As has often been related, Alvan Clark became a telescope maker 

 almost by accident. Interest in astronomy became widespread in 1844, 

 spurred by the appearance of the great comet in the previous year. 

 Wealthy Bostonians raised money for a German equatorial refractor, 

 equal to the largest in the world, for Harvard College. During that same 

 year the dinner bell broke at Phillips Academy at Andover, where George 

 Bassett Clark was enrolled as a student in preparation for entering 

 Harvard. Following Newton's example, George melted down this bell 

 metal to make a reflecting telescope. Alvan watched his son's experiment 

 with growing enthusiasm and, like any father, could not refrain from 

 giving him the "benefit" of his "maturer judgment" ; 1S he then promptly 

 became involved with the construction of telescopes. The record intimates, 

 however, that neither of his sons worked with him much before 1850. 



The firm of Alvan Clark & Sons grew out of a small shop in East Cam- 

 bridge in which George Bassett Clark made and repaired scientific instru- 

 ments. The Clarks themselves do not seem to have publicly recorded the 

 establishment of their company. The date 1850 — given in 20th-century 

 advertisements 19 — must refer to the start of George's shop. For Alvan 

 Graham was still serving a mechanical apprenticeship in 1850; and until 

 i860, when he finally closed his Boston portrait studio, Alvan Clark 

 could spend only his spare time working on astronomical instruments. 20 



Although George was directly responsible for the first telescope and 

 the nucleus of the company, we know less about him than about his 

 father or brother. 21 This is perhaps because his constant devotion to the 

 business kept him from pursuing other activities. He was born in Lowell 

 in 1827, aR d prior to his two years at Andover he attended a grammar 

 school, a high school, and Mr. Whitman's private school in Cambridge. 

 George never made it to Harvard. After graduation from Andover he was 

 attracted by the railroads, which had just begun to spread across New 

 England, and spent a couple of years as a civil engineer on the Boston 

 and Maine and the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain lines. In 1848 

 the gold rush lured him to California: he returned East within a year, 



18 Alvan Clark autobiography, op. cit., p. 113. 



19 See advertisements in Popular Astronomy, vol. 13 (1905). 



20 "The Alvan Clark Establishment," Scientific American, vol. 57 (1887), pp. 



i9 8 -'99- 



21 Most available biographical information on George Bassett Clark is from his 

 obituary in Proc, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 27 (1891-1892). pp. 

 360-363. 



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