Alvan clark biography of george michael

William Sheehan

On September 5, 1877, Mars came to a perihelic opposition in the constellation Aquarius, approaching to within 35 million miles (56 million km) of the Earth. Since the last perihelic opposition in 1860, the 26-inch (66-cm) refractor of the U.S. Naval Observatory, located at Foggy Bottom on the banks of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., had gone into operation. In 1877, Asaph Hall was in charge of it and planned to use it to search for Martian satellites (fig. 4).

Hall was the son of a failed clock maker. He and his wife, Angelina, were working as schoolteachers in Shalersville, Ohio, in the 1850s when Hall decided that he wanted to become an astronomer. Though he had not received much formal training (he had stayed only a year at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor before leaving because of a lack of funds), he applied to become an assistant at the Harvard College Observatory. William Cranch Bond, the observatory's director, was, like Hall, the son

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The construction of the 40-inch refracting telescope at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, was directed by George Hale, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, and funded by Charles Yerkes, a Chicago businessman. The telescope is made of 40-inch glass lenses manufactured by the Alvan Clark and Sons Company in Massachusetts. The lenses had to be free of defects and impurities in order to function correctly. So, Clark had to use clay rods to continuously stir the glass in a furnace to prevent bubbles and produce perfect lenses. A 62-foot long steel tube supports the lenses at the front and the eyepiece at the back. The entire telescope is mounted on an elevating floor in a 90-foot diameter dome in Yerkes Observatory.

Two months before the opening of the observatory, the movable floor collapsed because of faulty cable fastenings. Luckily, construction workers were able to rebuild the floor before opening day for a price of $3,000. All toget

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Alvin Clark

Dr. Alvin E. Clark age 92 of Arkadelphia died Wednesday, April 21, 2010 in Arkadelphia. Dr. Clark was a retired Colonel and Chaplain in the United States Army and a Mason. Dr. Clark pastored several local churches in the Arkadelphia area after his retirement. He was preceded in death by his wife Lorine G. Clark.

Survivors include fem children, Don Clark of Arkadelphia, Judy Beth Hutcherson of Arkadelphia, Wallis Clark of Mena, AR, John Allen Clark of Irving, TX and James David Clark of Bismarck, nine grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.

Funeral services will be 2 PM Sunday in the Ruggles-Wilcox Funeral Chapel with Brother Don Clark officiating. begravning with full military honors and Masonic Rites will be in Rest Haven Memorial Gardens. Visitation will be 6-8 PM Saturday at the funeral home.

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