History of Science documents
- Foucault instruments at the Lycée Louis le Grand, Paris (2006 June 24, in French) [pdf, 4.3 Mbyte]
- Poster presented (in absentia) at the SICU2 conference, Oxford, Mississippi, 2007 June
21-24 [pdf, 3.0 Mbyte]
- Secretan Reflecting Telescope No. 13
- Full-text search capability: a new tool for
researching the development of scientific language. The Whirlpool Nebula as a case study (Notes & Records of the
Royal Society 62 (2), 187-196 (2008) [link])
- A newly-discovered accurate early drawing of M51,
the Whirlpool Nebula (Journal of Astronomical
History & Heritage 11, (2) 107-115 (2008) [pdf, 7 Mbyte])
[link, 1.2 Mbyte]
- The Physics Instrument
Collection at the University of Rennes 1, France (Bulletin of the Scientific
Instrument Society 111, 34-39 (2011) [pdf, 385 kbyte])
- La Caille and the Far Southern Sky (Southern Stars 52 (3),
3-15 & cover (2013) [pdf, 13 Mbyte]
- Télescope de Foucault: Stupeur dans le collimateur.
Découverte (Revue du Palais de la découverte) 393, 42-49 (2014). The Foucault telescope at the
Palais de la découverte in Paris (in French). [pdf, 4.8 Mbyte]
- Evolution of the Foucault-Secretan Reflecting Telescope (Journal of Astronomical History & Heritage 19, (2) 106-184 (2016) [link, pdf, 8.9 Mbyte])
- Errata and Addenda to same [link, pdf, 120 kbyte]
- Vector graphics (infinite resolution) copy of Fig. 18 [pdf, 4 kbyte]
- Vector graphics (infinite resolution) copy of Fig. 58 [pdf, 4 kbyte]
- (Catalogue) Astronomie, Secretan,
Ch. Épry & Jacquelin, Successeurs (c.1925) [14.2 Mbyte]
- (Catalogue) Astronomie, Secretan,
Ch. Épry & Jacquelin, Successeurs (c.1925) [text serachabe, 10.6 Mbyte]
- (Catalogue des) Instruments astronomiques, Secretan,
Ch. Épry & Jacquelin, Successeurs (1942) [4.7 Mbyte]
- (Catalogue des) Instruments astronomiques, Secretan,
Ch. Épry & Jacquelin, Successeurs (1942) [text searchable, 2.3 Mbyte]
- Extrait du Catalogue génénerale des instruments
d'optique appliqués aux recherces scientifiques, médicales et industrielles et á l'enseignement
construits par Édouard LUTZ, Opticien, Officier de l'Instruction publique (c.1890) [11.3 Mbyte]
- Extrait du Catalogue génénerale des instruments
d'optique appliqués aux recherces scientifiques, médicales et industrielles et á l'enseignement
construits par Édouard LUTZ, Opticien, Officier de l'Instruction publique (c.1890) [text searchable, 6.0 Mbyte]
The Townsend Telescope is a 6-inch Cooke refractor built in 1864. Its
owner James Townsend gifted the Telescope to
Canterbury College c.1891. In 1896 it was installed in a newly-built tower
in what was then the University site in central Christchurch,
but is now the Arts Centre. In 1996 a book Stars in a Cluster
was published to celebrate the centenary of this installation, and also the
first decade of the 1m McLellan reflector at the University of Canterbury's
Mount John University Observatory.
The Townsend Tower was cracked in the Christchurch-Darfield earthquake on 2010
September 4. Work was underway to stabilise the Tower and gain access to the
Telescope when both Tower and Telescope fell in the Christchurch-Lyttelton
earthquake on 2011 February 22. The tube was squashed and the cast-iron
declination axle was fractured, but the RA and DEC setting wheels are only
burred and, most astonishing of all, the objective survived intact. Restoration is now underway.