clipped from: www.boston.com   

The Man Who Invented Mars

Long before the space race and space shuttle, a brilliant, wealthy, charming Boston Brahmin named Percival Lowell popularized the idea that we are not alone in the universe.

At left, a colorized version of a 1905 drawing of Mars by Lowell; at right, an artist’s concept of the Phoenix Mars lander.
At left, a colorized version of a 1905 drawing of Mars by Lowell; at right, an artist’s concept of the Phoenix Mars lander.
AT 7:36 P.M. ON May 25, if all goes well, a stranger from Earth will land near the north pole of Mars. It is called Phoenix.
Somewhere, a 19th century Boston Brahmin named Percival Lowell will be smiling.
Long before NASA was established in 1958
Percival Lowell devoted much of his career and considerable fortune to trying to prove that Mars hosted intelligent life. Viewed through his telescopes, the ancient, baleful Red Planet was about the size of a dime.
Percival Lowell peers at Mars through his Clark telescope.
Lowell believed he was seeing a network of canals on its surface. Therefore, he declared, Mars holds intelligent life. It is not necessarily like human life, he emphasized, but it is intelligent enough to build canals.