The first courses focused on measurement of the night sky and was taken by civil engineering students to sharpen their surveying skills.

Contracts were extended to Charles A. Gunn, the architect and an instructor on campus, and Bevis and Company in Urbana as the general contractor with construction beginning in April 1896.

Myers announced the discovery of the source of the variability in the star Beta Lyrae at the opening conference for Yerkes Observatory.

Before 1907, all magnitude measurements for stars were obtained through visual comparison of relative brightness, a process that was slow and inexact.

The drawback of previous methods of measuring stellar magnitude made the use of electricity for empirically gathering astronomical data revolutionary for the science of astronomy.

Once Stebbins arrived fresh from his dissertation completed at Lick Observatory, he began a two-year study of the brightness of 107 binary stars using a Pickering visual photometer.

The research, with the assistance of his wife, May Stebbins, investigated the relative brightness on binary stars using visual techniques.

It happened that within two or three months, the Department of Physics gave an open house, and one of the exhibits was in [the] charge of a young instructor, F.C.

[6]Stebbins and Fay C. Brown soon became friends and in time, they had a selenium cell positioned on the 12-inch (300 mm) telescope at the observatory.

In 1915, Stebbins' object of study became the star involved in Myers' first big discovery at the observatory, Beta Lyrae.

[5] When Robert Baker arrived he continued a photoelectric photometry program focusing on variable stars.

On May 27, 1933, the star Arcturus provided light which fell onto a photo cell in the observatory's annex and sent a signal to open the Chicago World's Fair.

Dr. Stanley Wyatt joined the faculty in 1953, George Swenson and Ivan King in 1956, Kennth Yoss, John Dickel and James Kaler in 1964 and Edward Olson in 1966.

By the time of Dr. McVittie's retirement in 1971, the one-astronomer department had expanded to nine faculty with research interests in relativity, cosmology, celestial mechanics, perturbation theory, dynamics of star clusters, planetary nebulae, planets, supernovae and radio astronomy.

The department which produced only five advanced degrees prior to 1951 graduated 29 Masters and 14 Doctoral students during the McVittie administration.

On October 4, 1957, the very evening of the launch of Sputnik, students and faculty met at the observatory and constructed an improvised radio interferometer.

The observatory underwent major renovations and additions in 1956 and 1966 to accommodate the growing faculty (see architecture section below).

[5] The observatory is no longer used for research purposes, though the telescope is still used as a teaching tool in the university's astronomy classes.

[4] In 2009, Professors Leslie Looney and Benjamin McCall constructed a spectrometer on the ground floor of the observatory, and ran an optical fiber cable to the telescope in the dome.

The optics are by John A. Brashear of Pittsburgh and the mechanical parts by the Warner & Swasey Company of Cleveland.

One axis slants upwards toward the north pole of the heavens; the other at right angles to it, and it is to this one that the tube of the telescope is attached.

Designated as model M-505, the transit included a handing level, micrometer and a built in reversing mechanism.

In addition there were three other smaller transit telescopes, two clocks by Clemens Riefler of Munich, and other accessories including sextants, chronometers, and teaching tools.

[6] The observatory was built on a one-story T-plan, facing north, of buff-colored Roman brick (from Indiana) and features limestone lintels and sills.

Built by the firm of Warner and Swasey, Cleveland, Ohio, the scope is stabilized on a brick pier which extends down into the bedrock and is not attached to the building in any way.

Most of the building's windows are of the wooden double-hung variety and original, as are the front entrance door transom and concrete stoop.

The southwest corner of the building was built in 1956, of cream colored brick, to house additional classrooms and office space.

[6] The observatory basement and the dome housing the refractor are still in use by the astronomy department at U of I and the University of Illinois Astronomical Society, a student organization on campus.

The research regarding photometry was conducted on a 12-inch (300 mm) Warner and Swasey refractor telescope in the second-story equatorial room.

As a result of Dr. Stebbins' work determining stellar magnitude using photoelectric photometry, it became standard technique.