Page:Williamherschel00simegoog.djvu/129

Rh own making, which was to have lasted me all my lifetime."

The ingenuity of the appliances for ensuring stability and lightening labour in consulting the telescope was a monument to the mechanical genius of Herschel, in keeping with the greatness of the mirror. These appliances are now things of the past, not to be repeated by any future adventurer in the fields of research, but none the less worthy of respectful regard even in this age of engineers. They were not successful in making a cumbrous machine so light and easy to handle as science required, but that is only saying that the necessity for this preceded the discovery of the means of doing it, and that the first attempts were inferior to those made later. The iron tube, at the bottom of which lay the colossal eye that looked heavenwards, was 39 feet 4 inches in length and 4 feet 10 inches in diameter. It was an unwieldy and far from necessary addition to the structure, enough to cause error in observations by its ton-weight and instability. He had also to make arrangements for conveying observers and visitors from the ground to the gallery, 30 feet high or more, to whom ladders would have been difficult or dangerous. A chair-lift was devised, but was never erected. So easy did he find the ladders, and such was his agility at sixty and seventy years of age, that he preferred to reach or leave his post of observation by running up or down them. Among other requirements was a means of communicating readily and at once from his lofty perch both with the recorder of observations, whose