Tuesday, 28 April 2020

Astronomy in Yorkshire # 15 Observatories with Cooke Telescopes


Observatories with Cooke Telescopes

I know I am often going on about how good Cooke telescopes are and depending on your nationality you might have a different view. The American would go for Alvan Clark telescopes while the Germans would say that Zeiss telescopes were superior, but I always believe the best were Cooke telescopes.

I came across this interesting little survey from 1866 and while it does not claim to exhaustive it is fascinating. I could not believe these facts when I first saw them.

The survey was of 48 private observatories in Britain and indicated that 40 had refractors while only 8 had reflectors, an interesting fact in itself and showing how popular refractors were compared to reflectors.

Of those 40 surveyed

12 were equipped with Cooke telescopes

The next nearest telescope makers with just 3 were Alan Clark (USA), Troughton, Goddard, Slugg and Slater.

Although this list does not suggest to be complete it does give an indication of how popular Cooke telescopes were.



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