Bernard Lovell (1913–2012)

This is the story of the Jordel Bank radio telescope, from initial concept, through land aquisition, construction, financial efforts, and finally operation and the relationship with the press.

The saga is more involved than one not familiar with the project would assume so it makes for pretty good reading.

This was the first large steerable radio telescope in the world and so it made significant discoveries for many years. Eventually, long after this book was written, the telescope collapsed during a high wind. But it was rebuilt from scratch and still functions today.… (more)

"The radio telescope at Jodrell Bank which is now such a familiar feature of the Cheshire plain was born at the same time as the first Russian Sputnik. In that remarkable autumn of 1957an avalanche of people and telephone calls descended upon us and there often seemed little distinction between day and night, or between the site of the telescope and our own home three miles away. The life which we knew before October 1957 has never quite returned. In the first few years about a quarter of a million people wrote to ask if it was possible to see the telescope and hear about its work. Perhaps a quarter of these inquiries have come to us privately as a family. At that time, in the absence of any official organisation to deal with visitors, we did our best to meet these private approaches.
During the course of this unofficial activity we have found that in trying to understand the work of the telescope our visitors have many difficulties in common. In this book we have tried to explain the work with which the telescope is associated in the way we have often used with these visitors. The degrees of understanding vary widely. The rather elementary, fundamental differences, between optical and radio telescopes often have to be explained to people who appreciate, even if they do not fully understand, the far more difficult problems of cosmology. So it is with this book. It is not a textbook, and it is certainly not a book for specialists. We hope it will have an appeal to all ages like the giant which we see from our own garden."… (more)

A.C.B. Lovell, an English pioneer in the use of RADIO TELESCOPES, surveys the theories, techniques and instruments of astronomy.
In 1825 John Quincey Adams addressed Congress: "It is with no feeling of pride as an American, that the remark may be made that on the comparatively small territorial surface of Europe there are existing upward of one hundred and thirty of these lighthouses of the skies [telescopes], while throughout the whole American hemisphere there is not one." Wholesome use of 'competition'. So where have the Europeans been lately?
Lovell does not write at all about the relationship between 'individual' and the universe. Apparently he is noting the possibility that individuals can become astronomers. Apparently his books have helped.… (more)