Cooke Telescope Tales - Mr Maw and his two Cooke telescopes

William Henry Maw (1836 – 1924) was born in Scarborough on December 6^th 1836, when he was growing up he was friends with the sons of Dr Harland, who would become the founders of the Harland & Wolf ship builders. Both his parents died when he was in his teens, without influences and an advantage of a higher education he was still able to raise himself to become a leading authority in the fields of mechanics and engineering. 

His leisure time was however devoted to astronomy. In Kensington, London in 1887 he built an observatory for his 6 inch Cooke telescope which he used to study the Moon. Later from 1897 when he lived in Surrey he built an observatory for a larger 8 inch Cooke  telescope. This had originally been owned by the Rev R W Dawes and would later be located at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and known as the Thorrowgood Telescope.

 W H Maw made extensive observations of double stars using both Cooke telescopes. In particular the double stars from the Struve catalogue. His observations were considered to be very accurate. Maw was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and one of the founders of the British Astronomical Society.   

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