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Home Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection Palomar telescopes 200-inch lens waiting to be ground at the Caltech Optics Lab

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Palomar telescopes 200-inch lens waiting to be ground at the Caltech Optics Lab

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Order Number	00097917
Title	Palomar telescopes 200-inch lens waiting to be ground at the Caltech Optics Lab
Photographer	Schultheis, Herman.
Collection ID	Herman J Schultheis Collection Los Angeles Photographers Collection
Location/Accession	N-007-408 8x10
Date	Circa 1937
Physical Description	1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm.
Notes	Title supplied by cataloger.; Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film's DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937.
Historical Data	George Ellery Hale determined that re refracting telescopes had reached their limit at 40-inches and in 1917 he successfully completed the 100-inch reflecting telescope at Mount Wilson, the largest in the world at the time. After this accomplishment, Hale got funding for a 200-inch telescope to be built at Mount Palomar. Unfortunately he had problems with the company he had used to make a 100-inch glass lens. GE's attempt at a silicon lens failed. Hale next tried Corning who had to make special kilns to accommodate the large lenses, and wanted to make 60-inch and 120-inch trial lenses before attempting the 200-inch lens. Although the smaller lenses didn't have flaws, they had to cast the 200-inch twice before they were successful. Corning sent all of the lens blanks to the Caltech Optics lab in 1936 to be ground. Polishing the 200-inch lens took eleven years and Hale who died in 1938, never saw the completion of the project.
Description	This image of the Caltech optics lab captures all three mirror lenses sent by Corning in preparation for the Palomar telescope. From left to right, the 120-inch blank is seen on a platform in the extreme bottom left corner. A grinder with checkered pattern of stones is seen standing vertically on the left. Next the 60-inch blank has been ground and is standing vertically in a special wooden harness to the right of the grinding stone. Finally on the right in the back the massive 200-inch lens blank sits on a special platform. The scale is hard to understand but the two ladders, elevator platform in front of it and second floor doorway on the back wall all give an indication of the size. The rails along the walls near the ceiling are tracks for a hanging crane to move the massive mirrors.; See image #00036241 for a long shot of this laboratory.
Subject	California Institute of Technology.--Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. Universities and colleges--California--Pasadena. Reflecting telescopes. Optical laboratories--California--Pasadena. Lenses--Design and construction. Grinding and polishing. Grinding machines. Pasadena (Calif.). Schultheis Collection photographs.
Format	Photographic prints
Credits	Made accessible through a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.
Reproduction Information	Images available for reproduction and use. Please see the Ordering & Use page at http://tessa.lapl.org/OrderingUse.html for additional information.
Sub-Collection Name	Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection