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Tales of Movie Stars and Mogey Refractors

This telescope mirror shadow tester doubles as an artificial star test.

Many eyepieces that I have found to be excellent in most respects I ultimately sold in part or whole due to the eyepiece having EOFB. What is Edge of Field Brightening?

In August 1997, the rumors were flying among amateur astronomy circles about the demise of Unitron. Certainly, their ads had long disappeared from the pages of magazines they once graced, such as Sky and Telescope...

The first time I saw a Tele Vue refractor was when I was responding to an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1995 for a Brandon 94mm refractor. I drove to the seller’s home in Mentor-on-the-Lake, and admired the baby-blue Brandon on a Unitron alt-azimuth mount, set up on the back porch overlooking Lake Erie. But another telescope next to it really took my breath away. It was a brass Renaissance on a Tele Vue Panoramic mount. “Are you selling that one?” I asked. I liked the Brandon. But I really wanted the Renaissance. I ended up buying both.

In the world of commercial telescopes, if Byers mounts are the Mack trucks of telescope mounts, then Losmandy mounts are the Dodge Ram trucks. The two companies are only located about 120 miles apart, in North Hollywood and Barstow, but both seemed on the other side of the world from each other, in scale, size, market and old school and new school philosophy.

The things that matter and the things that don't.

But after visiting Norman and Robert Edmund, I had a choice. Go see the sights in Philadelphia, like the U.S. Mint and Independence Hall, with my wife? Or spend the afternoon at D&G Optical talking to Barry Greiner about telescopes?

On a trip to Southern California in June 1997 to track down some of the influential figures in the history of commercial telescopes, I hoped to find Steve Kufeld, the inventor of the world-famous Telrad telescope sighting device.

In the spring of 1998, Tom Johnson was living a comfortable life in retirement in Palm Springs, Calif., after being out of the telescope wars for some 18 years and having sold Celestron to Diethelm Holding Co. of Zurich.

"What's the most powerful binocular you got?" and "How far can I see with it?" are two of the most common and least useful questions customers ask about binoculars. Why is that?

Before World War II, if you were well-to-do and wanted a telescope, you could buy one from Tinsley Laboratories, J.W. Fecker, the old Brashear Co. in Pittsburgh and the venerable Warner and Swasey. If you weren’t wealthy, you had to build it yourself. That’s the world Norman Edmund entered when he got his start selling surplus optics by mail order.

In 1977, when I flew to California to track down and interview former commercial telescope makers, I was under the impression by talking to some people in the industry that Dick Nelson of The Optical Craftsmen was deceased. But Tom Cave in Long Beach told me

In 1997, Meade Instruments Corp. stood at the top of the telescope market. It went public that year, and was the darling of smaller issues. Its products were innovative, industry changing and in demand, such as the Autostar Computer Controller and the ETX 90 Astro. The Meade 90 ETX had been introduced the year before and, at $495, the waiting list to get one was incredibly long. John Diebel, the company founder and, at that time, chief executive and chairman, welcomed a visitor in his office at Meade headquarters in Irvine, Calif...

This is the story of Criterion Manufacturing Co. of Hartford, Connecticut, makers of the legendary RV-6.