t22" binocular 22" enclosure Why binoculars Credits Binocular FAQs ATM links Gluing mirrors 12½" binocular RFT system Home

About the author

Career

IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine, announced in 1953 My brief stint of telescope making in high school was suspended by college, marriage, army service, family and career. I got interested in computers after learning to program the IBM 650 drum computer while in the service. I joined IBM, worked 28 years as a systems engineer and software development manager, retired early and then consulted for systems integrators.

After a deplorable lapse of 40 years, I resumed my amateur astronomy and telescope making activities in the late '80s.

Early telescope projects

I launched my career as an ATM in 1946 by building a 4½" reflector. I bought a mirror kit from Edmund Salvage Company. The mount was made from pipe fittings with Babbitt bearings.My original 6" RFT, in a mount inspired by my mentor, Dr. H. Page Bailey of Riverside, California. Finished in 1949. The optics survived time and now exist in the RFT system.I made this 20" Newtonian in 1996. It won an award at RTMC that year. This was the first telescope I made to use RTV glued mirrors. It snowed during the telescope judging that year.This 14-1/2" Newtonian was an experiment in tube and mount design.I've described in some detail my more interesting and recent telescopes. Here are my earlier efforts. These telescopes were built in 1946, 1949, 1996 and 2004.

 

Telescope projects described in detail in this Web site are the 6" RFT, 12½" binocular and 22" binocular.

Retirement

Jeanne and Bruce Sayre behind the 22" binocular.My wife and I are now retired grandparents and live in Applegate, a small town 50 miles away from Sacramento in Northern California's Mother lode. We enjoy traveling to star parties up and down the west coast, Texas and Australia. When not involved in new telescope projects, I try to follow the computing evolution. 

We are members of the Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society1 and the IDA2. Even in the foothills 50 miles from Sacramento, we still have a large light dome.

A poet sums it up

Telescope, a poem by Louise Glück,
2004 U. S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner3:

There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you've been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You've been stopped being here in the world
You're in a different place
a place where human life has no meaning.

You're not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.

Then you're in the world again.
At night, on a cold hill,
taking the telescope apart.

You realize afterward
not that the image is false
but the relation is false.

You see again how far away
each thing is from every other thing.

Published in New Yorker, January 17, 2005, page 52

^ Top   |   < To home page

t

Internet links

  1. Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society (SVAS)
  2. International Dark-Skies Association (IDA)
  3. Poets.org about Louise Glück