Astronomy: $20 Telescope Makes Good

Kaoru Ikeya, 19, of Shizuoka Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, was chronically broke. A $28-a-month lathe operator, he gave $25 of each pay check to his widowed mother. But a little thing like lack of money never kept Kaoru from his normally expensive hobby—amateur astronomy. Somehow he accumulated the cash for parts and materials, and all by himself he built an ambitious telescope.

Patiently, Kaoru ground and polished an eight-inch parabolic mirror. He made a tube out of tin plate. The whole instrument cost him only $20. At first it did not work very well, as is usually the case...