Featured 18th Century Telescope (1800? 1790?)

My experience with telescopes tells me that this is significantly older than the Victorian era. How much older I'm not sure, but I doubt this was made after the 1830s...



The engraving "W.B. to F.S. Fox" is the only writing on it.


After buying it, I cleaned the lenses and refitted one of the threaded coupling-rings which hold the draw-tubes together (it was loose and wobbly, but it's fine now).

The telescope is in great overall condition. The lenses aren't damaged. There's one or two minor dents but nothing that affects its use or maintenance. There's one crack down the barrel which I suspect is just from age or something. The barrel itself is not broken. The seller speculated that the brass ring around the middle was (possibly) a later addition to the telescope, to reinforce it when the barrel cracked.

I have never seen such a thing on ANY other antique telescope that I've either seen, or owned, so it seems to be a reasonable suggestion.

 

Beautiful, and great for silver spotting.
Someone will be able to date the font.

 

Unbranded scopes always get me nervous with all these Indian replicas around but yours has all the right kind of wear patterns to be right. What clues make you think it would be so old?

 

The screw doesn’t look that old, nor does it look like it’s replaced.

 

Actually I'd be MORE scared of a branded scope. I've seen hundreds of reproductions and you can spot one a mile off - they always look 'too perfect' with their aging. The vast majority of antique scopes that I've seen were NOT branded - they were such common things that I guess most makers didn't see the point of it.

A victorian (or even a modern) telescope has lenses which are held in with threaded rings. This is so that you can unscrew the whole damn thing and take out the glass to clean it, or replace it if it's broken.

Georgian telescopes did not have this feature. Once the glass is broken, it's broken. You can't remove it. And you can't remove it because the glass disc is actually spun into the frame (made of brass) which holds it in place. It's a feature I've only ever seen in MUCH older telescopes. By the Victorian era, for whatever reason, they decided that having lenses that were wholly removable might be a good idea if you wanted to try and replace them.

On top of that, the eyepiece shutter simply slides up and down (like a guillotine). Victorian ones pivot from one side to the other on a screw. Modern telescopes still do this (that's when you can even find them with an eyepiece cover. Most of the reproductions that I've seen don't bother with that today, but that's because they're not meant to be used as everyday tools).

I dunno if I'm making much sense. I'd have to show you photographs to really explain it properly...

 

Thanks Shangas. Great information and sorry I can't add anything. But I do love the scope.

 

Any font can be replicated,there are many sources.

 

Yes, I wasn't thinking about fakes, etc. I am just an innocent when it comes to telescopes.

 

I have seen a lot of fake technical instruments too, sextants, telescopes, compasses etc. so there is a great need to be cautious. However, the degree of wear and the build-up of scratches, marks etc around the Dedication script on this one doesn't look manufactured to me. The whole scope looks genuine to me, but I am no expert.

 

I know this is authentic. It has damage in places that a fake - even a fake with fake damage - wouldn't have. There's dents and chips (small ones, but dents and chips nonetheless, but not big enough to make the telescope unusable or compromise integrity) to lenses and metalwork inside the drawtubes (presumably from when it was disassembled for cleaning).

You wouldn't find this on a reproduction or a fake. They wouldn't bother going to that kind of detail.

 

@ Shangas

Would they actually plate the brass in that time period?

 

No, why do you ask?

 

The top of the tube below the eyepiece and the band with engraving appear to have plating wear.

 

Hi Hb, what is plating wear? Thanks.

 

I think what you are seeing is wear to the lacquer coating. Most brass pieces on instruments were given a lacquer coating.

 

If you look at the photo with the engraved letters,you will see bright "brass" and dark areas from scratches and wear.

 

Hi again Shangas, I feel like a restless puppy today. I can't get settled. Maybe it was the 5.00 am coffee?

Anyway, on my iPhone, the few lines of your text around the brass Presentation ring and the photo do not show. I am not sure why this has happened, but it may affect others using their phone too. All text and photos show on my MacBook.

 

Are you interpreting this wear as bright brass plating over some other metal? I think the bright areas are where the lacquer coating is intact, protecting the brass, and the darker areas are where the coating has been damaged and the brass has tarnished.

 

The telescope is made entirely of brass, inside and out. The difference in colour is because of the lacquering. Brass was lacquered in an attempt to stop it tarnishing and corroding (and so that you didn't have to polish it so often to keep it clean).

The difference in colour is, as 2MB says, because in some areas, the lacquer has worn off and the brass underneath has tarnished, whereas other areas the lacquer has survived and the brass remains bright.

To get uniformity, you'd have to strip off all the lacquer, polish all the brass and then relacquer.

I'm too lazy to do that. I don't intend to do anything else to this telescope.

I've pulled it apart, wiped down the lenses and blown out the dust, I've fixed a wonky draw-tube coupler and given the whole thing a general once-over, but I don't really intend to do anything else with it. I think it looks great as it is.

 

The US Navy in the past had every piece of brass stripped of lacquer and hand cleaned/polished by hand.