In May 1895 Howard, with the workmen, opened the kiln. The mold was loose, so the pegs had sheared as expected. When the sand was removed the disc was found to be whole. A close inspection revealed no obvious faults. The disc was gently carried to an inspection room and Dr. Peate was immediately sent for. He arrived, examined the disc for a moment, then said, “Give me a hammer.” Before anyone could move he seized a nearby hatchet and knocked off the sprue, or tail left as the pot was removed from the mold. The onlookers feared the lens would “explode,” as predicted by its detractors, but the only result was the removal of the tail, as Dr. Peate expected.[35] The _Budget_ was still saying it couldn’t be done. Commenting on a May 1, 1895, announcement of the removal of the disc from the kiln, the paper seized on the fact that the disc was still warm to predict that it would be shattered before Peate could examine it, and reiterated its low opinion of Standard Plate. By the time this issue was in the hands of its readers however, the disc had been inspected and approved by Peate. Newspapers in Pittsburgh and elsewhere carried the news of the great American disc. The embarrassed _Budget_ replied that it was not talking about the mere casting of the disc but the completion of the mirror. It feigned surprise that this was all that was to be done in Butler. Even as late as May 24, 1895, the _Butler Democratic Herald_ was still defending its town. It concluded an editorial on the issue thus: … we have a feeling he [The _Budget_] has set his foot in it when he goes to poke fun at the Standard about casting the biggest mold on earth, and the end of it may be a repetition of the old saw “he who laughs last laughs best.” A week before this, however, the success of this casting had been made more or less official by an announcement to that effect in the May 17, 1895, issue of _Science_, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and probably the most highly regarded scientific paper of the time. [Illustration: FIGURE 14.—Surfacing machine used by Peate. (From Preston, fig. 4.)] On June 1, 1895, Standard Plate rendered Peate an invoice, not for $1600, but for $450. Evidently their work was done at cost. The disc was now removed to Greenville where Dr. Peate had erected a shop to grind, polish, and figure it. As the disc was slightly out of round the first operation was to make it perfectly circular. Peate did this roughly by spalling off pieces of the edge with his bricklayer’s hammer. The final rounding was done with the aid of the iron hoops that had made the mold. Dr. Peate fed steel shot between the edge of the disc and the iron semicircles. He rotated the disc on the turntable and thus rounded it off.