Guess I bought the same book with the photo of 'The Leviathan'......and landscape lens Ax 3631Originally Posted by Willeica
The photo of the landscape lens seems to have been taken from the Auction site....
most interesting info in this book about Grubb for me was the excerpt of and info about the 'Grubb lens ledger'.
I have been able to date several of my lenses to the day they were 'manufactured' or more likely completed which is quite extraordinary.
Whilst I have downloaded many photos of existing Grubb lenses I would only use them for personal reference and never publish them without consent. They are © after all.
Copyright law (domestic and international) is quite complicated and raises many questions, especially with regard to publicly available content on the internet; not easy to judge what is wright or wrong. In case of a book the publisher seems to be responsible to ascertain whether the book is not conflicting with copyrights and the like.
Well, not really. Photographic © is usually the photographer's, although there are exceptions. Unauthorised usage, especially when there is a relatively easy way of contacting the person who showed the photo on the web, breaches © and as such can carry penalties (usage fees, sometime punitive). It requires a civil action if it is to be enforced of course, but in William's case it would be very straihtforward were he to puruse it, though probaby not worthwhile. Linking to a photo on the web can avoid this, but using a photo in a publication without consent is a bit of a no-no really.
Paul and I have some of the entries in that ledger. For example, I have the one for 3631, which is in my collection, so I know the exact date that it was finished in 1875. It looks like the lenses were finished in batches in Rathmines after the Great Melbourne Telescope had been finished and just before work commenced on the Vienna Observatory. I have several photos of the Rathmines building from the 1870s, including one which had been taken by a gentleman who had come over from Vienna. It should still be in the Vienna Observatory archives. It is nice to have both the works record for my lens and also a picture of the building in which it was made in the 1870s. I do intend to use the lens to take some photos of of the spot at which it was made. The building is, however, long since gone. I have brought Paul (pgk) to that spot. I have also photographed the Ax lens and my Grubb Helicoid lens sitting on the graves of both Thomas and Howard Grubb and also on one of the Grubb coelostats at Dunsink Obervatory which were used to prove Einstein's Theory of Relativity. I have also had the geometry set of Thomas Grubb in my hands and I know where it is still located. There is a lot more, some of which I cannot mention here.
The photo of Ax 3631 probably came from the Breker Auction website. Speaking of Vienna, I have full permission to use the images of items at the Leitz Photographica Auction, once I acknowledge the source. The guys in Vienna know and trust me
I know all about the copyright issues. All I can do is to repeat what I have already said, which is that the guys who produced the book lost out by not getting in touch with me. Surely, the fact that a Grubb collector lived in Ireland, just a few miles from where the Grubb factory was located, would have rung some bells for them.
William
An early bird for the list, which sold for a fine price a few days ago, an 'E' aplanatic:
The largest of the Grubb Patent stereo lenses - 7" focal length and intended to cover 4" x 4". It sold fast
Another Grubb lens arrived today - a Doublet. It was made on 6th October 1865 and I have another made on 22nd June 1865, both of which are designated as being 'B' lenses so they should be identical. Or so I thought. They are not. Not vastly different but the earlier is slightly bigger and the flange is not interchangeable. The joy of bespoke manufacture using steam powered lathes! This is the sixth Grubb Doublet that I have tracked as surviving, via the web. They are not plentiful.
Congrats on the acquisition. do you want to reveal their serial numbers? or post any pictures?
(since the list here became rapidly outdated I started to have my own updated)
I need to convert my spreadsheet so that it works in a post. I have currently tracked nearly 140 surviving Grubb lenses (father and son) with a few others buried in museum collections which seem to be difficult to access and get information about. Some have lost their glass though and at least one is an amalgam of two Petzvals! Many have been used hard and show it and I own one which appears to have been lightly repolished at some point (I bought this one from India where someone has clearly worked on it, and quite well by the look of it. Few have really pristine optics and all the Patent lenses from Thomas have rice writing on them. I have about 30k words written about the Grubbs, their photographic lenses and the contemporary users of them (Francis Bedford, Samuel Bourne, Carleton Watkins and Thomas Annan as examples).
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