Telescope

Description:

Refracting telescopes with a short focus and wide field of view are known as comet seekers. This example has an achromatic objective of 5 inches aperture, a tapered wooden tube 34 inches long, and a small finder scope. The inscription on the focusing mount reads “TOLLES BOSTON.”

The "B.A. Gould" inscription on the flange of the objective mount refers to the astronomer, Benjamin Apthorp Gould. In his account of a solar eclipse in August 1869, Gould noted that he had used a “somewhat peculiar” telescope that had been made for him several years since by Robert E. Tolles, “then of Canastota, N.Y. and now superintendent of the Boston Optical Works.” Gould took this telescope to Cordoba where he served as the first director of the Argentine National Observatory, and he later ordered a similar instrument for the Argentine government. Following his return to the United States, Gould gave the telescope to Seth Chandler, an astronomer who had been his assistant in the late 1860's. A Chandler descendant gave it to the Smithsonian in 1980.

Ref: “Report of Dr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Burlington, Iowa,” in Reports of Observations of the Total Eclipse of the Sun, August 7, 1869, p. 29-38.

D. J. Warner, “The Microscopes and Telescopes of Robert B. Tolles,” Rittenhouse 9 (1995): 65-83.

George C. Comstock, “Benjamin Apthorp Gould,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 17 (1922): 155-180.

W. E. Carter and M. S. Carter, “Seth Carlo Chandler, Jr.,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (1995): 45-79.