Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1891 — A Great Glass. [ARTICLE]

A Great Glass.

A distinguished assemblage of mathematicians and scientists gathered enthusiastically around a plain packing-box in Cambridge. Mass., a few days ago to look at a piece of glass. It was ten feet in circumference and some three inches thick, but as it lay in its bed of excelsior its value exceeded $60,000, and the spectators regarded it with the greatest affection. The place was the office of Alvan Clark, the noted telescope maker, and the glass was the lens for the new telescope to be erected on Wilson Peak, in the Sierra Madre Mountains, near Los Angeles, 6,000 feet above the sea, for the University of Southern California. It will be the largest telescope in the.world, the object'glass being 3 feet 4 inches in diameter, or five inches more than the famous Lick telescope. The tube will be sixty-five feet long, and the moon will be brought by it within one hundred miles of the earth. The whole is the gift of E. F. Spence, President of the First National Bank of Los Angeles. The glass was cast in Tarls, after no less than 110 attempts, and is insured for its full value in two Boston companies. It'will take fully two years yet to grind and polish it to the requfred locus, and, when to all appearances complete, the human Angers will be called into play to finish its surface. It is ground down with red oxide of iron and polished with beeswax. ‘ When in position the telescope is expected to perform wonders. It will have a photographic outfit which will be three times larger than any nowin existence. It will costas,ooo to transport the glass to Los Antreles. When you hear that a man has passed in his checks, it is not always safe to infer that he is dead; he may only have overdrawn his bank account. Some men are so far-seeing that they stumble over their ins ght and knock all the brains out of their knee pans.