Part 3. San Francisco, 1944 to 1958: the monastery on Webster Street and the first telescope

He had entered the monastery in May 1944. Its address was 2961 Webster Street, near the marina, and the temple’s was 2963. David Levy wrote that the day there ran on a strict schedule, beginning at 4:45 in the morning with worship, study and meditation. In Don Moser’s account Dobson became the pujari, the monk who conducts the worship and looks after the flowers, and what he wanted as a monk was to understand the whole universe and to reach the ultimate reality behind it.33.Levy 1995; SF directories; Moser 1989, pp. 102-110.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.record from the timeSF directories: Polk’s Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory (R. L. Polk), yearly volumes, 1929 to 1966.a later writerMoser 1989: Don Moser, “John Dobson, the celestial Pied Piper”, Smithsonian, April 1989, pp. 102-110.

One night, by his own account, he was the usher at a lecture in the temple, posted at the auditorium’s far end, when the bell at the office door rang twice. He was not going to leave somebody out there ringing, so he left his post and walked round to the office door, which was on Webster Street. A woman stood there with tears running down her face. He asked whether she wanted to hear the lecture and took her in by the entrance on Filbert Street. She was Marie Louise Burke, whom a later essay of his calls Gargi: the keeper, as he saw it, of what was known about Swami Vivekananda. Long afterward, on a bench at a monastery in Michigan, she told him that she owed all her life in Vedanta to him. He was astonished. He had always thought that he was “on her list of people to be avoided”.44.Memoir 2; Einstein’s Geometry (essay).his own accountMemoir 2: John Dobson, “Memoir 2”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountEinstein’s Geometry (essay): John Dobson, “Einstein’s Geometry”, undated essay written after 2004, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

In a monastery, he told a cosmology class in the 1990s, a man is shut in for life with people he would never have picked: “You’re stuck in with people whom you would have walked across the street to avoid.” Swami Ashokananda once lectured on that, and called enduring the faults of others one of the austerities of the life. Married people would say that they put up with as much, the Swami said, and his answer was no: a husband or a wife is chosen to suit, and the children are raised to suit. The life, Dobson went on, is designed to squash the ego, and the monk is in there to get it squashed. “And if the abbot scolds you, you don’t fight back. You just go to your bed and cry.” But the monk knows that the whole thing is for his benefit.55.Cosmology class 9, at 00:11:33, 00:11:41, 00:12:04, 00:12:43. Recorded: “You’re stuck in with people whom…” (Cosmology class 9, 00:11:33). Recorded: “And if the abbot scolds you…” (Cosmology class 9, 00:12:43).his own accountCosmology class 9: John Dobson, cosmology class 9, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).

In one of his anecdotes a brother, asked by the Swami how he was, said that he was fine. The Swami said, “I’ll tell you when you’re fine.”66.Anecdotes.his own accountAnecdotes: John Dobson, “Memories” (anecdotes), sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

The house had an oil furnace, and the Swami’s kitchen was on the third floor, one flight above the monks. One day up there, by Dobson’s account, the Swami asked him whether a powder that had been put in the furnace was there to keep soot from forming. Dobson said no, it was there to burn the soot out. The Swami asked whether he was sure, and he said that he was, and after this had gone round several times Dobson reasoned that nobody can be that sure of anything and said, “No, Swami.” The Swami stamped his foot until the building sounded like a drum, and called him a liar and worse.77.Memoir 1.his own accountMemoir 1: John Dobson, “Memoir 1”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

A day or two later Dobson mentioned an old roof between their floors, left there when an earlier swami, Trigunatita, added the third story as an afterthought. The Swami doubted it, so Dobson got a flashlight and showed him, through the crawl-space door on the stair. The Swami’s face broke into a smile, one of the most beautiful Dobson had ever seen, and he said that Dobson was right, as usual. By then the Swami had found out from the man who put the powder in what it was for.88.Memoir 1.his own accountMemoir 1: John Dobson, “Memoir 1”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

