Imperfect as it is,
it fills the mind with awe and the imagination with delight.
----
Think of the great celestial eye, flint and crown glass lenses
more than four feet in diameter, weighing a ton, and suspended at
the end of a tube one hundred feet long! It will reach out
thousands of billions of miles into space, giving us, perhaps,
new secrets of the universe. Yet it is but a child's toy
compared to the instruments which must follow it.
And you who read this, if your mind is fresh and your imagination
not jaded, may be the man who shall add to the power of this
instrument as Galileo added to that given to the world by
Lippershey, the humble Dutchman.
We invite the young American of ambition to study this latest
proof of man's growing skill, and see whether he can imagine
anything to add to it. ----
"I have not seen it" say you. If you are the right man, you do
not need to SEE it. Galileo only HEARD of Lippershey's
discovery. He thought hard on the problems of refraction for one
night, and as a result produced a telescope capable of magnifying
threefold. He finally produced a telescope of thirty-two-fold
power.
This French telescope magnifies six thousand times, but it is
only a baby telescope, full of faults. It is rendered imperfect
by the wavy motion of the air, which affects our sight just as
the motion of the waves affects the sight of a fish.
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