Glass plate negatives of the Dwingeloo Radio Telescope

© Unkown

Approximately one month ago CAMRAS received an e-mail from a woman charged with the conclusion of an inheritance. She found glass plate negatives in the house of a deceased lady. The box with the negatives contained a short note with the text 'For Dwingeloo?'. The woman charged with the conclusion asked if these negatives are interesting for CAMRAS. Because we were curious we said of course that they are interesting.

A few days later a very well packed box arrived. They contained ten glass plate negatives. We were very surprised. The pictures on the negatives were taken during the hoisting of the dish of the Dwingeloo radio telescope on its tower. Albert van Duin made excellent scans of these negatives. The result is visible on this daily image (unfortunately not at full resolution). On one of the photographs professor Minnaert and Van de Hulst can be recognized. Thanks to the Dutch Royal Library who digitized approximately 60 million pages of old Dutch newspapers and made them accessible via the internet, we found that the hoisting of the dish happened on June 1st 1955. An article describing this event can be found at http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=KBNRC01:000042319:mpeg21:a0106 .

The movie about the construction of the Dwingeloo radiotelescope made by Herman Kleibrink also shows the hoisting of the dish. This movie can be viewed via https://youtu.be/lMQ-8XmkFeI?t=21m25s . (The movie will start at the point where the hoisting starts. You can of course watch the whole movie.)