He had an assignment as well. Swami Ashokananda, by Dobson’s account, set two of the monks a task, Dobson and one other: to bring science and Vedanta together. Schrödinger’s What Is Life? was required reading in the monastery, and the Swami once said that “it’s not sufficient to realize; one must also understand.” Dobson thought at first that he had it backwards, and then that he would not have made such a mistake. What the Swami must have meant, he decided, was that a spiritual experience is not enough unless it is also understood against its philosophical background.99.Memoir 3; Stavig 2019, p. 7; Cosmology class 8, at 00:35:15; Faith 2004.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).a later writerStavig 2019: Gopal Stavig, “Ramakrishna-Vedanta in Southern California”, part VIII, “John Dobson” (2019).his own accountCosmology class 8: John Dobson, cosmology class 8, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountFaith 2004: John Dobson, “Faith”, signed Hollywood, 13 March 2004, sidewalkastronomers.us.

Two of the ideas he taught and wrote about in old age came to him there. One was that space and time had to be opposites, and he had made a note of it. “I wrote it down because I’ve seen it in my handwriting,” he told a class in the 1990s. The second, which he later dated to the 1950s, was that magnetism might be the Coriolis effect of electricity. The other monk was charmed, was sure that somebody must have used the idea already and promised to look it up, and reported afterward that he had found no sign of it.1010.Cosmology class 4, at 00:23:16, 00:23:25; Coriolis 2002. Recorded: “I wrote it down because I’ve…” (Cosmology class 4, 00:23:25).his own accountCosmology class 4: John Dobson, cosmology class 4, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountCoriolis 2002: John Dobson, “Coriolis”, signed 16 July 2002, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

After nearly 3 years of “discussion and disagreement”, as he told it, Dobson wrote a paper. The Swami would not read it, because, he said, he did not have enough scientific background. Then the other monk left a paper of his own on the stair post, and for months afterward the Swami scolded Dobson every time they met, each time for some idea that had never entered his head. Dobson did not work out until much later what had happened: the Swami had apparently read the other monk’s paper and taken it for Dobson’s, or for the work of both. Asked decades later how the job of reconciling science and religion had turned out in the monastery, he said that back then it had not gone too well.1111.Memoir 3; Regas 2014.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountRegas 2014: Dean Regas, “The Astronomer Who Showed Us the Sky”, HuffPost, 2014 (from his 2005 interview).

The job is what led him to telescopes. In the monastery, he said on television in 1991, “I became keenly tied up in these cosmological problems,” and that made him want to see how the universe looked. He had come in, by his later account, already sure that the universe was mostly hydrogen and that what drove it was gravitational collapse, and he wanted a telescope to watch it happen. Buying one never entered his head: “In the monastery you don’t have a penny.”1212.Space.com 2000; The Astronomers 1991, at 00:34:46, 00:34:54; Crater Lake interview, edited; Mayer 1980, p. 25. Recorded: “I became keenly tied up in…” (The Astronomers 1991, 00:34:46).a later writerSpace.com 2000: Space.com profile of John Dobson, May 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).his own accountThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.

Writers give him a small telescope before the big one. In David Levy’s account he had decided by the early 1950s to make one, and it had a lens of 14-inch focal length and an eyepiece out of an old pair of binoculars, for a power of 37. The press biography written for a film about him describes a 2-inch refractor made in 1956, from a junk-store lens and the eyepiece of a pair of Zeiss binoculars, through which he saw Saturn’s rings. Dobson’s own word was that he had used only a little refractor before he built his own, and what he called their first telescope was the big one.1313.Levy 1995; Film press biography; Sky at Night 2006; Planetary Radio 2012, at 00:21:27; Crater Lake interview, edited.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.a later writerFilm press biography: Press biography for the film A Sidewalk Astronomer (2005), telescopepictures.com.his own accountSky at Night 2006: Interview with John Dobson, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, December 2006.his own accountPlanetary Radio 2012: Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan, “A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson”, recorded 4 August 2012, broadcast 10 September 2012 (recording).his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).

