ABSTRACT
On the evening of his eighth birthday, Saturday 20 November 1897, Edwin Powell Hubble looked forward eagerly to a special gift: he would be allowed to stay up late to look through his grandfather’s telescope. Unlike Harlow Shapley, who, some 120 miles to the west in Nashville, Missouri, had just celebrated his 12th birthday, Hubble developed a fascination for astronomy as a young boy. His maternal grandfather, William James, introduced him to stargazing. James, a medical doctor and drugstore owner, had built his telescope himself.
