Fred Locke invented Pyrex glass for Mount Wilson Observatory telescope

HONEOYE FALLS MAN INVENTS MATERIAL FOR LARGEST EYE

Fred M. Locke's creation Used in the World's Most Powerful Telescope.

Pouring of twenty tons of molten glass to form the world's largest telescopic eye at the Corning Glass Works Sunday, was an incident of more than ordinary interest locally. The composition known as Pyrex, which formed the twenty ton lens, is the invention of Fred M. Locke, a native of Honeoye Falls, whose parents and grandparents lived in the village on Railroad Avenue where Mr. Locke made his home of many years.

He was a telegraph operator and, in his younger days, Mr. Locke was a genius and later brought out an insulator for high power electric transmission lines, opening a manufacturing plant in Victor. Pyrex was one of his later contributions.

During the next ten months the lens will cool in a heat controlled annealing box, it will then be sent on to California where it will be ground, the operation consuming three years, it is estimated. In 1938, the mirror will be placed in a telescope located in one of the mountains of Southern California. It is claimed that with this telescope it will be possible for astronomers to see four times farther and peer into volumes of space thirty times that now visible. The making of the mirror is described as the greatest piece of scientific work ever undertaken by Walter S. Adams, Director of Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California.