April 1, 2002
Dear Friends,
The state of the art techniques we now apply to the creation of our ever-larger optics owe much to the steadfast work of countless individuals. One of these is Dr. Auguste Sharpié. We now take his Sharpié Test so for granted that we have all but forgotten its early history and the man behind it. In fact, many of us do not even know that the name on the now ubiquitous Sharpié Marker is the name of its inventor! Worse than that, we even misspell and mispronounce his name! It's not "SHAR-p" but "shar-p-AY."
Here I present for the first time some new materials that will help us remember the remarkable Dr. Auguste Sharpié.
Dr. Wilhelm Tondrewski, Professor Demeritus, Üpsalalala University
How many times have we heard the story? Young Auguste Sharpié, on visiting George W. Ritchey's workshop, is given some crayons and paper to entertain himself. Precocious Auguste quickly finds a far more interesting canvas - the 60" Mt.Wilson mirror blank! He scribbles the now famous bull's-eye pattern. George Ritchey immediately recognizes the significance of young Auguste's genius, and the rest is history.
Until recently, Sharpié biographers had dismissed such accounts as fanciful. But in late 1999 that attitude was forever changed by the contents of a long-forgotten time capsule unearthed near Springfield, Vermont. Among the capsule's riches is the photograph shown below. A grinning seven year old Auguste Sharpié sits triumphantly atop the 60" testing apparatus. The bull's-eye pattern is clearly visible just behind him! This is certainly the "Eureka" moment for the Sharpié Test. This image also supports the widely held opinion that G.W. Ritchey exerted considerable influence over the young Auguste.
Here's a trip down memory lane for you older ATM's. Remember those messy, homebrew Sharpié Optical Testing Markers? The smell of Kerosene, India Ink, and Old Socks? The passing out? The unexpected explosions? Also found in the Springfield time capsule is the page below, torn from an unknown publication. This illustration provides yet more support for the existence of Missing Chapters from the "Amateur Telescope Making" series, although further scholarship is needed.
By the 1940's Auguste Sharpié's place in the world of big-telescope optics was well established. In this newly discovered photograph, one of the few showing Auguste as an adult, we see him applying his signature Optical Testing Marks to the 200" Palomar mirror blank. Auguste is using his newly developed "Shapié on a Stick" technique which has become so essential for the handling of large optics.
THE SHARPIÉ TEST IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
The Sharpié Test remains as important today as it was in the last century. Here, two unidentified but handsome young opticians apply Sharpié Optical Testing Marks to the mirror destined for the Auguste Sharpié 6.5 Meter Telescope. Note the deft but somewhat wobbly use of the stick technique first developed by Auguste himself.
THE OVERWHELMINGLY LARGE SHARPIÉ
The European Southern Observatory is now in the early planning stages for the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, or OWL for short. Its opticians were quick to realize that the proposed 100 meter mirror would require extraordinary new fabrication tools. Enter the Overwhelmingly Large Sharpié, seen publicly for the first time in the photo below.
The arm, when fully extended to 140 meters, can easily place the 165,000 kilogram Sharpié Marker's tip at a height of 100 meters. In normal operation the truck will drive in GPS-guided circles around the horizontal mirror, while extending its arm to the required radii.