William Herschel - Telescopes Quotes

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When I resided at Bath I had long been acquainted with the theory of optics and mechanics, and wanted only that experience so necessary in the practical part of these sciences. This I acquired by degrees at that place where in my leisure hours, by way of amusement, I made several two-foot, five-foot, seven-foot, ten-foot and twenty-foot Newtonian telescopes, beside others, of the Gregorian form, of eight, twelve, and eighteen inches, and two, three, five, and ten feet focal length. In this way I made not less than two hundred seven-foot, one hundred and fifty ten-foot, and about eighty twenty-foot mirrors, not to mention the Gregorian telescopes.

William Herschel
I have made it a rule never to employ a larger telescope when a smaller will answer the purpose.

William Herschel
The number of stands I invented for these telescopes it would not be easy to assign.... In 1781 I began to construct a thirty foot aërial reflector, and having made a stand for it, I cast the mirror thirty-six inches in diameter. This was cracked in cooling. I cast it a second time, and the furnace I had built in my house broke.

William Herschel
In the year 1783 I finished a very good twenty-foot reflector with a large aperture, and mounted it upon the plan of my present telescope. After two years' observation with it, the great advantage of such apertures appeared so clearly to me that I recurred to my former intention of increasing them still further; and being now sufficiently provided with experience in the work which I wished to undertake, the President of the Royal Society, who is always ready to promote useful undertakings, had the goodness to lay my design before the king. His Majesty was graciously pleased to approve of it, and with his usual liberality to support it with his royal bounty.

William Herschel
In future... we shall look upon those regions into which we may now penetrate by means of such large telescopes, as a naturalist regards a rich extent of ground or chain of mountains containing strata variously inclined and directed, as well as consisting of very different materials. The surface of a globe or map therefore will but ill delineate the interior parts of the heavens.

William Herschel
The power of penetrating into space by telescopes is very different from magnifying power, and ought to be considered separately.

William Herschel
I will make such telescopes and see such things!

William Herschel
In the old Telescope's tube we sit, And the shades of the past around us flit.

William Herschel
A little practice in this business [looking through a telescope] soon makes it easy, especially to one who has already been used to look with both eyes open.

William Herschel