Griffith Observatory

Griffith J. Griffith donated $100,000 to the City of Los Angeles on December 12, 1912 for an observatory to be built on the top of Mount Hollywood to be fully owned and operated by the City of Los Angeles. The plan for the observatory included an astronomical telescope open to free viewing, a Hall of Science designed to bring the public into contact with exhibits about the physical sciences, and a motion picture theater which would show educational films about science and other subjects. This last aspect of the plan would eventually evolve into the planetarium, a technology not invented until the 1920s.