A friend knew that he wanted a telescope and had no way of getting one, and told him that a person could grind his own glass. “You’re nuts,” Dobson said, and the friend showed him that it could be done. The friend had borrowed a book from the public library, a very small one whose instructions left a good deal out, and the two of them went by that.1414.Planetary Radio 2012, at 00:10:51; Crater Lake interview, edited; Sky at Night 2006; Mayer 1980, p. 26.his own accountPlanetary Radio 2012: Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan, “A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson”, recorded 4 August 2012, broadcast 10 September 2012 (recording).his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountSky at Night 2006: Interview with John Dobson, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, December 2006.his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.

The glass, as he told it on the radio in 2012, came off a sick man’s kitchen table. He and some others had been looking after a man with jaundice, and he remembered a round piece of glass on the table there, about 6 inches across, he thought, and half an inch thick. “So we asked him, how would you like to have it ground into a telescope?” He would love it, and he brought it over. It was a porthole glass 12 inches across and an inch thick. Dobson had remembered it at half the size. “I was shocked when I saw what he brought over.”1515.Planetary Radio 2012, at 00:10:51, 00:10:56, 00:11:05, 00:11:10, 00:11:21, 00:21:51. Recorded: “So we asked him, how would…” (Planetary Radio 2012, 00:11:10). Recorded: “I was shocked when I saw…” (Planetary Radio 2012, 00:21:51).his own accountPlanetary Radio 2012: Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan, “A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson”, recorded 4 August 2012, broadcast 10 September 2012 (recording).

They needed a second glass to grind the first one against, and they found one for $5, another 12-inch porthole, in a marine salvage shop down at the foot of Filbert Street. They ground one porthole against the other with carborundum, which was easy to buy in San Francisco, in what he called the overhang position, where, as he explained it, the middle of the top glass grinds faster and so do the edges of the bottom one. He followed the little book to the letter, and he had pitch in his hair, in his eyes, down his neck and all over his clothes.1616.Sky at Night 2006; Crater Lake interview, edited; Mayer 1980, p. 26.his own accountSky at Night 2006: Interview with John Dobson, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, December 2006.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.

He did not really know how to figure that first mirror, he said in 1980. He did what the books said and tried a Foucault tester on it, and he had no other mirror to check his against. Asked whether it was an accurate one, he said that by later standards it was not. His rule, he added, was not to stop work on a mirror until it showed him the surface of the nail heads that held the High Voltage signs to the power poles two blocks away.1717.Mayer 1980, p. 25-26, p. 26.his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.

What they ended up with had a 12-inch mirror and was about 7.5 feet long, and it was not only his: he and the friend made it, the glass had been another man’s, and on television in 1991 he said simply, “I helped somebody make a telescope.” Asked in the 1980 interview whether this first telescope was what became the Dobson mount, he said that it was an ancestor and that they did it much better now.1818.Sky at Night 2006; Crater Lake interview, edited; Mayer 1980, p. 25; Planetary Radio 2012, at 00:21:27, 00:11:10; The Night Sky, at 00:01:25; The Astronomers 1991, at 00:34:54. Recorded: “I helped somebody make a telescope.” (The Astronomers 1991, 00:34:54).his own accountSky at Night 2006: Interview with John Dobson, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, December 2006.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.his own accountPlanetary Radio 2012: Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan, “A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson”, recorded 4 August 2012, broadcast 10 September 2012 (recording).his own accountThe Night Sky: The Night Sky, episode 4, “Conversation with John Dobson”, JPL Public Education Office, 1990s (recording).his own accountThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).

