Thursday, September 4, 2008

Remembering the Past, Forging the Future

I will be speaking to the Riverside Astronomical Society on Saturday, September 6th. The talk, The 200-inch Hale Telescope: Remembering the Past, Forging the Future, will be a mix of the history of the building the 200-inch Telescope at Palomar and current and new research that is underway here.

Speaking of history . . . . I would like to thank our Superintendent and our current and former Chief Engineers for placing some collections of old photos into my hands. I have recently been spending a lot of time scanning photos from the collection of Guenther Froebel, who was an engineer at Westinghouse during their construction of the 2oo-inch telescope. The photos were donated by his son Gunner Froebel back in the 1990s.

Westinghouse did an amazing job of documenting many of the stages of the fabrication of the telescope and its parts. Most of the photos also include the people who actually did the work.

Here is one photo from the collection:

It is from the "last bolt" ceremony held at Westinghouse on April 30, 1937. The bolt was applied to the tube of the 200-inch telescope. Attending the ceremonies were the elder and younger Froebels, Caltech president Robert Milliken and Albert Einstein.

Some of these photos will be presented in my talk on Saturday night and many will eventually find there way here as well.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, my uncle ED BARTOW worked at Weastinghouse his whole life and i was wondering if he worked on the HALE TELESCOPE. I have live in essington/lester my entire life and westinghouse was very much a part of my life. I just saw a shown on TV about the HALE telescope and was pleased to find out WESTINGTHOUSE played a major part in it's construction.

nick bartow

ps
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON just visited essington during the primaries and that was exiciting but i believe EINSTINE'S visit must have been something to witness at the WEASTINGHOUSE plant.

Palomar Observatory said...

Ed,

That's pretty exciting about your uncle. I have a lot of photos from Westinghouse taken as the telescope was under construction. Maybe he is in some of them.