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Originally Posted by Suzy
Does anyone else have any stories or meetings with John Dobson to share? Would love to hear them!
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I did a 3 hour interview with John in 1988 on behalf of Sky and Space magazine. It was in Sydney over lunch, at the restaurant of the motel at which he was staying. I think an astronomy club was sponsoring him to talk.
No one at Sky and Space had much knowledge about him but i had read all the S and T articles and had a good article on him in a copy of the Kalmbach Publishing Dobsonian book.
Sky and Space were going to transcribe the interview but 6 months later they told me the story would no longer be considered current . I pursued the tape but was eventually told it had been lost .
John was 73 at the time and had his 10 year old son with him.
I remember how humble he was. He could have ordered anything on the menu but chose a $4 entrée soup and asked the waiter for a glass of `intergalactic oxygen ' ( water ) - the waiter did not know what to think !
One thing that stood out in my mind was that he was not much interested in talking about telescopes nor seemed to have a lot of interest in them . they were just a means to an end for what he was really interested in - people seeing the Universe in which they lived. I did however coax him into some pretty interesting stuff on mirror making .
The story he told of how he had sired his son so late in life stuck in my mind.
He lived on the outskirts of San Francisco in accommodation owned by the University at which he taught telescope making classes. A visiting student had been sleeping on the couch in the room he ground mirrors in . A rattlesnake had made its way in , and John tossed it into the barrel on which he ground mirrors. The young lady could not cope with sleeping in the same room as a rattlesnake , and jumped into bed with John for safety. And 9 months later his son was born... This is how he told it to me- I'll probably never know if he was having a lend of me or not