The Moon was at third quarter when he first saw it through the 12-inch, and it looked to him as if he were coming in for a landing. That was in the mid-1950s, by his own account about 1956 or 1957, and he set it in San Francisco. He gave the date once, in 2004, and nothing we have found from the time fixes the year or the city. In 1969, in the earliest interview we have, he told a reporter that he had started in Sacramento, making telescopes for other people.1919.Crater Lake interview, edited; Contra Costa Times 1969.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountContra Costa Times 1969: Vicki Allen, “John Dobson Helps People See The Moon”, Contra Costa Times, 12 February 1969, p. 16A (California Digital Newspaper Collection).

In 1958 he was moved to the monastery in Sacramento. He had wanted to see what was out there, and when he looked at the Moon through “that thing”, he said in 1980, he thought, “everybody has to see this.”2020.Crater Lake interview, transcript; Mayer 1980, p. 24, p. 25; Crater Lake interview, edited; NYT obituary 2014.his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).a later writerNYT obituary 2014: Douglas Martin, obituary of John Dobson, New York Times News Service, January 2014.

1. What is from the time. The census words are our reading of the handwriting. Gopal Stavig, a historian of Vedanta in Southern California, gives his years as a monastic, 1944 to 1967, and names Swami Ashokananda for the assignment. We have not asked the Vedanta Society of Northern California for its records.2121.1950 census; Stavig 2019, p. 7.record from the time1950 census: 1950 United States census, San Francisco, enumeration district 38-479, sheet 1, lines 23 to 27 (National Archives; our reading of the handwritten sheet).a later writerStavig 2019: Gopal Stavig, “Ramakrishna-Vedanta in Southern California”, part VIII, “John Dobson” (2019).

2. His work, and the night of the bell. The Smithsonian’s catalogue has him “working as a gardener”. Usher is his own word, in a memoir that gives the night no year and does not say that he was a monk yet.2222.Smithsonian catalogue; Memoir 2.a later writerSmithsonian catalogue: National Museum of American History, catalogue entry for a Coulter Optical Dobsonian telescope (object 1994.0399.01).his own accountMemoir 2: John Dobson, “Memoir 2”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

3. The Swami, the assignment and the paper. The bell, the furnace, the roof and the papers come from three undated memoirs of his, and we have found the furnace and the roof nowhere else. The furnace memoir says only Swami; the house was Ashokananda’s, and we take him to be the Swami of the story. The memoir of the papers names Swami Ashokananda earlier on its page and names the other monk, unnamed here. The anecdote of the brother who was fine names neither house nor Swami, and from 1957 Swami Shraddhananda taught in Sacramento. Wikipedia has him hold that the mistaken paper was the true reason he was put out in 1967; his memoir gives another.2323.Memoir 2; Memoir 1; 1950 census; SF directories; Memoir 3; Anecdotes; Vedanta Society of Sacramento; Wikipedia.his own accountMemoir 2: John Dobson, “Memoir 2”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountMemoir 1: John Dobson, “Memoir 1”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).record from the time1950 census: 1950 United States census, San Francisco, enumeration district 38-479, sheet 1, lines 23 to 27 (National Archives; our reading of the handwritten sheet).record from the timeSF directories: Polk’s Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory (R. L. Polk), yearly volumes, 1929 to 1966.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountAnecdotes: John Dobson, “Memories” (anecdotes), sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).a later writerVedanta Society of Sacramento: Vedanta Society of Sacramento, “Our Story” and “Resident Swamis” (web pages).a later writerWikipedia: “John Dobson (amateur astronomer)”, Wikipedia (revision of 2026).

4. The small refractor and the book. Levy gives a focal length and the press biography an aperture, so they may be describing one instrument. The little refractor he had used need not be one he made: his father had one when he was a child. Levy names Allyn Thompson’s Making Your Own Telescope; Dobson, in what we have, names no book.2424.Levy 1995; Film press biography; Sky at Night 2006; Mayer 1980, p. 24, p. 26; Crater Lake interview, edited.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.a later writerFilm press biography: Press biography for the film A Sidewalk Astronomer (2005), telescopepictures.com.his own accountSky at Night 2006: Interview with John Dobson, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, December 2006.his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).

