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On July 3rd, 1786, Herschel, accompanied by his brother Alexander, started for Göttingen, commissioned by the King to present to the University one of the ten-foot reflectors purchased from him. He was elected a Member of the Royal Society of Göttingen, and spent three weeks at Hanover with his aged mother, whom he never saw again. During his absence, however, the forty-foot progressed in accordance with the directions he had taken care to leave behind. He trusted nothing to chance. “There is not one screwbolt,” his sister asserted, “about the whole apparatus but what was fixed under the immediate eye of my brother. I have seen him lie stretched many an hour in a burning sun, across the top beam, whilst the iron-work for the various motions was being fixed. At one time no less than twenty-four men (twelve and twelve relieving each other) kept polishing day and night; my brother, of course, never leaving them all the while, taking his food without allowing himself time to sit down to table.”