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The Basics
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• A descendant of a Cape Cod whaling family, Clark started life as a portrait painter, but soon turned to grinding lenses and mirrors to make telescopes.
• Clark’s sons, Alvan G. Clark and George Bassett Clark joined the business, helping to build the first serious telescope factory in the United States. Their facility included a 230-foot underground tunnel to test their largest lenses.
• The company successively built the five largest refractors in the world, including the 26-inch lens at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, the 36-inch lens at Lick Observatory, California (still in use); and the 40-inch lens at Yerkes Observatory, which remains the largest refracting telescope in the world.
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A Deeper Look
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• Many important discoveries were made with Clark refractors, especially related to binary stars, stellar motion, and planetary studies.
• Asaph Hall discovered Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars, with the 26-inch USNO telescope. He also discovered a white spot on Saturn that helped determine the planet's rotational period.
• Percival Lowell (falsely) observed canals on Mars with the famed 24-inch Clark refractor at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.
• And in 1861, Alvan G. Clark made a 18.5-inch lens for E. E. Barnard at the University of Mississippi. While testing it, he observed Sirius and glimpsed the faint companion predicted by Friedrich Bessel in 1844. The outbreak of the Civil War prevented the lens from making it to Mississippi. It remained in the Midwest at the “old University of Chicago”.
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A Bit of History
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Clark's factory was sold to the Sprague-Hathaway Company, which moved the shop to West Somerville, Massachusetts. Manufacturing continued with Perkin-Elmer Corporation, a maker of precision instruments. Most of Clark's original equipment was scrapped during World War II.
Although modern materials and design techniques have since led to better lenses, Clark telescopes, which trade for enormous sums, are still revered among collectors and refractor purists.
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Personal View
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Antique telescopes, like antique cars, have an unquestionable charm and fascinating history. But today's better instruments are far superior to anything made in the 19th century, even by the Clarks. Heresy?
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