Lockyer's Stargazing, Past
and Present; and a full description of the instrument is given in
the text of the same work. This refracting telescope did not
long remain the largest. Mr. Alvan Clark was commissioned to
erect a larger equatorial for Washington Observatory; the
object-glass (the rough disks of which were also furnished by
Messrs. Chance of Birmingham) exceeding in aperture that of Mr.
Cooke's by only one inch. This was finished and mounted in
November, 1873. Another instrument of similar size and power was
manufactured by Mr. Clark for the University of Virginia. But
these instruments did not long maintain their supremacy. In
1881, Mr. Howard Grubb, of Dublin, manufactured a still larger
instrument for the Austrian Government--the object-glass being of
twenty-seven inches aperture. But Mr. Alvan Clark was not to be
beaten. In 1882, he supplied the Russian Government with the
largest refracting telescope in existence the object-glass being
of thirty inches diameter. Even this, however, is to be
surpassed by the lens which Mr. Clark has in hand for the Lick
Observatory (California), which is to have a clear aperture of
three feet in diameter.
[11] Since the above passage was written and in type, I have seen
(in September 1884) the reflecting telescope referred to at pp.
357-8. It was mounted on its cast-iron equatorial stand, and at
work in the field adjoining the village green at Bainbridge,
Yorkshire.
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