Boller and Chivens

One of my favorites pastimes as a kid was to peruse the various professional telescope and observatory ads in Sky & Telescope magazine. I started subscribing just as Group 128 was ceasing operations. But I remember gazing wistfully at the Boller and Chivens ads -- they, the vendor of beauutiful 16-inch and up telescopes. At the tender age of 13 or 14, I swore I would own one someday, housed tastefully in an Observa-Dome Laboratories dome on some remote mountain top. Alas, that has not transpired, but I can still hope!

Meanwhile, it has surfaced that not much is widely known about Boller and Chivens. However, relatively recently, numerous images have been posted in an attempt to solicit information about their operations. Do check out the images and please contribute if you know something about them.

http://www.chesmontastro.org/?q=node/4355

John Brashear

It's been a while since I've written anything here. If anyone is following this blog, my apologies. (I suspect no one in their right mind is reading any of this, but I'm not exactly in my right mind either. I'm more of a lefty...)

Having recently been up at Lick again, I've been thinking of telescope makers. John Brashear's efforts don't get the same accolades the Clarks do, but his telescopes were equally good (and his instruments, like micrometers, spectroscopes, and astrographs had excellent reputations). I read Brashear's autobiography many years ago and found some great resources online:

For a wonderful set of links about the man & his scopes:

http://johnbrashear.tripod.com/

For a digital, online version of his autobiography:
http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/t/text/text-idx?c=pitttext&view=toc&idno=00c867671m

And if you ever get to Oakland, California and want to look through a 20-inch refractor, Chabot Observatory offers viewing through an 8-inch Clark refractor, the 20-inch, and a 36-inch reflector:

http://www.chabotspace.org/observatories.htm