5. When. His date is in both texts of the 2004 interview; a garbled transcript of the 2005 film has him say the late 1950s. In 1980 he put his active interest in astronomy after he was 30, so in 1945 or later. An Associated Press story of February 1980, which quotes him, gives 1956 for his first telescope without saying whose year it is. Levy has him wanting something bigger by 1956. In 2004 Eugene Weekly put his decision to make a serious telescope, and the Wall Street Journal his noticing the glass, in the early 1950s.2525.Crater Lake interview, edited; Crater Lake interview, transcript; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 01:12:38; Mayer 1980, p. 24; AP, 24 Feb 1980; Levy 1995; Eugene Weekly 2004; Campbell 2004.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.his own accountAP, 24 Feb 1980: Associated Press, “In Quest Of The Heavens”, Santa Cruz Sentinel, 24 February 1980, p. 79 (California Digital Newspaper Collection).a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.a later writerEugene Weekly 2004: “Seeing Stars”, Eugene Weekly, 15 July 2004.a later writerCampbell 2004: Brett Campbell, “The Father of Street-Corner Stargazing”, Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2004, p. D10.

6. Where, and whose glass. San Francisco is in the 2004 interview, Moser and Levy; his 1980 answer puts the first mirror before Sacramento. Sacramento is in the 1969 remark, which may mean only the telescopes he made for other people, and in a San Francisco Chronicle profile of 2000. The 2006 interview and Levy have the glass on a friend’s table; none says whether the friend and the sick man were one man.2626.Crater Lake interview, edited; Moser 1989, pp. 102-110; Levy 1995; Mayer 1980, p. 25-26, p. 25; Contra Costa Times 1969; Perlman 2000; Sky at Night 2006; Planetary Radio 2012, at 00:10:56.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).a later writerMoser 1989: Don Moser, “John Dobson, the celestial Pied Piper”, Smithsonian, April 1989, pp. 102-110.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.his own accountContra Costa Times 1969: Vicki Allen, “John Dobson Helps People See The Moon”, Contra Costa Times, 12 February 1969, p. 16A (California Digital Newspaper Collection).a later writerPerlman 2000: David Perlman, “A Star Among Astronomers”, San Francisco Chronicle, about December 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).his own accountSky at Night 2006: Interview with John Dobson, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, December 2006.his own accountPlanetary Radio 2012: Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan, “A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson”, recorded 4 August 2012, broadcast 10 September 2012 (recording).

7. The telescope itself. His own accounts give the mirror, the length and the word ancestor; the 2006 interview, as printed, has him call it “a 12-inch Dobsonian”. We have found none of his that describes its tube, what it stood on or how the mirror was coated. The New York Times obituary, which sets his whole monastery life in Sacramento, lists plywood, cardboard tubes and cereal boxes for his first telescope; the Wall Street Journal gave the porthole telescope a plywood box, hose-reel cores and roof shingles. Levy’s hose-reel tube and shingles come in his description of the design, which he calls the original 12-inch sidewalk telescope, and in Dobson’s 1983 talk they belong to Sacramento. Air & Space (2010) has him tell its writer, who asked about his original telescope without saying which one, that somebody borrowed it for 10 years, removed the mirror and left the rest in the rain, and it was lost.2727.Sky at Night 2006; Crater Lake interview, edited; Mayer 1980, p. 25; NYT obituary 2014; Campbell 2004; Levy 1995; Telescope Making 1983, p. 43, p. 44; Scott 2010.his own accountSky at Night 2006: Interview with John Dobson, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, December 2006.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.a later writerNYT obituary 2014: Douglas Martin, obituary of John Dobson, New York Times News Service, January 2014.a later writerCampbell 2004: Brett Campbell, “The Father of Street-Corner Stargazing”, Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2004, p. D10.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.his own accountTelescope Making 1983: “Dobson on Dobsonians”, his Riverside talk of May 1983, Telescope Making no. 20, pp. 43ff.his own accountScott 2010: Phil Scott, “It’s All Sawdust and Mirrors”, Air & Space, 30 June 2010.

