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The Perfect Machine: The Building the Palomar Telescope
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The Perfect Machine: The Building the Palomar Telescope Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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A Rare and Fabulous Book About a Mind-Boggling Telescope
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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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