At last he gave up teaching, and took to telescope
making. He advanced step by step; and like a practical,
thoughtful man, he invented special tools and machinery for the
purpose of grinding and polishing his glasses. He opened a shop
in York, and established himself as a professed maker of
telescopes. He added to this the business of a general optician,
his wife attending to the sale in the shop, while he himself
attended to the workshop.
Such was the excellence of his work that the demand for his
telescopes largely increased. They were not only better
manufactured, but greatly cheaper than those which had before
been in common use. Three of the London makers had before
possessed a monopoly of the business; but now the trade was
thrown open by the enterprise of Cooke of York. He proceeded to
erect a complete factory--the Buckingham Street works. His
brother took charge of the grinding and polishing of the lenses,
while his sons attended to the mechanism of the workshop; but
Cooke himself was the master spirit of the whole concern.
Everything that he did was good and accurate. His clocks were
about the best that could be made. He carried out his
clock-making business with the same zeal that he devoted to the
perfection of his achromatic telescopes. His work was always
first-rate. There was no scamping about it. Everything that he
did was thoroughly good and honest.
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