Warner & Swasey Company

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26-inch Warner & Swasey refractor, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1904. Warner & Swasey name is visible on plate attached to telescope mount at lower right.

The Warner & Swasey Company was an American manufacturer of high-quality special machinery and machine tools. Founded in 1880 by Worcester Reed Warner (1846-1929) and Ambrose Swasey (1846-1937), the company was best known for two general types of products: astronomical telescopes (and other equipment for astronomical observatories) and lathes. When one considers how much the development of large optical telescopes in the 19th and 20th centuries relied upon the advancement of machine tool technology, the connection is logical.

The first Warner & Swasey telescope was sold to Beloit College for its new Smith Observatory and had a 9.5-inch lens made by Alvan Clark & Sons. Among the notable instruments the company built were the telescopes for Lick Observatory (1883), the United States Naval Observatory (1893), Yerkes Observatory (1897) and Canada's Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (1916). In 1919, the company's founders donated their private observatory in East Cleveland, Ohio to Case Western Reserve University. Today's Warner and Swasey Observatory grew from that facility. The company was acquired by Bendix Corporation in 1980.

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[edit] Observatories with Warner & Swasey telescopes

• Crane Observatory, Washburn University
• Chabot Space & Science Center, Oakland, California
• Hildene Astronomy Club (Robert Todd Lincoln Telescope), Manchester, Vermont
• Kirkwood Observatory, Indiana University
• Lee Observatory, American University of Beirut
• McDonald Observatory (Otto Struve Telescope), University of Texas at Austin
• Painter Hall Observatory, University of Texas at Austin
• McKim Observatory, DePauw University
• Mueller Observatory, Cleveland Museum of Natural History
• Spacewatch 0.9-meter Telescope, Kitt Peak, University of Arizona
• Swasey Observatory, Denison University
• University of Washington Observatory, University of Washington

Warner & Swasey designed and built the Lick Observatory refractor, shown here in an 1889 drawing. Alvan Clark & Sons made the 36-inch onjective lens.

[edit] External links

• International Catalog of Sources: Warner & Swasey Company records to 1919
  • 1900-1985
  • The story of Warner & Swasey telescopes by Ernest N. Jennison
• The Beautiful Early Telescopes of Warner & Swasey, Including the J.A. Brashear and C.S. Hastings Optical Collaboration, abstract of lecture by John W. Briggs, Yerkes Observatory, at the 112th annual meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Pasadena, CA, July 15, 2000
• The 26-inch USNO Refracting Telescope
• Smith Observatory History