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Francis Watkins and the Dollond Telescope Patent Controversy book cover

1st Edition

Francis Watkins and the Dollond Telescope Patent Controversy

By Brian Gee, edited by Anita McConnell Copyright 2014
430 Pages
by Routledge

430 Pages
by Routledge

424 Pages
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Francis Watkins was an eminent figure in his field of mathematical and optical instrument making in mid-eighteenth century London. Working from original documents, Brian Gee has uncovered the life and times of an optical instrument maker, who - at first glance - was not among the most prominent in his field. In fact, because Francis Watkins came from a landed background, the diversification of his... Read more
1: On Becoming an Optical Instrument Maker; 2: The Optical Community in Eighteenth-century London; 3: At the Sign of Sir Isaac Newton's Head; 4: The Chromatic Problem: From Newton's Error to Hall's Solution; 5: The Rise of John Dollond and his Patent; 6: Peter Dollond and his Conflict with Watkins & Smith; 7: Peter Dollond and his Further Disputes with Opticians; 8: New Conflicts within the Spectaclemakers' Company; 9: The Unexpected Longevity of Chester Moor Hall; 10: One Hundred Years at Charing Cross; 11: After Watkins & Hill

Biography

Brian Gee was a member of the Scientific Instrument Society from its foundation in 1983. He published numerous key works on scientific instruments and had almost completed this monograph on the Dollond patent controversy before he died in 2009. Anita McConnell is an independent historian of science, living near Cambridge. A.D. Morrison-Low won the 2008 Paul Bunge Prize for her bookMaking Scientific Instruments in the Industrial Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). She is Principal Curator, Science, at National Museums Scotland. The completion of the book was made possible by the generous funding of the Scientific Instrument Society.

Recipient of the Paul Bunge Prize 2015, awarded for outstanding research in the study of scientific instruments by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) and the Deutschen Bunsen-Gesellschaft Physikalische Chemie (DBG).

'... impressive and engaging ... this book is an impressively readable and useful source on the subjects which it addresses.' Journal for the History of Astronomy

'The book’s editors, Anita McConnell and Alison Morrison-Low, should be commended for their hard work in making this a comprehensible and valuable addition to the scholarly analysis of a crucial period in the history of invention, as should the Scientific Instrument Society for facilitating the publication.' Richard Dunn, Royal Museums Greenwich

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