Thursday, 20 February 2020

Optical Instruments and Their Makers


It’s been a while since I’ve updated you on my work in progress, so here goes: It’s non-fiction, and the title is Brass & Glass: Optical Instruments and Their Makers.

The inspiration for the book came from my interests in stargazing, photography, microscopy and bird-watching. These involve using telescopes, microscopes, binoculars and cameras, and soon I began to take an interest in classic and vintage optical instruments. I found the lack of reference material frustrating - I would see an interesting looking vintage telescope at auction, but to find out more about the maker I would have to buy extraordinarily expensive reference books, many of which are out of print. Further, the information I sought was frequently scattered around multiple sources, and time-consuming to collate. I wanted an affordable, simple, encyclopaedic reference in which I could find the name of the maker or optical instrument and a concise, but informative article about them. This book is my attempt to remedy that gap in the literature.

It’s up to over 1700 entries now, and I’m working with several subject-matter experts to get critique feedback on the content. That will lead to a new raft of updates and additions then, when that’s complete, hopefully it’ll be close to being ready for publication.

Watch this space...

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