The making and the mounting of the Yerkes telescope have been assigned to Warner & Swasey, of Cleveland, Ohio, who are recognized as the best telescope builders in America.  The great observatory is approaching completion.  The instrument itself has been finished, examined, accepted by a committee of experts, and declared to fulfill all of the conditions of the agreement between the founder and the makers.  Thus, just north of the boundary line between Illinois and Wisconsin, the greatest telescope of the world has been lifted to its dome and pointed to the heavens.

The formal opening of the observatory is promised for the summer months of 1896.  The human mind by this agency has made another stride into the depths of infinite space.  Another universe is presently to be penetrated and revealed.  A hollow sphere of space outside of the sphere already known is to be added to the already unthinkable universe which we inhabit.  Every part of the immense observatory and of the telescope is of American production, with the single important exception of the cast glass disc from which the two principal lenses, the one double convex and the other plano-concave, are produced.  These were cast by Mantois, of Paris, whose superiority to the American manufacturers of optical glass is recognized.

It is estimated that the Yerkes telescope will gather three times as much light as the twenty-three-inch instrument of the Princeton Observatory.  It surpasses in the same respect the twenty-six-inch telescope at the National Observatory in the ratio of two and three-eighths to one.  It is in the same particular one and four-fifth times as powerful as the instrument of the Royal Russian Observatory at Pulkova; and it surpasses the great Lick instrument by twenty-three per cent.

What the practical results of the study of the skies through this monster instrument will be none may predict.  Theoretically it is capable of bringing the moon to an apparent distance of sixty miles.  Under favorable circumstances the observer will be able to note the characteristics of the lunar landscape with more distinctness than a good natural eye can discern the outlines and character of the summit of Pike’s Peak from Denver.  The instrument has sufficient power to reveal on the lunar disc any object five hundred feet square.  Such a thing as a village or even a great single building would be plainly discernible.

Professor C.A.  Young has recently pointed out the fact that the Yerkes telescope, if it meets expectation, will show on the moon’s surface with much distinctness any such object as the Capitol at Washington.  It is complained that in America wealth is selfish and self-centred; that the millionaire cares only for himself and the increase of his already exorbitant estate.  The ambition of such men as Lick of San Jose and Yerkes of Chicago, seems to ameliorate the severe judgment of mankind respecting the holders of the wealth of the world, and even to transform them from their popular character of enemies and misers into philanthropists and benefactors.