Meade

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See also Mead. For people named Meade, see Meade (surname).

Meade Instruments Corporation

Type	Public (NASDAQ: MEAD)
Founded	1972
Headquarters	Irvine, California, USA
Key people	Steve Murdock CEO, Brent Christensen CFO
Industry	Manufacturing
Products	Optical / mechanical devices
Website	Meade Instruments Corporation

Meade Instruments Corporation is a company based in Irvine, California, that manufactures and imports telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, CCD cameras and telescope accessories for the consumer market.

[edit] Origins and history

Founded in 1972, Meade started out as a mail order seller of small refracting telescopes and telescope accessories. They soon branched out into larger reflecting telescopes and in 1978 ventured into the Schmidt-Cassegrain that up to that time had been dominated by Celestron Corporation. Meade has continued grow to the point of arguably being the worlds largest telescope manufacturer. Meade has a long history of litigation with other companies over infringement of their patents, particularly with its once bitter rival Celestron.

[edit] Products

$A Meade 90mm refractor$

A Meade 90mm refractor

Products (as of 2007) produced by Meade include:

Binoculars
Microscopes
Spotting scopes
Achromatic Refractors (5 and 6-inch)
Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes (8 to 12 inches – LX-90 models only)
Schmidt-Newtonian telescopes (6 to 10 inches).
Modified Ritchey-Chrétien LX-200R series (8 to 16 inches) and RCX400 series (10 to 20-inches), the latter either on a fork alt-az/equatorial mount (10 to 16 inches) or an observatory-class German equatorial mount (16 and 20-inch models only)
ETX series Maksutov-Cassegrain telescopes ranging in size from 90mm to 125mm. (see: Meade ETX telescope)
"Truss-tube" Dobsonian telescopes (currently 8, 10, and 12 inches, with a new 16-inch model coming out in late January/early February).

Many Meade telescopes come on alt-azimuth and equatorial mounts with computerized locating of astronomical objects as well as mounts that will aim themselves at any given object (a technology commonly called "GoTo").

Other accessories produced by Meade include the series 5000 eyepieces that are comparable in construction to those of Chester, New York-based Tele Vue Optical's "Nagler" (82-degree field of view), "Panoptic" (68-degree field of view), and "Radian" (60-degree field of view) eyepieces.

Meade also sells under the "Meade" name imported low to moderate cost reflectors and refractors intended for the beginner retail market.

In 2004 Meade acquired Coronado Filters, who produce an extensive range of specialty telescopes that allow views of the sun in Hydrogen-Alpha, and more recently Calcium K line wavelengths.

In November, 2006, three unnamed plaintiffs, including a manufacturer of traditional Ritchey-Chrétien telescopes, filed a civil lawsuit against Meade, several dealerships, and yet-to-be-named individuals in federal court (New York Southern District). The complaint is against Meade advertising their RCX400 and LX200R models as "Ritchey-Chrétien". The plaintiffs claim these models do not use true Ritchey-Chrétien optics and therefore Meade and its retailers are committing false advertising infringing on the plaintiff's market.[1] [2]