The discoverer had not then succeeded in taking 

 likenesses from hfe. Holcombe immediately com- 

 menced experimenting and soon succeeded in taking 

 portraits, on silver plates, made sensitive to light by 

 Iodine. There was soon a great demand for in- 

 struments to take portraits. He had for a considerable 

 time as much as he could do to supply the applications 

 he received for these instruments, from 1839 to 1845. 

 As the calls for these instruments lessened he con- 

 tinued the manufacture of telescopes. He was the 

 first that sold a telescope of American manufacture. 

 All the telescopes used in this country before 1833, 

 had been obtained in europe. It had been said that 

 they could not be made in this country. He had 

 been greatly assisted in his sales, by the influence 

 and recommendation of scientific men. It was soon 

 discovered that telescopes could be made in America 

 and about 1845, one after another went into the 

 business, and there is now no further need of going 

 to europe for telescopes, as good ones can be made 

 in the United States as can be made in europe. 



The whole market was in his hands during thirteen 

 years. During this time the business was good and 

 paid well. The competition afterward reduced the 

 profit. In 1816 he was chosen select man and assessor 

 in his own town, which office he held during four 

 successive years, and held the office occasionally by 

 subsequent elections. In 1832 he was chosen to 

 represent the town in the Legislature of Mass and 

 he was reelected three successive terms. In 1852 

 he was elected to the State senate. In 1833 he was 

 appointed a Justice of the Peace for the county of 

 Hampden, which office he has held every year since, 

 and his last commission does not expire until May 1 875, 

 at which time, if he should live to see it, he will be 

 but a few days less than 88 years old. In 1837 he 

 received from Williams Colledge the Honorary 

 degree of A.M. In 1831 he was ordained a minister 

 in the Methodist Episcopal church. He preached 

 constantly on the sabbath during many years, and 

 afterward occasionally until he was eighty years old. 



11. Henry Fitz, 1808- 1863 



Julia Fitz Hotvell 



Henry Fitz died suddenly through an accident in 

 1863, when he ivas in his 55th year. His widow 

 closed his shop in New York City and moved the 

 equipment to Southold, Long Island, ivhere it was 

 used by his son to complete certain contracts in progress. 

 Thereafter it remained essentially as it ivas until 

 nearly the present time, when the shop was offered to 

 the U.S. National Museum of the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution by Mrs. Julia Fitz Howell, granddaughter of 

 FttZ- The decision to construct a new Musetim of 

 History and Technology made it possible to accept 

 this generous offer, and the complicated project of 

 transferring the shop and reassembling it ivas accom- 



plished in 1957 through the assistance of Mr. L. C. 

 Eichner.^ 



Although a feiv duplicate items were eliminated, 

 the shop is essentially complete, including such items 

 as Fitz s account books, the small rouge box he used 

 to polish lenses in the course of a walk, and his door 

 key. Through the assistance of Mr. Eichner and Mr. 

 Arthur V. A. Fitz the Smithsonian has obtained a 

 comet-seeker telescope and Fitz' s first instrument, a 

 small draw telescope. 



The following biographical sketch was written by 

 Mrs. Howell on the basis of papers in the possession 

 of the family. 



HENRY FITZ, inventor and telescope maker, was 

 born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on Decem- 

 ber 31, 1808. Little is known of his mother, Susan 

 Page Fitz, except that she was probably of Scottish 

 ancestry. His father, Henry Fitz, Sr., was a hatter 



' For a list of Fitz material in the U.S. National Museum, 

 see appendix, p. 184. 



164 



BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



