In 1991, MAS celebrated its 60th birthday as a club. We threw a party, organized various special events, and generally made a big deal of the occasion. And we received some significant coverage in the local newspaper. The club rightly regarded its 60th birthday as an important moment.

We were mistaken, though. The club was not established in 1930-31. However, we can overlook this error. The club leaders had compelling reasons to choose the 1930 date, and there was little evidence available to them to suggest otherwise.

By 2020 the club had seriously taken up the task of writing of its own history. The author spent a few hours in some online newspaper databases and found that in the 1930s, the events surrounding the formation of MAS had been extensively covered in the same local papers. By the 2020s, tracking down those documents could be done in minutes without leaving home. Prior to the internet, accessing old newspapers was not easy. Newspaper archives existed only in libraries on microfiche, and indexes—when they existed—were incomplete and difficult to access.

But in under an hour, I had found documentary evidence of our actual birthday (spoiler alert, it was in early 1935). At the same time, we were collecting many other primary source club documents that further fleshed out MAS’s origin story. We now know the full story.

The History of the Madison Astronomical Society exists in two volumes, available from this website as PDF downloads (find them here).

The club still has a few print copies floating around but they’re harder to find. If you’re interested, ask us if we can sell you one.

The story of the club’s history can be found in the volumes linked above. The first chapter of the 1935-1988 volume is all about nailing down the date and circumstances of the club’s founding. It’s all there and it’s a good read, but here’s a quick summary.

Around 1934, there were several serious telescope makers and amateur astronomers in Madison. Though some of them knew each other casually, there was no attempt to form a a club until UW astronomy professor Dr. C. M. Huffer offered an astronomy class through the UW Extension. The class was quite popular thanks to Huffer’s personable nature and the accessibility of his instruction. As the class was coming to an end, a group of the students approached him and asked if there was a way they could continue to meet. Huffer told them that they were describing an astronomy club, and he encouraged them to form one. Huffer knew of a few of the telescope makers and put them all in touch with one another. By the end of February, 1935, they had organized a first meeting, drafted a constitution, and elected officers.

A few months later one of them, Dr. Jack Supernaw (elected president of the new group), would write in its first newsletter:

It is significant, when the Extension Department of our State University announces a twelve-week course in popular astronomy, to have forty-seven in attendance for the first lecture. It is significant that among these forty-seven were housewives, grade and vocational teachers, nurses, oil station attendants, doctors, store-keepers, lawyers, and ministers—a cross section of diverse interests and tastes but a lay group with the common desire to know more about the mystery of the universe . . . The common need for discussion and “mutual benefits that evolve from congenial associations” gave rise to the organization of our present group.

There’s more to it than this, of course, and the story is a good one. The club they formed in early 1935 still exists today. Reading about their activities, interests, and dreams will sound familiar to today’s members. There are differences, of course. Technology has put a much different twist on the hobby, but it still comes down to the people you’ll get to know when you visit a meeting. We’re still a group of housewives, teachers, nurses, storekeepers, lawyers, and ministers—and much more.

By the way, in 2025, we celebrated the club’s 90th anniversary!

(Posted by John Rummel, September, 2025).

Back to More MAS History.

John M. “Jack” English, (1901-1958)

English was part of the small group of MAS founders. He was an avid telescope maker and served as the club’s first secretary/treasurer in 1935-36. And his grandkids vividly remembered the telescope that stood in his yard.

1940 photo from his grandchildren

Jack English was born in Platteville and earned his teaching degree from the Platteville Normal School (now UW Platteville) in 1923. He taught in several school districts around southern Wisconsin before taking a position at the Madison Vocational School teaching chemistry. He would stay at the vocational school for 29 years.

In the early 1930s, English was actively sharing his hobby of telescope making with the public and mentoring others in the craft. His friendship with Bill Binney (another founder) led him to be part of the core group that formed MAS. Because of his position at the vocational school (later, MATC), many early MAS meetings took place in classrooms or meeting rooms at their building on S. Carroll St. in downtown Madison.

In 2021, as the MAS history project was in full swing, I got in touch with a couple of Jack’s grandchildren, who live in Michigan and Ohio. They provided many memories and details of their grandfather’s life and love of astronomy, and shared with me the historical photos that appear in this post.

As we were talking about English’s love of astronomy, they said, “Have you been to his house? His telescope is still in the yard.” I gently explained to them that telescopes that were set up in the out-of-doors 70 years ago were surely long gone. But they stood firm, telling me that they had all visited Madison the previous year and drove by Grandpa’s old house. “The telescope is still there!” they insisted.

So they gave me the address and I made the pilgrimage to Monona Drive on Madison’s east side.

Jack and Gladys English raised their son in this house.

And Jack’s telescope is still there.

Note the highlighted region in the side yard. English’s telescope is not in great shape, and obviously hasn’t been functional in many years, but it’s still standing. (These pictures were taken in the fall of 2021 but I’ve been back as recently as the summer of 2025. I’m happy to report that it’s still there.)

