One of Bill's S&T articles was on his "BKD" or Bill Kelley device, a simple but very effective concept that lifts the weight of a Dobsonian tube assembly and rocker box off of the ground board enough to allow freer movement in azimuth. Others extended the idea to help improve the movement in altitude. It made some very heavy traditional Dobsonian scopes much easier to use. Besides the more technical article on mirror flexing with Alan Adler, I think the third article was an earlier one on the same concept as Chuck said, just less technical. Bill began telescope making when he was just a kid, I think when he was only about 8. Even then he was very imaginative at solving problems. He had no money to purchase pitch to make a polishing lap for his mirror (I think it was a four-inch) so he used road tar. For his "trash scope," so named because he used an inverted garbage can for a pier, he devised an equatorial drive using a wind-up kitchen timer. This was also the first scope he made using one of the warped surplus spherical mirrors that he had purchased at RTMC. With these mirrors he helped a number of people of lesser means obtain a very serviceable telescope. I think that Karen and DeLoy Pierce were among his first "customers." Bill told me a few stories from his service in the army in Italy during WW2. He had some sort of intelligence job and tooled around the country in a jeep gathering information from the locals. He learned to speak Italian during his service. Since I had been in Italy on an LDS mission we used to speak together in Italian from time to time. Even 50 years later his memory of the language was excellent. Bill was a born teacher, he was a lot of fun to be with, and he was also one of the smartest people I've ever known. More than all that, he was a good friend. I look forward to observing the universe again with him in another life. Having a new vantage point will be interesting, and I'm sure he's enjoying it now. No need for road tar in his new home. Kim -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Chuck Hards Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 2:38 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Bill Kelly posting Apr 29, 2000 Bill authored or co-authored at least 3 articles for S&T. Did you check the archives? If I have time, I'll look them up on my digital S&T collection. I know that the flex-mirror idea was published there, possibly twice. Once with Adler, as Kim mentioned. On 2/10/11, erikhansen@thebluezone.net <erikhansen@thebluezone.net> wrote:
Hi All,
I searched for an article that Bill may have written. This is all I found, a posting on Utah Astronomy in 2000
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