He returned to New York in November 1839 and in that month, according to
the testimony of his son Harry, made a portrait with a camera invented
by Wolcott. This camera portrait he believed to be the first ever made.
In 1840, after more experimenting, he set up a studio in Baltimore,
where his father was then living, and spent several years there “taking
likenesses.” At the same time he continued to work with telescopes and
lenses. His first refractors were built there, instruments he later
referred to as crude affairs.
While in Baltimore he took a step which marks the beginning of the final
phase of his career. In June 1844 he married Julia Ann Wells of Southold,
Long Island, whom he had known for about a decade and with whom he had
long corresponded. Julia was a woman of unusual ability and personality,
less scientific than he but more literary and artistic, and no less
intelligent. With her to encourage him, he continued his experiments in
telescope building. A year after their marriage they moved to New York,
where he was to spend the remainder of his life.
That summer he prepared a 6-inch refracting telescope for exhibition
at the Fair of the American Institute, held annually in New York. This
carefully constructed instrument, with its ingenious tripod and its
achromatic objective—which he had made himself, correcting the curves by
a process of his own invention—won the highest award of the Fair, a gold
medal. It was the first of many such medals he was to earn. His telescope
also received favorable notice from scientists and astronomers, among
them Lewis M. Rutherfurd, a wealthy New Yorker and trustee of Columbia
College. Rutherfurd immediately ordered a 4-inch refractor for his own
observatory. His interest and example soon brought orders from others.
From this time on, Henry Fitz devoted most of his energies to building
telescopes. Cameras were not altogether abandoned. He continued to make
them and to instruct others in their use. He invented a camera lens that
was patented posthumously. He was one of the founders of the American
Photographical Society and remained interested in it all his life. But
from 1845 on, cameras became secondary; he built them between telescope
orders.
[Illustration: FIGURE 10.—Henry Fitz made this 13-inch equatorial
refractor in 1861 for the Allegheny Observatory. It is still in use.
The University of Michigan has in use a Fitz refractor of similar size.
(_Photo courtesy Allegheny Observatory_)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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