of New York has never been regarded as an instrument well adapted for 

 astronomical research. This is due not only to original defects in its optical 

 parts, but also to faulty construction of its mechanical arrangements and 

 the lack of suitable subsidiary apparatus." When the Clarks examined 

 the telescope they found it less faulty than its reputation; they thus 

 limited their work to correcting the chromatic aberration as much as the 

 unusual thinness of the lenses would permit, and making a few additions 

 and improvements to the battery of eyepieces and micrometers. The 

 Clarks also refigured the 6%-inch objective of the transit circle so that 

 Boss found it "all that could be desired." And they made a chrono- 

 graph in which the rotation of the cylinder was governed by a rotary 

 pendulum. 81 



By 1 888 Francis G. Du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, had a private 

 observatory housing a 12 -inch aperture reflecting telescope by Brashear, 

 and a refracting telescope with a Brashear equatorial mount and a 

 4 J/2 -inch aperture objective lens figured by the Clarks. 82 



The B. M. C. Durfee High School in Fall River, Massachusetts, has 

 a telescope of 1888. The 8-inch achromatic objective was made by the 

 Clarks, and the clock-driven equatorial mount was made by Warner & 

 Swasey. 83 



Eastern Michigan University, a state normal school, has been 

 using a portable 4-inch Clark equatorial refractor since at least 1878. 

 In that year James C. Watson borrowed it for use during the solar 

 eclipse, and with it he "discovered" two new planets between Mercury 

 and the sun. 84 



D. W. Edgecomb of Newington, Connecticut, owned a 9. 4-inch aper- 

 ture equatorial refractor made by the Clarks in 1874. He claimed that 

 this telescope, which he used for observations of the moon, planets, and 



81 Report of the Astronomer in Charge of the Dudley Observatory (1877), pp. 6-7. See 

 also ibid. (1878), pp. 1-3. 



82 William C. Winlock, "Progress of Astronomy for 1887, 1 &%%," Annual Report . . . 

 Smithsonian Institution . . . 1888, p. 186. 



83 William H. Knight, "Some Telescopes in the United States," op. cit., pp. 



394-395- 



84 U.S. Naval Observatory Reports of the Total Solar Eclipses of July 2g, i8jg and 

 January n, 1880 (Washington, D.C., 1880), p. 117. 



60 



