H. Page Bailey was a dentist in Riverside, California, who became interested in telescope making when a cash-strapped patient paid his bill with a 12-inch telescope. In 1932, Bailey attended a meeting of the Riverside Astronomical Society at which D.O. Hendrix, an astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory, discussed Bernhard Schmidt’s recently-published paper on photographic telescopes. That talk inspired Bailey to build this f/2.5 instrument. It is the first Schmidt telescope made in the United States, and the first one made by anyone else other than Bernhard Schmidt himself. The mount is made from an automobile frame.