Alvan Clark & Sons
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Alvan Clark & Sons was an American maker of optics that became famous for crafting lenses for some of the largest refracting telescopes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Founded in 1846 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts by Alvan Clark (1804 - 1887) and his sons George Bassett Clark (1827 - 1891) and Alvan Graham Clark (1832 - 1897). Five times, the firm built the largest refracting telescopes in the world: the 18.5-inch Dearborn telescope at the University of Chicago was commissioned in 1856 by the University of Mississippi, but the outbreak of civil war prevented them from ever taking ownership. In 1873 they built the 26-inch objective lens for the refractor at the United States Naval Observatory. In 1883, they build the 30-inch telescope for the Pulkovo Observatory in Russia, the 36-inch objective for the refractor at Lick Observatory was made in 1887, and the 40-inch lens for the Yerkes Observatory refractor, in 1897, remains the largest ever built.
The company's assets were acquired by the Sprague-Hathaway Manufacturing Company in 1933, but continued to operate under the Clark name. In 1936, Sprague-Hathaway moved the Clark shop to a new location in West Somerville, Massachusetts, where manufacturing continued in association with the Perkin-Elmer Corporation, another maker of precision instruments. Most of Clark's equipment was disposed of as scrap during World War II, and Sprague-Hathaway itself was liquidated in 1958.
[edit] Reference
- Deborah Jean Warner and Robert B. Ariail, Alvan Clark & Sons, artists in optics (2nd English ed.) Richmond, VA. : Willmann-Bell, in association with National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1995 (1996 printing), 298 p. ISBN 0-943396-46-8
