The newspaper article below, about a 19th-century telescope, is from the Shelbyville (Kentucky, USA) Sentinel-News, 2016. I rediscovered it while cleaning out some files in my house. I think it will be of interest to readers of Sacred Space Astronomy.
Click here to download the PDF.
It is really only the brasswork and mechanicals of the Shelbyville telescope that are still in use in Missouri. The article states that many of the original wooden pieces of the telescope had been replaced. It does not mention the fact that the objective lens of the telescope had also been replaced. The 19th-century original still existed, but had become cloudy and therefore unusable.
Note the prominence of the observatory dome in the 19th-century illustration of Shelby College in the article. Apparently, at the time of the 1869 solar eclipse in Shelbyville that is mentioned in the article, the Shelbyville telescope was a significant astronomical instrument for the country. The photo below (from the Shelby County Historical Society) was taken in Shelbyville. Perhaps the large refractor is the Shelbyville College scope. Note the presence of African Americans (at right in the photo) — not something you see in lots of 19th-century photos of astronomers in action.
Shelbyville was something of an education center in the 19th century. It was home of the Science Hill Female Academy, as well as home of the Shelby College.
The article states that Mr. Boessen, of Missouri, and I planned to do more research on this telescope. Those plans never came to fruition. However, details about the telescope and its restoration can be found in the following articles:
Amateur Astronomers Restore Antique Telescope (Columbia Daily Tribune)
Astronomy Club Restores Antique Telescope (Columbia Missourian)
Interested readers can also look up the piece titled “It’s a Duesy” that Mr. Boessen (mentioned in the Sentinel-News article) published in Sky & Telescope (March 2011, Vol. 121 Issue 3, p36-39), below.
