Customer Reviews

Alvan Clark & Sons, Artists in Optics

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Warner and Ariail have done an outstanding job of presenting a history of Alvan Clark & Sons, America's premier 19th century telescope maker. They trace the lineage of nearly all extant Clark telescopes, illustrate the characteristics of each model of Clark refractor, describe the history of the firm (including manufacturing), and include an appendix on all known portraits painted by Alvan Clark (he was a portrait painter prior to making telescopes). It does lack some warmth and might have benefited from personal accounts of owners describing their scopes and the views through them or experiences using different Clark telescopes. However, it is still an inspirational work and made me want to own an antique refractor.

This second edition is updated and improved from the out-of-print first edition. It has much of interest for telescope buffs and collectors of optical instruments. (It should be noted that the book is still available from the publisher as of January 2003 at the original price.)

This book is divided into two general parts. The first section is a fast moving history of the Clark family and business history in 47 pages. This represents a lot more than I've seen elsewhere on them and it's very interesting stuff and very well written.

The remainder of the book consists of listings of existing Clark telescopes, or extracts from their product catalogs. I don't think you'd want to read this word for word, but you can skim through it and stop when you see something interesting. What I liked were the photos and information about observatories that had bought his telescopes. Some of the universities still have the original observatory building with the Clark telescope still in it! A lot of observatories are pictured, from the big famous ones down to personal observatories. The black and white pictures are clear and sharp.

If you're interested in old telescopes, and especially if you want to know the history of American telescopes, get a copy of this book. I got mine from the publisher in late 2011, but now in early 2012 it appears to no longer be available from them. Pick up a used copy at a reasonable price and you'll be amply rewarded.