The Rise of Commercial Telescope Making in 19th Century America

Details The Rise of Commercial Telescope Making in 19th Century America The Rise of Commercial Telescope Making in 19th Century America

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21320002l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #200.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.186

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Very few telescopes were made in America in the 18th century; astronomers needed to rely on distant European makers. While there is evidence of a few American craftsman-made telescopes that were shown at early to mid-19th century Mechanics' Fairs, Massachusetts native Amasa Holcomb appears to have been the first to offer them for sale commercially. Most of Holcomb's instruments were Herschelian reflectors with speculum metal mirrors. Henry Fitz started his optical career by making mirrors used for the first Daguerreotype portrait cameras, and by the mid 1840's he was offering refractors of ever-increasing size. Not long after Fitz started, Alvan Clark began selling telescopes, and the premature death of Fitz in 1863 may have aided Alvan Clark and Sons' rise to prominence. The later decades of the 1800s saw a dramatic increase in the number of college observatories, and with that came more manufacturers to supply the demand.

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