Description
An improvement to the quality of telescopic images came in 1758, when 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. In London, optical instrument-makers largely constructed telescopes as luxury items for middle-class gentlemen seeking to pursue a hobby that promoted a public image of self-improvement and good station. Shagreen, or ray-skin, was an exotic material often used to decorate status objects such as this telescope during the eighteenth century.

08/07/2014
Created by: Allison Ksiazkiewicz on 08/07/2014