Based on the condition of the tube, mount and pier, it’s been exposed to the elements since it was built in 1930s (see photo below). The tube is empty, there’s no mirror cell, secondary assembly, or focuser. And the equatorial mount is not aligned to north.

The house on Monona Drive is not the English’s—or the telescope’s—first home.

A close examination of this photo reveals that the same telescope, pier, and mount are present, but the location is not the Monona Drive house. From this, we can infer that English constructed the telescope and pier sometime in the 1930s, most likely at his previous home on Oakridge Ave. He subsequently relocated it with him to Monona Drive. Although only the optical tube, elements of the equatorial mount, and pier remain today, it’s evident that this device was meticulously crafted.

Jack English’s telescope is roughly the same age as the MAS, and bears a metaphorical resemblance to it. Their shared origin story lies in English’s co-founding of the Society and his passion for telescope making. Both survived the years (and Madison’s harsh climate) because they were well-designed and carefully made.

I managed to track down the current owner of the Monona Drive property. The people who own the house now are the children and grandchildren of a Mr. Goff, who purchased the property from the English family upon Jack’s death in 1958. The story that came down through the Goff family during their long tenure there is that the original owner of the house was a professor of astronomy at the UW-Madison. I was able to offer a correction to the legend of the telescope and let them know that the real story is even better – that of a humble teacher, amateur astronomer, and telescope maker – and co-founder of the Madison Astronomical Society.

(Posted by John Rummel, September, 2025. Parts of this post are recycled from the biographical sketch written for the MAS History.)

Back to More MAS History.

In the September, 2023 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, I was lucky enough to have my article about the history of MAS published. It was my biographical profile of the extraordinary Paula Birner Carey, a co-founder of MAS. The full text of the article is reproduced below.

Almost Forgotten

A little-known past member enriches the history of Madison’s local astronomy club.

by John Rummel

MY ASTRONOMY CLUB, the Madison Astronomical Society, got its start in the 1930s. As with most such clubs in those days, it was a man’s world. But as I researched its beginnings, one woman stood out in the crowd of men.

Paula Birner, an elementary school teacher, was new to Madison in the fall of 1934. A year before the club’s birth, she had appeared on local radio stations doing a program called “Watchers of the Sky.” Birner went on to be a key member as our club organized the following year, and she was omnipresent in it for the next 14 years. In an age when a woman’s role in clubs like ours was largely that of spouse to their husbands — the members — Birner was giving talks and, later in the 1930s, authoring a series of columns for the Wisconsin State Journal on astronomy and practical observing.

Birner was married in the mid-1940s but soon widowed. She left Madison and continued her teaching career in Racine, Wisconsin, now under her married name, Paula Birner Carey. Her life was busy: Carey was active in the teacher’s union and the PTA, and she anchored various writing workshops and classes.

But her love of astronomy beckoned. In the fall of 1956, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Racine Journal Times appealing to others who shared her passion for astronomy. “Somewhere in Racine, or thereabouts, there must be kindred souls,” she wrote. “Wish they would communicate with me. We could form a club and have some fun!”

STELLAR ACHIEVER Paula Birner Carey was a founding member of two Wisconsin astronomy clubs — one in Madison, the other in Racine. She appears here in the mid-1940s.

Carey’s letter worked. Within months a Racine astronomy club was formed, and she would later serve on its board. In 1963, the club built a formidable observatory — the Modine-Benstead Observatory — and in May 1964 Sky & Telescope published an article highlighting the achievement. Its author, of course, was Paula Birner Carey.

Her technical know-how shines through in the article. “As a Newtonian of short focal length (80 inches),” she wrote about the observatory’s convertible 16-inch reflector, “it is suitable for deep-sky viewing and photography; as a Cassegrain (320 inches), it can be used for lunar and planetary studies.”

I never got to meet her — she died in 1993 — but I relate to her attachment to the hobby. I imagine her playing up astronomy with her students but longing for a group of adults to share her interest in the stars. She wanted to recapture the community she’d found in Madison around observing the heavens, and she succeeded brilliantly, helping to found not just one but two vibrant astronomy clubs in Wisconsin.

Carey never remarried after her husband died in 1948, and she had no children. Details of her life and love of the hobby were hard to come by. Sometime after her retirement from teaching in Racine in the late 1960s or early 1970s, she returned to Madison. She must have lived out her retirement in the city where she first helped organize an astronomy club four decades before. She rejoined our Madison club and attended meetings, and she continued to serve on the board of the Astronomical League. She would have been in her 70s by then.

I questioned older members of our Madison club, trying to find anyone who recognized the name or met the person. Only one or two recalled her. They remembered her attending meetings — the nice gray-haired woman sitting in the back. One of them recalls her speaking of the Racine club. But I bet nobody at the time suspected that this kind older lady sitting among them was a founder of their club.

Carey’s last recorded activity in the Madison club was a donation she made in her mid-80s to our new observatory. To the end, she thought of the club — her club — and wanted to see it grow.

JOHN RUMMEL is a Madison, Wisconsin-based amateur astronomer, retired school psychologist, and current historian for the Madison Astronomical Society.

Published in the September, 2023 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, page 84 (Focal Point column).

Back to More MAS History.