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Magazine Beach

Beaches of MassachusettsCharles RiverGeography of Cambridge, MassachusettsLandforms of Middlesex County, MassachusettsParks in Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Tourist attractions in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Magazine Beach (8470327159)
Magazine Beach (8470327159)

Magazine Beach is an American riverside park in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is located on the left bank of the Charles River, across Memorial Drive from Cambridgeport, and opposite Agganis Arena and other Boston University facilities on the far bank. Magazine Beach is Cambridge's second largest park, being about 15 acres (6.1 ha) stretching along the river from Pleasant Street to the BU Bridge. The park includes a free outdoor swimming pool (Veteran's Memorial Pool) as well as ball fields, exercise equipment, picnic areas, and other typical urban park features. The Paul Dudley White Bike Path runs through the park. The park's namesake, a gunpowder magazine from 1818, is in the park. It is the oldest building in the Charles River Reservation. There was a swimming beach at the park in the early and mid 20th century, attracting about 60,000 swimmers in a season, but swimming in the Charles River became dangerous due to pollution, and was forbidden in 1949.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Magazine Beach (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Magazine Beach
Dr. Paul Dudley White Path, Cambridge Cambridgeport

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Latitude Longitude
N 42.355027777778 ° E -71.113611111111 °
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Dr. Paul Dudley White Path
02215 Cambridge, Cambridgeport
Massachusetts, United States
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Magazine Beach (8470327159)
Magazine Beach (8470327159)
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Alvan Clark & Sons
Alvan Clark & Sons

Alvan Clark & Sons was an American maker of optics that became famous for crafting lenses for some of the largest refracting telescopes of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1846 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, by Alvan Clark (1804–1887, a descendant of Cape Cod whalers who started as a portrait painter), and his sons George Bassett Clark (1827–1891) and Alvan Graham Clark (1832–1897). Five times, the firm built the largest refracting telescopes in the world. The Clark firm gained "worldwide fame and distribution", wrote one author on astronomy in 1899. The 18.5-inch (470 mm) Dearborn telescope (housed successively at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and Adler Planetarium) was commissioned in 1856 by the University of Mississippi. The outbreak of the Civil War prevented them from ever taking ownership. As a result, it was being tested in Cambridgeport when Alvan Graham observed Sirius B in 1862. In 1873 they built the 26-inch (660 mm) objective lens for the refractor at the United States Naval Observatory. In 1883, they build the 30-inch (760 mm) telescope for the Pulkovo Observatory in Russia, the 36-inch (910 mm) objective for the refractor at Lick Observatory was made in 1887, and the 40-inch (1,000 mm) lens for the Yerkes Observatory refractor, in 1897, only ever exceeded in size by the lens made for Great Paris Exhibition Telescope of 1900. The company also built a number of smaller instruments, which are still highly prized among collectors and amateur astronomers. The company's assets were acquired by the Sprague-Hathaway Manufacturing Company in 1933, but continued to operate under the Clark name. In 1936, Sprague-Hathaway moved the Clark shop to a new location in West Somerville, Massachusetts, where manufacturing continued in association with the Perkin-Elmer Corporation, another maker of precision instruments. Most of Clark's equipment was disposed of as scrap during World War II, and Sprague-Hathaway itself was liquidated in 1958. Alvan Clark & Sons Telescopes