Produced by Colin Bell, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY: PAPER 26 HOLCOMB, FITZ, AND PEATE: THREE 19TH-CENTURY AMERICAN TELESCOPE MAKERS INTRODUCTION—_Robert P. Multhauf_ 156 I. Amasa Holcomb—_Autobiographical Sketch_ 160 II. Henry Fitz—_Julia Fitz Howell_ 164 III. John Peate—_F. W. Preston and William J. McGrath, Jr._ 171 HOLCOMB, FITZ, and PEATE: Three 19th Century American Telescope Makers _Practically all the telescopes used by amateur scientists in 18th-century America were of European origin. Our dependence upon foreign sources for these instruments continued well into the 19th century, and the beginning of telescope making in this country has conventionally been associated with the names of Alvan Clark and John Brashear, whose work dates from the 1860’s._ _Presented here are biographical sketches of two predecessors and a contemporary of Clark and Brashear whose obscurity is not deserved. The accounts relate some hitherto little-known aspects of telescope making in America as it progressed from mechanic art to science._ THE AUTHOR _of the Introduction, Robert P. Multhauf, is head curator of the department of science and technology in the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution._ INTRODUCTION _Robert P. Multhauf_ The telescope was invented about 1600. It was brought to America about a half-century later, and within another century had become a commonplace appurtenance to the library of the cultivated gentleman.[1] Throughout this period, from Galileo to Herschel, the telescope found use in scientific astronomy, although the possibility of contributing to the science of astronomy by simple observation diminished continuously after the time of Galileo. Herschel’s work had aimed at the advancement of scientific astronomy through increasing spectacularly our powers of vision, just as had that of Galileo in the 17th century and of Hale in the 20th. But even in Herschel’s time the monstrous size of the instrument required made the project something of a national effort. The telescopes of the 18th-century American gentleman were already toys, as far as the astronomer was concerned.