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Title: The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope
ISBN: 0060926708
Author:
Ronald Florence
Publicate Date: 1995-09-13
Publish: 1995-09-13
List Price: $16.50
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $12.48
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $7.99
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.50
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A Rare and Fabulous Book About a Mind-Boggling Telescope
I've been fascinated with the 200" Hale telescope on Mt Palomar since I read "The Glass Giant of Palomar" as kid. "The Perfect Machine" meets the highest standard you can apply to a non-fiction book--it reads like a novel. Not only does it correct the many errors and omissions of "The Glass Giant of Palomar," but it weaves interleaving stories in a fscinating and riveting way. There's the story of the glass blank of Pyrex and the difficulties casting it, the extraordinary vision of George Ellery Hale, and even the Surrier Truss design first used on this telescope tube. Then there is the site selection, constuction problems, and most of all a vivid portrait of the personalities involved in the construction of this giant. It is even more mind-boggling to realize that all this happened in the first few decades of the 20th century!
After reading this book I finally made my pilgrammage to Mt. Palomar to view the monster for myself. Knowing the details of the telescope's construction added even more to the sense of awe I felt standing in the visitor's gallery gazing in disbelief at this huge, huge machine, and knowing all the discoveries made with it over the years. It was an incredible experience. No photograph of the Hale telescope does it justice.
This is an extraordinary book.
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2: The story of the Palomar telescope and its predecessors
I purchased this book at the telescope gift shop on Mount Palomar back in 1996. I read it in the next few days. It is the fascinating tale of George Hale, a remarkable man who had to battle personal demons (in the form of debilitating mental breakdowns) to build the world's largest telescope--then do it again and again! I can't remember the first one offhand, but the 100-inch Hooker Telescope on Mt. Wilson was next, then the 200-inch Hale telescope on Mt. Palomar. This book talks about all the technical, financal and other difficulties that were overcome to make the giant telescope possible. It explains large earlier telescopes and how the problems encountered in their construction provided lessons for the designers and builders of the Palomar telescope. Anyone interested in the history of technology or astronomy should give this book a look.
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3: I bought it for my father
I have no trouble pinpointing the splendid-ness of this book. All I have to do is mutate a cliche and say that "the angel is in the details." Florence's full, dramatic account of the various attempts to create the mirror for this enormous telescope -- first by General Electric and then by Corning -- is worth many times the price of admission. What you get is an exciting story of engineering hurdles met, overcome, and sometimes not overcome ... I am not an engineer, but probably should have been one. My father _was_ an engineer and, while reading this book, decided he would probably find it enthralling, and I was right. Florence is such a careful and masterful writer, that this tale of seemingly-insurmountable obstacles and struggles should appeal to anyone. He makes molten glass come to life. Bravo. One of the better books I've read in the past 5 years - and I read a lot.
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4: A nearly perfect book about a nearly perfect machine
Not only does Ronald Florence give a vibrant account of the design and construction of the Hale telescope, he manages to make the reader share his fascination for an admirable project and an awe-inspiring science machine. The book is better than well written, it is captivating. Having been closely involved in a major telescope project, I can only state that his account of the production of the "giant eye" rings true. Rarely has a science writer shown so much understanding of the intricate processes, technologies, and human relations underlying a large science project. Still, there are a few disturbing inaccuracies in Florence's story. On a number of occasions, the author wrongly gives credit to the Palomar telescope designers for innovations that had been experimented long before, such as the principle of the support of the primary mirror, actually due to Lassel (Malta, 1861). The account of the in-situ finishing of the primary mirror sounds completely implausible, the metrology of the time (I saw the Hartmann screen on the occasion of a privileged visit in 1995) being of too low resolution to allow any meaningful verification of local refiguring as reported by Florence. The post-1950 period would also have deserved a somewhat broader and fairer account; the Russian 6-m may not have been a success comparable to the Palomar but paved the way for modern mechanical designs, and the advent of entirely new and far-reaching concepts, such as active optics, in the hands of European designers and suppliers is completely ignored. Still, the vision and the endeavour underlying the making of the Palomar telescope emanate from every page; it is a nearly perfect book about a nearly perfect machine.
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5: A fine rendering of a historic achievement
Florence's narrative brings alive the fascinating saga of the great Mt. Palomar reflector, in its time the world's largest telescope and a pioneering example of "Big Science." The instrument's gestation period, beginning in 1928 and interrupted by the second World War, was so long that three of the principal figures didn't live to see it dedicated in 1948. Included in this group was the project's founding father, George Ellery Hale, for whom the telescope is named. The author uses Hale's remarkable abilities and seemingly unending physical and mental travails as a unifying theme throughout the book.A renowned telescope developer and respected solar astronomer, Hale had the establishment clout and scientific connections to launch such a grand project and assemble a team to carry it out. While suffering from a chronic nervous condition that often left him isolated in a darkened room, he was nevertheless able to lead the program through its most critical periods and help rescue it from a multitude of financial and organizational crises. The immense 200-inch (nearly 17 ft) diameter of the Palomar telescope's main mirror gave it twice the theoretical resolution and four times the light grasp of its Hale-inspired predecessor, the 100-inch reflector on Mt. Wilson. Everything about the 500-ton machine was Brobdingnagian, perhaps best symbolized by the fact that an observer at the prime focus actually sat inside the telescope tube, with plenty of clearance for starlight to stream past him to the mirror some fifty-five feet below. In the hands of Florence, what might have been a confusing welter of facts becomes a coherent and utterly engrossing suspense story. He seemingly overlooks nothing about the relevant issues of Astronomy, optics, engineering, business, politics and personalities; yet there is no sense of overkill and one always feels eager to begin the next chapter. The dozens of interacting characters are portrayed with enough subtlety, irony and humor to make them seem real and familiar. I have seldom gotten so much pure enjoyment from a book.
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