Newtonian Reflecting Telescope (replica)
date: label: date made
content: ca 1962
name: label: maker
content: L. C. Eichner Instruments
notes: label: Description
content: In 1667, then a young Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) experimented with lenses and prisms. The following year, having found that he could not avoid the colored rings caused by the lenses (a phenomenon caused by what is now termed chromatic aberration), Newton made the first functional reflecting telescope. Newton’s second reflecting telescope, completed in the fall of 1671 and shown to the Royal Society of London, led to his election to Royal Society Fellowship in early 1672. What became of those two historic telescopes is not now known.
label: Description
content: This Newtonian telescope in the National Museum of American History is a replica of the one that was given to the Royal Society in 1766, and that historians regard as “possibly the world’s oldest surviving reflecting telescope.” The metal mirror is 6 inches diameter. The cardboard tube, 12 inches long, has been cut in half and fitted with a diagram of the light path.
label: Description
content: Ref: A. Rupert Hall and A. D. C. Simpson, “An Account of the Royal Society’s Newton Telescope,” <i>Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London</i> 50 (1996): 1-11.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New Jersey, Clifton
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.320820
label: catalog number
content: 320820
label: accession number
content: 243023
objectType: label: Object Name
content: telescope, reflecting (replica)
label: Object Name
content: telescope (replica)
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 11 in x 5 3/4 in x 8 5/8 in; 27.94 cm x 14.605 cm x 21.9075 cm