Reflecting telescope with a 24-inch silvered-glass primary mirror, designed for astronomical photography, and made by George Willis Ritchey (1864-1945), head of the instrument shop at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Starting in 1900, Ritchey used this instrument to take unprecedented images of nebulas, novas and other astronomical objects. He would later make similar but much larger telescopes for the Mount Wilson Observatory in California.
Ref: D. J. Mills, "George Willis Ritchey and the Development of Celestial Photography," American Scientist 54 (1966): 64-94.
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