The Thomas Cooke Buckingham Works in York and the British Association meeting in 1881

 York Herald Saturday 3^rd September 1881

British Association for the Advancement of Science

The works of Messrs. T. Cooke and the well known scientific instrument makers, will amply repay an inspection. They stand on Bishophill, on the site of the Palace formerly belonging to the Duke of Buckingham. These works were built 25 years ago by Thomas Cooke, originally a schoolmaster, whose mathematical talent earned him wide reputation among men of science; and the memoir written by Colonel Strange for the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain is a fitting tribute to his genius. The first efforts of Cooke as maker of scientific instruments were devoted the manufacture of small optical work, but his perseverance and skill soon earned for him work of a higher class, and he produced the largest telescope then known, with object glass of 25 inches diameter. since then two telescopes have been constructed with object glasses of 26 and 27 inches diameter, but to Cooke is due the honour of having made the sudden spring from 15 to 25 inches.

He died November, 1868, leaving the business to his two sons, under whose management the mechanical and optical branches are now conducted. The visitor to the works will see in action lathes for turning, planing machines, and tools of various kinds, the figuring of object glasses being the only process kept secret, this being done by means known only the firm. large automatic graduating engine may also be seen in operation.

A great portion of Messrs. Cooke's work is done for use abroad, instruments from these works having been used for the Indian Government Ordnance Survey, for measuring the Pyramids, and for many scientific experiments in other latitudes. The firm made the for Lord Lindsay's Transit Venus expedition in 1874, and are now making equatorials for the coming Transit of Venus 1882. The equatorial placed in the Royal Observatory, Brussels, last year, was also constructed at their works.

Among other specialities of the firm are turret clocks, lathes for amateur work, geometrical chucks for ornamental eccentric and epicycloidal turning, and post office clocks. In the general Post-office, London, are 20 Cooke clocks, controlled by electricity, and worked from one standard motor.

Visitors to the festival Concert Rooms should not fail notice their exhibit of instruments, including a transit instrument of 7-inch aperture, an equatorial of 6-inch aperture, made for the Spanish Government for the coming Transit of Venus expedition to the Antilles, smaller equatorials, electrically controlled chronograph for recording the time for astronomical occurrence to the fiftieth part of a second, and a double ray reversion spectroscope, with a dispersive power equal to that of prisms. Other instruments Messrs. Cooke on view are an equatorially mounted refractor, with object glass of 10-inch aperture, at the Fine Art Exhibition, and a large 15-inch object glass, at the Museum Gardens, orders for using which can be obtained from T. 8. Noble, Esq., Lendal, or at the works.

                                                     www.theramblingastronomer.co.uk