Chicago to have the credit of the largest telescope, so we must regard it as belonging to Chicago. The Observatory is on the shores of a lake which is now called Lake Geneva, but which had a more beautiful Indian name, Kish-wau-ke-toc, meaning Big Foot, from its shape. The lake is a kind of summer resort for the rich people of Chicago, and when the train comes in, you can see crowds of steam yachts waiting to carry them to their various houses round the shores of the lake, just as we might see a number of motor-cars at a big terminus in England.
The great Yerkes telescope is 60 feet long and has all sorts of beautiful and powerful mechanism to work it. The floor on which the observer stands can be raised or lowered, so as to give him a comfortable position for any object he wants to look at; and this is worked electrically; so that pulling a lever is sufficient to start the mechanism. Pulling another lever starts a motor which turns the great dome round: and generally, by pulling one lever or another all the things can be done which in smaller observatories are done by hand. To get enough electric power for all these things there is a "power-house" placed at some little distance from the telescope. One curious visitor enquired if they put it at that distance because they were afraid it might explode and damage the 100,000 dollar telescope; but the astronomer said no, that was not the reason; they did not fear an explosion, as might be seen from the fact that the power-house was close to his own dwelling-house in which there was a million-dollar baby!
