The Retiree Club

An organization of Perkin-Elmer retirees and other former employees

Home

Links

About us

Events

Contacts

Meetings

Newsletter

Reflections

Form


Latest Club & Member News Briefs
 as of
 3-26-2010

  Florida luncheon photos of  March 25, 2010 are on the 
 EVENTS page

 

 

 

 

Members of the Perkin Family Visit PerkinElmer, Inc.

Rob Perkin and Kristina Perkin Davison were the guests of PerkinElmer, Inc in Shelton, Connecticut for a plant tour and viewing of the founder's portraits on January 27th.  Rob is the youngest of the four Perkin children and Kristina is the daughter of Rob's oldest brother, the late Dick Perkin.

Hosting the visit for PEI were John Widomski, Director of Shelton Operations, Nick Dellolio, Jr., Manager, Facilities Operations, Security and Office Services, and Sandra Schiller, Manager, Marketing Communications.

The day was so successful that other members of the Perkin family will pay another visit in May.

                                                                                                                               (Photos by Dennis Yates).

 

Rob, left, and Kristina, with John Widomski, as they arrive at the facility.

  

In the Richard S. Perkin  Conference room for an orientation are Kristina and Rob at the left, with John Widomski  presiding.
 
John Widomski points to a historical display of photos prepared for the 50th anniversary of Perkin-Elmer in 1987 and donated to the facility.   Kristina and Rob pose at the portrait of their grandfather and father respectively, the late Richard S. Perkin, co-founder of the company.  The portraits hang outside conference rooms named after the two founders on the third floor of the facility.

 

 


Did you know the most precision optics made
 in the world were made by
  Perkin-Elmer
 for the X-Ray Telescope at that time the
program was called
  AXAF
 subsequently changed to the
  Chandra X-ray Observatory

   

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is part of NASA's fleet of "Great Observatories" along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitizer Space Telescope and the now deorbited Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Chandra allows scientists from around the world to obtain unprecedented X-ray images of exotic environments to help understand the structure and evolution of the universe. Already surpassing its five-year life, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is rewriting textbooks and helping advance technology. The Chandra X-ray Observatory is the world's most powerful X-ray telescope. It has eight-times greater resolution and is able to detect sources more than 20-times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope.

3C305

The Chandra telescope system consists of four pairs of mirrors and their support structure. 

X-ray telescopes must be very different from optical telescopes. Because of their high-energy, X-ray photons penetrate into a mirror in much the same way that bullets slam into a wall. Likewise, just as bullets ricochet when they hit a wall at a grazing angle, so too will X-rays ricochet off mirrors.

The mirrors have to be exquisitely shaped and aligned nearly parallel to incoming X-rays. Thus they look more like glass barrels than the familiar dish shape of optical telescopes. They are the smoothest and cleanest mirrors ever made.

 


LINKS:

http://chandra.harvard.edu/about/top_ten.html

AXAF High Resolution Mirror (HRMA)

 

 

Send your news to Don Mahon at donmahon3@comcast.net to include in this column.