Re: ATMJ help

[Anthony Stillman <atmer@flash.net>]

>Randall Wheeler's S&T article...telescope making is dying off.


I've read and been told that the numbers, the level of activity, the rate
of innovation in ATMing was, in the nineteen twenties and thirties,
something to behold.  I've read how in the forties, the tremendious demands
for optics, were met, in part, by members of the ATM community.  I've seen
how some of the amateur percision made instruments from the fifties and
sixties exceeded commertial equiptment quality and were as much works of
art as tools for the heavens. I witnessed the seventies and eighties, when
amateur scopes of unheard of aperature, cobbled together from cardboard and
prayer, brought excitement and phenomenal growth.  I think, in fact, there
was a slump in active ATMing after that, but not a drop in ATMs.

Quantitativly, I know that the size of this list is growing.  I've seen and
smelled the flux of glass and tile-tool through Chabot, slowly but steadily
increase.  I see no shortage of new recruits and no lack of innovation.
And I know more active ATMs now than I have every known.

When observing a phenomenon its important to take your perspective into
account, or risk coloring your view falsely.  Hence, I suspect that some of
the growth I've seen is observationally biased.  S&T's view, thouogh sad,
is quite understandable.

Anthony