Porter Garden Telescope

Object Details

Jones & Lamson Machine Co.

Brashear, John A.

Description

A skillful blending of art and science, the Porter Garden Telescope is a 6-inch f/4 Newtonian reflector cast in solid statuary bronze that can also serve as a sundial and as an elegant piece of domestic garden furniture. The slender blade of overlapping leaves holds the primary mirror, the prism, and the eyepiece in alignment. A bowl of lotus leaves embraces the mirror and a pair of cylindrical flowers forms the slow motion controls. The base is embellished with the names of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. When not in use, the optical elements could be removed and taken indoors.

Russell Porter, an Arctic explorer and Boston architect, designed the Garden Telescope. John A. Brashear provided the eyepieces and prisms. Wilbur Perry, an early member of Stellafane, figured the mirrors.

This example is marked "The Porter Garden Telescope built and sold by Jones & Lamson Machine Co. Springfield Vermont. -U-S-A- / No. 49 / US Patent 1468973 Sept. 25, 1923." Christian La Roche acquired it in the early 1930s and gave it to the Smithsonian in 1992.

The Garden Telescope has a split-ring equatorial mount. Porter developed this design in 1918 and later proposed it for the large telescope on Mt. Palomar. John Pierce, a member of the Springfield Telescope Makers, suggested "that the 200-inch mount as constructed is simply a glorified 'Garden Telescope,' with a lattice tube instead of the bar which supports the prism and ocular in the garden telescope."

We suspect that fewer than 100 Garden Telescopes were ever made. This commercial failure can be partially attributed to cost. With a price tag ranging from $400 to $500, it was beyond the means of most potential buyers.

Ref: John Tracy Spaight, "The Porter Garden Telescope," Rittenhouse 6 (1992): 97-102.

Location

Currently not on view

Credit Line

Christian La Roche

after 1923-09-25

ID Number

1992.0242.01

catalog number

1992.0242.01

accession number

1992.0242

Object Name

Porter Garden Telelescope (mount)

Physical Description

statuary bronze (overall material)

brass (overall material)

Measurements

overall: 88 cm x 31.5 cm x 31.7 cm; 34 21/32 in x 12 13/32 in x 12 15/32 in

overall: 28 in x 12 1/2 in x 24 in; 71.12 cm x 31.75 cm x 60.96 cm

place made

United States: Vermont, Springfield

See more items in

Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences

Science & Mathematics

National Museum of American History

Record ID

nmah_1184878

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746ad-e687-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa