John Dobson

John Dobson- I like to think of John Dobson as the Henry Ford of astronomy<G> Henry Ford had a vision of an affordable car for the average working man and the farmers on the out skirts of towns. I can't think of a better description of John Dobson, except we are talking telescopes instead of cars. Much of John Dobson's life was centered around getting a telescope in front of as many people as he could, any place, any time he could! When you think of John Dobson the first thing that comes to mind is a less expensive telescope that can do darn near anything that the high dollar telescopes can.

Born in Peking (Beijing), China, John Dobsons dad was a teacher of Zoology an Peking University, founded by his grand father, whilst his mother was more into the arts, she was a musician.

In the early twenties John Dobson along with his brothers Harrison, Ernest and Lowry were moved to San Francisco where Mr. Dobson taught high school at Lowell High until retiring in the fifties.

John Dobson attended UC Berkeley and graduated in 1943 with a degree in chemistry. He worked in the defense world for about a year then he became a Ramakrishna Monk. As a monk at the Vedanta Monastery John Dobson used his chemestry education and interest in religion to compare and find a relationship between science and religion.

With a degree in chemistry and a natural curiosity about space and beyond. it would only be natural that he would want to see more of the stars. Well being a monk didn't lend itself to having much money to buy one so he made his first telescope from an eyepiece of binoculars and a 2 inch lens he picked up at a thrift store. It was okay and it was a start. But when a monk talked to John Dobson about possibly grinding his own mirror for a reflector telescope, John picked up an old 12 inch porthole from a boat yard and ground it into a telescope mirror. Once he saw the moon in his mirror he was hooked! John Dobson was so impressed he wanted to show everyone this sight. That was the beginning of John Dobson the side walk astronomer!

Unfortunately the monastery didn't necessarily agree with Johns infatuation with science and space, so he had to keep his affair with the telescope a secret.
Around 1958 John got transferred from San Francisco to Sacramento. He kept up his astronomy and scope building on the side and built a 5" reflector with a piece of glass he cut from the bottom of an old glass milk bottle. One friend of John Dobson's really like the scope and started bringing Dobson some more portholes and other telescope making parts that he would secretly bring to John to use.

Being a trained chemist John was pretty good at sifting sand for grinding his mirrors and concocting rouge from supplies he had around the garden in the monastery. As a monk he didn't have any money to work with so he made almost every thing he had in order to make the telescope. John would make telescopes from anything he could get his hands on. Old hose reels discarded lumber, old doors basically any thing that was around and wouldn't be missed..he still had to make his scopes in secret. He even had to grind his mirrors under water to deaden the sound of the sand scraping the glass.

Over the years John Dobson kept making bigger telescopes wanting to see more and more. He liked looking at the moon, It was quick, easy and he would say that it looked like you were coming in for a landing when you were looking through your telescope.

Naturally John couldn't afford an nice German Equatorial Mount, or any other pre-maid mount for that matter..so he used the same principal used for years with the cannon. A simple Alt Az mount. That is to say the Altitude adjusted by moving the telescope up and down and the Azimuth, the side to side adjustment. If you look at the newtonian reflector style of telescope that he would build for the telescope it lent itself great for an old cannon style carrier.

John would put wheels he found on his scopes to make it easier to drag it around with him to show people on the streets. he became so popular that people would ask him for help in building a telescope. This exited John to no end! John would engage their enthusiasm and teach anybody interested, how to build a telescope for next to nothing.

Being the type guy that John is he would stay out way passed the curfew of the monastery and help build telescopes and have star parties at night. This naturally conflicted with his order and they started to question his absentee hours saying that John must have been up to something other than just telescopes and star parties. So after being in the order for 23 years, the monks decided he should leave find his way down a different path. So John Dobson did take another path, one of providing a service to the public and astronomy.

Free to dive into his love of astronomy full force John hitched to back to San Fran where he hooked up with some old friends. He picked up a few of his scopes he left in town and started to set the telescopes up on the corners of Jackson and Broderikc streets there in the city and showed anyone that would look, the stars and the heavens through his telescopes, there on the sidewalks of San Francisco. Hence the genesis of the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomer.

John would tell people what they were looking at through the scopes and give them a tour of the night sky for free. Literally tens of hundreds of people looked through those telescopes set up there by a penniless monk and John did what he set out to do....He showed the world what he saw through his telescopes and the wonderment of the universe. John managed to do this for years with the help of friends who would feed and cloth him and help him get parts for telescopes.
He started teaching classes on building telescopes at a local community complex and the California Academy of Sciences. This afforded him a little money to help him get along and to improve and build better telescopes. John still concentrated on making as large a scope as he could for the least amount of money and still teaches scope making classes where he started so long ago.

Around 1968 a few of his students joined John Dobson in providing telescopes for public viewing on the streets of San Francisco. This group started the official public service org. of the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers. Over time the SFSA grew with leaps and bounds and in just a few years had a portable 24" telescope they could take anywhere there were dark skies and people interested in seeing the night sky.

These days the SFSA has been shortened to 'The Sidewalk Astronomers' and includes chapters from all over the place and gets bigger everyday. Literally millions of neophytes have looked through Sidewalk Astronomers telescopes worldwide.
As Henry Ford brought the automobile to the masses, John Dobson has brought the simple telescope to the world. He enabled us to use, view through, build and own very large diameter telescopes at a very affordable price by utilizing a simple but affective design for a scope base (the Dobsonian Telescope Base) and showing the world how simple and enjoyable it can be to build your own telescope mirror and all.

There have been millions of people affected by one man and his love of the universe or maybe it is his love of showing people his view of the heavens. Or it could be that John just likes being part of all of it! You me and the universe.

What ever it may be John Dobson is a unique individual, to say the least! I have had the pleasure of star gazing with John and listening to him converse with the universe. He is interesting and funny and really industrious. I heard a story that he ground an 8" mirror in one day at Riverside Telescope Makers Conference and (he was in his mid 70's) used it in a scope that night to view the moon with no aluminizing. You know that is quite a feat if you have ever tried to grind a mirror.
John gave a talk a few months back at RTMC 2008 and it is my understanding that he is still speaking and teaching on a fairly steady basis. He probably will for ever<G>
John Dobson is still a force to be reckoned with at 93....

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