portland observatory was built as a business center like captain samuel moody. created this business around the idea of signaling the arrival of ships into the port of portland. portland has a wonderful natural harbor and was a great center was aipping, and so there very important, competitive advantage that could be had of people knew the ships were coming into the port. so the idea was to build the building, a tower on a high point of ground, and put a very powerful telescope in the top. and through that telescope captain moody could look into the harbor and identify ships that were coming in. and in those days, there was a lot of shipping here, and also many different kinds of ships. so captain moody's business idea was to charge people to have their boats, or the ships signaled as they came into port. they would actually provide a captain moody would actually raised a flag when he saw the ship coming into port through the telescope. from the beginning, that observatory was also a site where people could go to the top, as a tourist activity. as captain moody,