When the trustees of the Lick Observatory called in 1886 for designs for the great 36-inch telescope, Warner & Swasey submitted one which provided for much heavier mountings than had ever been used before, and heavier construction throughout. They were awarded the contract and the instrument was built and installed under Mr. Swasey’s personal supervision. It is located on the very top of Mount Hamilton in California, 4200 feet above sea-level; and to give room for the observatory 42,000 tons of rock had to be removed. The great instrument, weighing with its mountings more than forty tons, “was transported in sections, over a newly made mountain road, sometimes in a driving snowstorm, with the wind blowing from sixty to eighty miles an hour.”[217] [217] _Cassier’s Magazine_, March, 1897, p. 403. As is well known, the instrument was a brilliant success. The Warner & Swasey Company has since designed and built the mountings for the United States Naval Observatory telescope, the 40-inch Yerkes telescope, the 72-inch reflecting telescope for the Canadian Government, and the 60-inch reflecting telescope for the National Observatory at Cordoba, Argentina, the largest in use in the southern hemisphere. In addition to this large work, the firm has built meridian circles, transits and other instruments for astronomical work, range finders for the United States Government, and introduced the prismatic binocular into this country. In connection with this astronomical work Mr. Swasey designed and built a dividing engine capable of dividing circles of 40 inches in diameter with an error of less than one second of arc. A second of arc subtends about one-third of an inch at the distance of one mile. Although the graduations on the inlaid silver band of this machine are so fine that they can scarcely be seen with the naked eye, the width of each line is twelve times the maximum error in the automatic graduations which the machine produces. Although their reputation as telescope builders is international, Warner & Swasey are, and always have been, primarily tool builders. They were not the first to build tools in the Middle West, but they were the first to turn out work comparable in quality with that of the best shops in the East. The Warner & Swasey shop has had the advantage of other good mechanics besides its proprietors. Walter Allen, an expert tool designer, did his entire work with them, rising from apprentice to works manager. Frank Kempsmith, originally a Brown & Sharpe man, was at one time their superintendent. Lucas, of the Lucas Machine Tool Company, was a foreman. George Bardons, who served his apprenticeship with Pratt & Whitney, went west with Warner and Swasey when they started in business and was their superintendent; and John Oliver, a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic, was their chief draftsman. The last two left Warner & Swasey in 1891 and established the firm of Bardons & Oliver for building lathes.