"The spread of amateur telescope making is a constant source of wonder to me," Mr. Porter writes. "Only last week I spent a delightful afternoon with a prominent movie star in Hollywood, who had made his six-inch telescope and is planning a ten. But the biggest kick came yesterday. Marshall saw a boy over a fence working on something that had the earmarks of a reflector. He stopped his car and came over to the fence.

"'What you got there, boy?'

"'Telescope."

"'May I have a look?'

"'Sure, but she doesn't work very good. I can see all right but there are a whole lot of images.'

"Marshall looked down the tube.

"'Did you make the mirror?'

"'Oh no, it's a shaving mirror I bought at the five-and-ten for 25 cents.'

"'And the diagonal?'

"'That's a piece of looking glass.'

"He had taken the eyepiece from a small spyglass, and the whole affair was in a pasteboard tube swung in a wooden fork that rose from the three legs of his mother's Christmas tree stand.

"Well, Marshall put him wise to the extra images and today we went up and photographed this young Richard Cale, aged 13, with his instrument. He had found a looking glass man who had silvered his mirror and ready-made diagonal, and in his hands was a copy of 'Amateur Telescope Making.'

A look through the eyepiece at some distant clapboards and I could well appreciate the enthusiasm that shone in the boy's eyes.

'Now,' he said, 'I'm going to make a real telescope.'

"'Fine,' I replied, 'and tomorrow after school, come down to Cal. Tech. and I'll show you how we are trying to make a real telescope' (meaning the 200-inch).

" 'Oh gee, will you? "'

So this lad whom Porter took in tow probably saw more about the 200-inch telescope than most of us have seen-which is mighty little more than nothing at all. "I never saw Porter more enthused," Marshall writes, "than when he inspected the lad's enterprise." The photograph was taken by Marshall, who is a sort of amateur professional photographer, or a professional amateur.

CALIFORNIA is still making plenty of telescopes. From the Telescope Class, Franklin High School, Los Angeles, comes the wide photograph reproduced below, and the following comment:

"Los Angeles Public Schools now have a class in telescope making. There are about 40 pupils in the class, which meets at the Franklin Evening High School twice a week. All of the pupils intend to make complete telescopes; although at the present writing most of them are still working on their mirrors, which range in size from four to twelve inches. 'Amateur Telescope Making' is being used as the textbook with great success. Rex W. Beach of Los Angeles is the instructor.

"The class was organized in February under the Federal Emergency Educational Program. A class of this kind constitutes a novel addition to the regular school curriculum and it is hoped that it can be made a permanent thing. A chemistry laboratory room was found to be ideal for making telescope mirrors. Telescope building is a large subject which can offer many worthwhile projects for other classes. For example, a good mounting can be made in either the woodshop class or in the metal shop class, the mirror can be silvered in the chemistry class, and the mathematical locations of celestial objects can be worked out in the mathematics or astronomy classes."

A METHOD for lining up the optical parts of a Newtonian telescope, suggested by J. V. McAdam of Hastings-on- Hudson, N. Y., runs as follows

"A, B and C are cardboard disks with 1/4" holes at center, covered with tinfoil having 1/8" holes at center.

"Remove prism and mirror. Line C up with A and B at about center of curvature of mirror, by sighting through A.

"Remove A and B and insert prism, mirror, and D.

"Adjust mirror to cast image on C, concentric with pinhole. This brings axis of mirror absolutely to axis of tube.

"Adjust prism to bring spot in center of mirror, cross hairs in D and image of reflected from face of prism exactly coincident. This brings faces of prism square to mirror axis and ocular axis and insures rays converging on ocular being symmetrical about ocular axis.

All parts should be securely clamped into position to prevent movement during adjustment."

EVERY summer an informal convention of amateur telescope makers is held at the fountainhead of the telescope making hobby, Stellafane, near Springfield, Vermont, and A. D. Baker, Secretary of the Telescope Makers of Springfield, states that this year's meeting will be held on Saturday, July 21. Any reader not already familiar with these annual hob-nob gatherings is advised to throw his telescope into his car, leave his Sunday clothes at home, and come-or to come empty-handed. Don't await an engraved invitation-you won't receive one. An interest in telescopes and in other astronomically minded amateurs will be quite enough. Generally about 200 hobbyists attend these meetings.

BOSTON has organized a club called the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston. Wagn H. Hargbol of 600 Beech St., Roslindale, Massachusetts, is the president, and Miss Thelma Johnson, 11 Brogan Road, Medford, Massachusetts (who has made a telescope) is the secretary. About 30 attended the first meeting.

Amateurs who would like to discuss clubbing together to have a batch of 16 or 20-inch mirror disks poured, and thus get a lower price if possible, are requested to write, not to us, but to Richard Perkin, 122 Chester Ave., Garden City, New York. If a dozen or so decide on uniform orders it is thought that the price per disk will be greatly reduced. Various workers who have tried to make laminated disks, in order in that way to obtain disks larger than the available stock sizes, have recently reported bad results. The disks seem for a time to hold up, and then slump. Alan R. Kirkham of Tacoma now reports the same experience, and suggests putting a large question mark opposite his note on page 308 of "Amateur Telescope Making." Your scribe takes the blame for the insertion of this note, for it was he who inveigled Kirkham into writing it-partly against the latter's own judgment In England, however, Messrs. Hindle and Steavenson (see cut, "A.T.M.," page 453) are endeavoring to whip this problem.

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.