Description

A fine three draw brass telescope measuring 9.5″ when closed and 29.5″ when fully open, the first draw engraved, ‘Dollond, London’ and also, ‘Sir James South’. All lenses are damage free and the telescope gives excellent clear views. All brass parts retain the original lacquer. The barrel is finished in a very dark maroon, almost black, colour.                                                                The lacquered brass stand can be unscrewed midway down the column to reveal a large steel corkscrew for the user to fix to a tree branch or fence post. It appears un-used. The telescope, stand and case are in remarkable original condition noting a small hairline fracture to the lacquer on the barrel from the rear collar, hardly noticeable and looks more like a scratch.                        

The first draw tube is segmented into three parts with an arrangement of three lenses within the draw tube.

The mahogany case measures 11.25″ x 5.75″.

(Sir James South (October 1785 – October 1867) was a British astronomer and a joint founder of the Astronomical Society of London, and it was under his name, as President of the Society in 1831, that a petition was successfully submitted to obtain a Royal Charter, whereupon it became the Royal Astronomical Society. He originally trained as a chemist, then as a surgeon, but his interests in astronomy overtook all things. In 1816 he married Charlotte Ellis. She was an heiress and his new-found wealth enabled him to give up surgery and concentrate on astronomy.

He won the Copley Medal in 1826 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in that same year.

He was knighted by King William V1 in 1831.

Starting around 1826, James South made plans for a new, larger telescope, an equatorially mounted achromatic refractor (a telescope with a lens) in a new observatory.He bought a 12-inch aperture lens from Robert Aglae Cauchoix in Paris for about 1000 pounds, large enough to be the biggest achromatic object lens in the world at the time.The telescope for the lens was completed, but dismantled around 1838.The next largest refractor, was at the Makree Observatory, which successfully completed a 13.3-inch refractor (also a Cauchoix of Paris lens) in the 1830s on a Thomas Grubb mount. The problem for James South’s telescope was the equatorial mount.

South was involved in a notorious lawsuit brought against him by the instrument maker Edward Troughton over this equatorial-mount telescope which the latter had constructed for him, and which South considered defective. Troughton sued him for payment and won. South promptly demolished the telescope mount. The 12-inch lens, which had been purchased separately, was preserved and presented to the (Dublin) Dunsink Observatory in 1862.