Realizing the danger of this historic artifact being scrapped, Sam assembled a few interested parties (including his co-curator Wayne Coskrey), and agreed to purchase the projector. One of their calls was to Sam Mims, one of the two Planetarium Curators at the Louisiana Arts & Science Center in Baton Rouge. The freight and storage company that owned their warehouse began calling up Zeiss planetaria around the country, looking for someone willing to purchase Adler’s Zeiss. So, as a part of that sale, Adler’s Zeiss was shipped to Viewlex’s Long Island warehouse space, where it sat for the next year or two. Viewlex also offered Jackson $30,000 in trade-in for the Adler’s Zeiss. When they reached out to planetarium manufacturers for new projector price quotes, they received an offer from Viewlex (then Minolta’s US planetarium distributor) that was about $100,000 less than Zeiss repair costs. So why not the Zeiss? When the team in Jackson investigated the actual costs of re-constructing and updating the Zeiss, they found it would cost $230,000. The Adler’s new Mark VI had arrived from Oberkochen, Germany, so we repurposed those crates to ship the projector to Jackson.Īs previously mentioned, the Davis Planetarium opened in 1978, but with a Minolta S-IV projector. Technicians from Adler and Observa-Dome spent the next two weeks carefully disassembling the projector and crating it for shipping. In order to meet funding timelines, Observa-Dome acted as a go-between, purchasing the projector from the Adler, and then selling it to Jackson.ĭecemwas the projector’s last day in operation. Like many communities at the time, Jackson was attempting to access matching funding from the National Defense Education Act to purchase the projector. Coincidentally, that same year, William Clark, President of Observa-Dome in Jackson, Mississippi, approached the Adler to inquire if we’d be willing to sell our projector. Image Credit: The Adler Planetarium Archivesīy 1968, Zeiss had released their newest large planetarium projector, the Model VI, and the Adler was in the midst of researching our next planetarium projector purchase. Image Caption: Planetarium guests attend a sky show with the Zeiss Mk II projector at the Adler c. In 1960, Adler upgraded the projector to a Mark III, adding individual projectors for the 42 brightest stars, an upgraded Moon projector, and new chromium-coated, photo-engraved star plates (replacing the original hand-punched copper plates). The Zeiss Mark II was in place for Adler’s opening, May 12, 1930. What happened to the Adler’s Zeiss? Why wasn’t it installed in Jackson? And where is it now? Let’s Start At The Beginning Davis Planetarium opened in downtown Jackson in 1978, the installed projector was a Minolta S-IV. In January of 1970, the Adler Planetarium de-installed our original Zeiss planetarium projector (the first one in the Western Hemisphere) and shipped it to Jackson, Mississippi, where it was to be re-installed in the soon-to-be-constructed city planetarium. Written By: Mike Smail, Director of Theaters and Digital Experience Image Credit: The Adler Planetarium Archives Header Image: The Zeiss Mark II projector can be seen here in the Adler’s original domed theater in the 1930s.
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