Mr. Lockyer,
writing in 1878, says: "The two largest and most perfectly
mounted refractors on the German form at present in existence are
those at Gateshead and Washington, U.S. The former belongs to
Mr. Newall, a gentleman who, connected with those who were among
the first to recognise the genius of our great English optician,
Cooke, did not hesitate to risk thousands of pounds in one great
experiment, the success of which will have a most important
bearing upon the astronomy of the future."[7]
The progress which Mr. Cooke made in his enterprise was slow but
steady. Shortly after he began business as an optician, he
became dissatisfied with the method of hand-polishing, and made
arrangements to polish the object-glasses by machinery worked by
steam power. By this means he secured perfect accuracy of
figure. He was also able to turn out a large quantity of
glasses, so as to furnish astronomers in all parts of the world
with telescopes of admirable defining power, at a comparatively
moderate price. In all his works he endeavoured to introduce
simplicity. He left his mark on nearly every astronomical
instrument. He found the equatorial comparatively clumsy; he
left it nearly perfect. His beautiful "dividing machine," for
marking divisions on the circles, four feet in diameter and
altogether self-acting--which divides to five minutes and reads
off to five seconds is not the least of his triumphs.
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