8. The Moon, and his words. Both texts of the 2004 interview, the interviewer’s transcript and a 2005 edit, have the landing. In 1969, in the earliest interview we have, it all started with his first sight of the Moon through a telescope; no telescope, place or year is named. “Everybody’s got to see this” is the press biography’s wording and that of The Times of London, which has a full Moon. The Oregonian and two obituaries have a three-quarter Moon, literally a different phase. Recordings, unchecked by ear, are quoted only where several speech-recognition programs agree.2828.Crater Lake interview, edited; Crater Lake interview, transcript; Mayer 1980, p. 25; NYT obituary 2014; Contra Costa Times 1969; Film press biography; Times obituary 2014; Oregonian 2003; SF Chronicle obituary 2014; Planetary Radio 2012, at 00:11:10; The Astronomers 1991, at 00:34:54; The Night Sky, at 00:01:25; Cosmology class 8, at 00:35:15; Cosmology class 4, at 00:23:25; Cosmology class 9, at 00:11:33.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.his own accountMayer 1980: Ben Mayer, “Astronomy on the Sidewalk” (interview with John Dobson), Astronomy, April 1980, pp. 24-28.a later writerNYT obituary 2014: Douglas Martin, obituary of John Dobson, New York Times News Service, January 2014.his own accountContra Costa Times 1969: Vicki Allen, “John Dobson Helps People See The Moon”, Contra Costa Times, 12 February 1969, p. 16A (California Digital Newspaper Collection).a later writerFilm press biography: Press biography for the film A Sidewalk Astronomer (2005), telescopepictures.com.a later writerTimes obituary 2014: Obituary of John Dobson, The Times (London), 28 January 2014.his own accountOregonian 2003: Richard Hill, “Telescopic Visionary”, The Oregonian, April 2003.a later writerSF Chronicle obituary 2014: David Perlman, obituary of John Dobson, San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate), January 2014.his own accountPlanetary Radio 2012: Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan, “A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson”, recorded 4 August 2012, broadcast 10 September 2012 (recording).his own accountThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).his own accountThe Night Sky: The Night Sky, episode 4, “Conversation with John Dobson”, JPL Public Education Office, 1990s (recording).his own accountCosmology class 8: John Dobson, cosmology class 8, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountCosmology class 4: John Dobson, cosmology class 4, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountCosmology class 9: John Dobson, cosmology class 9, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).

9. The Bay. The story that the monastery had a telescope of his thrown into San Francisco Bay is not told above: we have found it in four writers and in nothing of Dobson’s own. Moser (1989) sets it among his Sacramento telescopes. Levy (1995) calls it a rumor about the first telescope he made, in his article the small refractor. The Los Angeles Times (2005) tells it of the porthole telescope, at a dismissal it dates to 1958, where every other source with a year has 1967. HuffPost (2014) puts it at his dismissal and names no telescope.2929.Moser 1989, pp. 102-110; Levy 1995; LA Times 2005; Stavig 2019, p. 7; Memoir 3; Regas 2014.a later writerMoser 1989: Don Moser, “John Dobson, the celestial Pied Piper”, Smithsonian, April 1989, pp. 102-110.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.a later writerLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.a later writerStavig 2019: Gopal Stavig, “Ramakrishna-Vedanta in Southern California”, part VIII, “John Dobson” (2019).his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountRegas 2014: Dean Regas, “The Astronomer Who Showed Us the Sky”, HuffPost, 2014 (from his 2005 interview).