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Brass telescope with mahogany wood handle Dollond mid-19th century

$2,091.64List Price

About the Item

Brass telescope with mahogany wood handle, single-elongation focus, instrument complete with sunshield extension and dust cover tabs. Signed Dollond London Day or Night from the mid 1800s. Maximum length cm 92, inches 36.2, minimum cm 51,- inches 20 focal diameter cm 3 - inches 1.2. Good condition, fully functional and complete with custom-made wood and brass base plate. To bring the scope into focus, you have to lengthen it all the way and then slowly shorten it until the image is in focus. The last photo is the gift box. John Dollond (1706-1761) English astronomer and optician was born to Protestant parents who came from Normandy and were forced to move to England for religious reasons. Having a great aptitude for mathematics and astronomy, he decided to devote himself to instrument making together with his son Peter (1730-1821), whom he stimulated to the study of optics and mathematics, and in 1752 he started a business that was soon a great success. From 1753 John Dollond was in contact with James Short and other members of the Royal Society of London to whom he reported his findings and his always innovative technical choices. He was the first to patent and commercialize the achromatic telescope, an instrument that came about after several experiments and studies by academics from various parts of Europe. In 1758, his compound goal was officially recognized and accepted by the Royal Society, and he even managed to obtain the prestigious Copley Medal, the highest award obtained for research work in science, created after a bequest of £100 in 1709 to the Royal Society by Sir Godfrey Copley, a wealthy South Yorkshire landowner; he himself became a member of the Royal Society in 1761. In 1765 his son Peter, who had succeeded him at the helm of the laboratory, proposed a lens with three lenses, two concave and one convex, a solution that made it possible to reduce spherical aberration and to produce lenses that were larger in size for the same focal length. The family business was continued successfully by Peter's grandson George (1774-1852). George studied and apprenticed with his uncle from 1804 to 1856 and then, upon the death of his other uncle John J., entered as a partner in the firm, at 59 St. Louis St., in 1856. Paul's Churchyard in London. He was William IV's trusted optician and around 1819 he gave a number of publications to print. In 1821 he remained alone at the helm of the "store," which still exists today under the name Dollond Aitchinson Ltd. after merging in 1927 with Aitchinson, a firm established in 1889 by James Aitchinson. Dollond Aitchinson Ltd. is one of the largest opticians in Europe, and it is interesting to remember that in the 1970s among other things it had bought the Italian Salmoiraghi. According to legend, one unspecified day in 1608 the children of Hans Lipperhey, who was an eyeglass maker in Middelburg , were playing in their father's workshop with lenses. When one of the sons put a concave lens next to his own eye, holding a convex lens in his other hand, and reaching out his arm in the direction of the tip of the cathedral bell tower he looked through it, he saw the wind-marking rooster at the top grow larger and closer. Immediately showing the phenomenon to his father, he fixed the lenses on a plank to make observation easier, thus creating the first rudimentary telescope. Unfortunately for Lipperhey, however, when he submitted a patent application for this instrument to the states general, within days other Dutch eyeglass makers also claimed the invention.

Dimensions:
Height: 36.2 in (91.95 cm)Diameter: 1.2 in (3.05 cm)
Materials and Techniques:
Brass
Period:
Mid-19th Century
Date of Manufacture:
1850
Condition:
Wear consistent with age and use.
Seller Location:
Milan, IT
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1020242126442

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