In order to resolve debates among scientists about the existence of life on Mars, Percival Lowell, an amateur astronomer fascinated with such possibilities, decided in 1893 to look at the planet himself...as closely as possible. He recruited some of the top talent in the field of astronomy, ordered an eighteen-inch refractor telescope to be built, and rushed a state-of-the-art observatory into construction on a 7,000-foot mesa in Flagstaff, Arizona. Everything had to be ready by 1894 to catch sight of Mars at its closest approach to the Earth, an alignment of the planets that only occurs every two years.
Before he built the observatory on what he came to call "Mars Hill," Lowell's main source of information on Mars was the work of the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. In the late 1870s, Schiaparelli wrote of an Earth-like world on which masses of land lay separated by water. He described odd linear configurations on Mars which he called canali (Italian for "groove" or "channel"). Lowell misinterpreted Schiaparelli's canali to mean canals -- waterways constructed by advanced technology. In the late nineteenth century, canals were the hallmark of advanced civilization.
After many long nights on Mars Hill squinting through his telescope, Lowell began to make out what he thought was a network of canals on the Martian surface. What he saw, combined with Schiaparelli's influence and his own calculations regarding Mars, led him to imagine that a terrible tragedy was unfolding on the red planet.
