Quabita goes on giving Turbo history facts about the 200 inch telescope.
“In June 1928, the International Education Board voted to give money to Caltech for the purpose of building this instrument and all other facilities necessary for its construction and operation.
And so it began what was to become one of man’s greatest scientific enterprises.
But it was long before 1928 that the idea of the telescope was born in the minds of George E. Hale and his associates. No one would have predicted in June of 1928 that the completion of this great instrument would not be accomplished for 20 years.
In 1935, work began at Palomar Mountain, the location was considered almost 50 years ago.
November 18, 1947, saw the next high point in the mirror’s career. The huge disk in its cell had been lifted off the grinding machine and lowered onto a trailer. At 3:30 in the morning State Highway Patrol officers gave the signal, and the tractor and trailer, convoyed by a spare tractor unit, another truck for spare parts, and innumerable reporters and cameramen, started the 160-mile trip to the Palomar Observatory. Road blocks were set up on some sections of the route, bridges received additional shoring, and the trailer had on one occasion 16 extra wheels mounted in order to distribute its 35-ton weight more evenly over suspect bridge.
The glass, into which eleven years of work had gone, became backing for the mirror”.
But suddenly Turbo realized that Hale, his desk and his untidy papers had all vanished, and he found himself looking at something he’d seen before, but only on a picture postcard.
And then he raised his nose. Food!
One turned to look at him. “The jokes are terrible here”, one said at last to the others.
Turbo was intrigued. At last he asked the professor, “What if your eye was, itself, powerful enough to be able to see the stars?” Then he thought to himself, the eye is not powerful enough to see distant stars and never will be; that’s why you need telescopes.