Hope Rides a Truck

Cal Tech was taking no chances with the world's most precious piece of glass. As it dared the perils of Southern California highways last week, the 200-inch mirror for the giant Mt. Palomar telescope, 160 miles away, was insured with Lloyd's for $600,000 and was escorted by 15 cops.

Starting time (3:30 a.m. from Pasadena) was concealed from the public as if the mirror's last move were a military offensive. The specially strengthened trailer, weighing 60 tons with the mirror and its wooden case, moved at five to ten miles an hour. At first the roadsides were empty, but as the news traveled, crowds began to gather. At Irvine, near Santa Ana, a star-minded school principal lined up his pupils to watch the parade pass.

Far ahead, road crews strengthened bridges and culverts. The trailer crept over them carefully, while a vibration meter--connected with a microphone inside the case--reported each tremor of the mirror. But the driver needed no admonition. Like everyone else in the cavalcade, he knew that man's latest bright hope of understanding the universe was riding behind his truck.

The mirror spent the night in the little ranch town of Escondido, which was all agog at the honor. At 5 a.m. it began the last lap, up the twisting road to mile-high Mt. Palomar. The pace slowed to a crawl as two trucks pushed the trailer.

Near Mt. Palomar's forested upper slopes thick fog drifted over the road and hail hissed out of the clouds. The three trucks groped through it fearfully, for a skid might have rolled both trucks and mirror down the steep mountainside. Then, as the mirror neared the observatory dome--shining like frosted silver and big as a railroad roundhouse--a shaft of brilliant sunlight broke through the clouds. The nearest star, the sun, was friendly.

The astronomers, engineers and technicians thanked all the stars as they watched the mirror backed into the observatory. The case was opened. A crane lifted the precious freight over the threshold of the chamber under the dome, where the giant telescope, crouched on its massive supports, was waiting.

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