactors.
Countless images in old astronomy books were taken with this instrument.
The 15-inch Great Refractor at the Harvard-Smithsonian in Cambridge is much smaller, but still in working condition, and open every Thursday night to visitors. It was the largest in the U.S. in 1847. (There is also a public lecture.) The original bearings for the dome were iron cannonballs, but they were melted down during World War II, and replaced with roller bearings. Two of the cannonballs are still on display, worn elliptical by 93 years of use.
The great refractor was a pioneer in astrophotography.
https://pweb.cfa.harvard.edu/about/about-harvard-college-observatory/about-great-refractor
Beautiful instrument.
I visited it, perhaps 5 years ago, when I was in the area.
As noted, a photo of this scope and photos from it were in every astronomy book of the 50s and 60s (probably earlier).
It’s a classic and one of a kind. It deserves to be preserved even if it isn’t doing much science anymore; it was a trailblazer in its time.
HEADS UP!
I’ve boated past this facility several times. The architecture is classic.
L