Small Scopes

The Story of John Dobson

John Dobson, famous the Dobsonian telescope style, had an enormous impact on amateur telescopes. His story is worth a read (with a photo of a classic Dobsonian scope from another site):

Dobson isn't a household name, nor is he one of those people you could describe "in a nutshell." He has been compared to Isaac Newton. Brett Campbell, in an article for the Wall Street Journal, called him "one of history's great popularizers of science."

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In 1956, Dobson built his first telescope, a two-inch 'scope made from scavanged parts. With it he could see the rings of Saturn, so he made another bigger one. Peering through it at the moon, he thought everyone should have the chance to see what he was seeing. Because Dobson was a monk and had no money, he had to make his telescopes with scraps and things that were given to him - old portholes and scrap wood, for example. He learned to grind his own lenses and make his own mirrors. His heavenly obsession, however, got him in trouble with his monastery, and eventually, in 1967, he was asked to leave.

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All the great big telescopes now on the planet are called Dobsonians," he said, although that's because the mount that is used on virtually every telescope today is a version of the mount that he invented. In 1978, Dobson was invited to speak at the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He now teaches a "Conceptual Cosmology" class each year there and has written several books on the subject. He has matched his peerings into deep space with deep thoughts about the nature of the universe, some of which turn astrophysics on its head. According to him, the question we should be asking is "Why do we have a universe at all?"

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posted by Tako John @ 10:02 AM