Howard N.E. Handbook for Telescope Making

Making Faber & Faber, 1962 - 322 p.
ISBN: 0-571-04680-0The procedures described in the Handbook for Telescope Making are based on my work of many years with teen-age boys in building and using telescopes. This experience has taught me that constructing an excellent telescope does not depend on a knowledge of higher mathematics or on advanced mechanical training. I have not strayed too deeply into technicalities nor, on the other hand, into oversimplification. Mathematics has been reduced to a minimum and technical terms have been avoided wherever possible.At the same time, however, any easing of traditional requirements could, in certain respects, lead to more, rather than fewer, difficulties in constructing a good telescope. I have, therefore, set rigorous standards in some places. For example, there has been no lessening of standards in the requirements for the optical parts, for this would inevitably result in poor performance of the telescope as a whole.Each chapter includes several methods of accomplishing the same result. Some methods are more expensive or demand more skill than others. Choose the one that suits both the pocketbook and the tools in the workshop.Some of the techniques represent recent advances in the telescope-maker’s art; many are tried-and-true methods used by amateurs ever since William Ellison published his classic work, The Amateur’s Telescope, some fifty years ago. The Handbook for Telescope Making presents the most simple and most practical techniques consistent with the highest professional standards.