Description
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was increased development of trade, especially international trade and production, as transportation allowed greater access to raw materials through a vast system of cultural innovation and exchange. Consequently, many of the advancements in science and astronomy are accompanied by the development of corresponding instruments, and similarly experimental instrument design often produced scientific breakthroughs. This refracting telescope was made by Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800). John Dollond (1706–1761) started manufacturing a special lens made of two different sorts of glass. Earlier refracting telescopes regularly suffered from chromatic aberration, which produced a spectrum of colours around the object when viewed through the eye-piece. Dollond’s solution reduced chromatic aberration by bringing two particular wavelengths of light into a common focus. Achromatic lenses and improvements in glass-making made both small and large refracting telescopes popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
08/07/2014
Created by: Allison Ksiazkiewicz on 08/07/2014