This year a number of amateurs' telescopes were brought to the convention, and all these were noted to be the center of admiring groups. After the usual Saturday evening dinner a few short speeches were made and on this occasion, for the first time since these meetings were instituted it rained-chiefly, it is asserted with conviction, down the neck of your scribe. As the rain held out longer than the speakers, the contingent of visitors from the club of amateurs in Pittsburgh jumped into the breach and saved the day-or rather the night-with their new invention for penetrating thick skies, exhibiting the Hercules Cluster through a cloud bank two miles thick-at least they said it was the Hercules Cluster, but some cynical spoil sport averred it was a Crookes spinthariscope substituted for the eyepiece. We pass the hint along for the benefit of those whose friends and neighbors will be shown the pretty stars, shine or rain. Mother is the necessity of invention-in Pittsburgh.

Plan to make this convention next year: Old clothes, shirt sleeves, old friends and informality. It's fun.

ABOUT one year behind mouth-to ear gossip which has spread out in wider and wider circles, at least among astronomers, now it can be told that the 200-inch telescope mirror will not be made of fused quartz. That material proved too costly. It was not the quartz itself which was costly, but the expense of fusing it. At present Pyrex is the favorite candidate and the Corning Glass Works is making serious efforts to elect it permanently to office by making a disk. Some time ago various chromium alloys were also given a serious try-out. They failed.

A PORTABLE telescope which can be thrown into a car and taken wherever the owner travels has been made by C. R. Wassell of 506 North Fourth Street, Steubenville, Ohio, who writes:

"The instrument is a 45-degree equatorial, which by finger adjustment of the plugs in the four supporting feet may be brought into quite accurate adjustment over a latitude variation of several degrees. These plugs also serve to take up any inequalities of the supporting surface, and the outfit is surprisingly rigid for its weight and nature. Being assembled of stock pipe fittings, with little machine work, the cost was very low.

"The tube itself 'telescopes' to about one half of its working length, and is so designed that the inner section is not marred during transit friction from the outer tube. The two parts are held together with extreme rigidity by means of six taper pins which pass through the heavy reinforcing bands carried by both inner and outer tubes. The declination axis is of course also attached to the heavy band on the outer tube.

"The pipe fittings may be firmly assembled by hand, without the use of a pipe wrench, and the whole set-up easily made in five minutes. To one who likes to carry an instrument in a car, and take advantage of the wonderful observing conditions often encountered during night driving in the country, the whole outfit has proved a wonderful source of pleasure, and all of my star-gazing acquaintances who have seen it have immediately started to build something along the same lines.

"The mounting includes a revolving head thus insuring that the observer's neck will be preserved for a horse-thief's fitting end. The finder, of an inch and a half aperture, carries a very old photographic lens as an objective. It is not perfect, or entirely free from color-but it works, and cost fifty cents."

AN interesting observatory, designed in part from the Scanlon specifications, has been constructed by George E. Pellam of The Sprague-Sells Corporation, Newark, New York, and his son John R. Pellam. The photographs reproduced nearly explain themselves. The dome was constructed in the attic of the Pellam residence and later grew right up through the roof, like a mushroom. The shutter is especially well constructed of separate sheets which slide up like a roll-top desk.

INDIANAPOLIS is looking lively. V. E. Maier, 1306 Parker Avenue, that city, writes that the Indianapolis Amateur Telescope Makers are in existence, have 25 members and are going strong, thank you. How odd that certain others of the larger cities have no clubs. Why hasn't Boston one, and Baltimore and St. Louis? Philadelphia expects to have one, as soon as the Fels Planetarium opens there next spring, for the blueprints of that structure show space allotted to amateur telescope makers. We also heard something about Seattle's intention to organize a club but apparently Tacoma, its sister city, took the edge off that aspiration.

READERS will recall that the immediate discoverer of Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh the telescope-making farmer boy, had made two telescopes from the instructions in

"Amateur Telescope Making." Recently we have run across two other amateurs who have gone professional as a direct result of the previous pursuit of the hobby of telescope making. On a recent visit to Harvard College Observatory we discovered William A. Calder, formerly of Wisconsin, who had previously planned to be a physicist and specialized in that science at the

University of Wisconsin, when the construction of several telescopes led him to espouse astrophysics. He is now doing graduate work on the Harvard College Observatory staff. Again, Wilbur Perry was one of the original members of the Telescope Makers of Springfield and early showed special genius for refined work. A year or so ago, Professor R. W. Wood of Johns Hopkins University inquired whether we knew of any young amateur telescope maker whom he could employ and train to help make diffraction gratings. Perry still has this job, and there is at least one honor connected with it: Wood gratings are famous in laboratories the world over and Perry helps make them.

S. B. Tinsley of the Tinsley Laboratories, Berkeley, California, writes, "Have you ever tried making the Foucault test on the poop-deck of a throbbing freighter on the high seas? This is what one of our amateur telescope-making friends who is a sailor has done." Who can match this for adverse working conditions?

The Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS) is a nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to helping people enrich their lives by following their passion to take part in scientific adventures of all kinds.