Need Grubb Lens Expertise

[Willeica]

I was about to raise the matter of when is an Irishman a real Irishman in the 19th century, but you have answered the question for me - as regards Grubb and Parsons!
Britain has no monopoly on Jingoism and Zenophobia in the 20th century. I was reading the account of a Danish group's exploration and settlement attempts in Mongolia during the 1920’s a few years ago and came across the most awful sections characterizing the “natives” and their “abilities”.

William Parsons was born in York and died in Dublin. His wife Mary was also born in Yorkshire, in Bradford. Charles was born in London and died in Jamaica. He did a lot of his growing up in Birr. He is rightly regarded with pride here in Ireland for his achievements, particularly for the steam turbine. His Wikipedia entry describes him as an 'Irish engineer' and I would not argue with that. Both Grubbs were born and died in Ireland and lived here all of their lives apart from the sojourn by Howard in St Albans after WWII. Howard also had a holiday home in North Wales and I have seen the holiday photos which he and his family took there. The Grubbs are not as well known here, probably because, unlike the Parsons family, they did not leave behind a large site such as Birr Castle which still contains what was the world's largest telescope for most of the 19th Century. The Grubb Works in Rathmines no longer exists. I believe I read somewhere that it had contained a factory for waterproof wear for some years after the Grubbs left, but it has long since been demolished.

Speaking of chauvinism and jingoism there is no evidence that either the Grubbs or the Parsons families engaged in this, but Howard, at least, was proud of his knighthood and there is written evidence of this. In the 1850s, Thomas was subject to some not very nice comments from the other side of the Irish Sea, particularly from Thomas Sutton with his nasty 'Green Isle' comments, although I recently came across a piece in the RPS Journal where Sutton aka ' The Wrangler from Cambridge' apologised to Grubb for his earlier comments. One interesting point is that Thomas did not have 'Dublin' engraved on his Aplanatic lenses which were subject to his British patent, but he happily had 'Dublin' engraved on his non patent lenses e.g. the Petzval types

The history of the relationship between Ireland and Britain is littered with unfortunate and incorrect concepts of each other, some of which have lasted up to the present time. Racial and cultural stereotypes are never helpful, no matter what part of the world they come from and are best left to history. They have no place in the world of today.

William

[Jody_S]

Another one for the lists, and I finally found a lens worthy of mounting on my 8x10 studio camera:

No 3032, engraved Grubb, Dublin, a C2 Petzval (16.25in f5, for 8x10), with a slide-in Waterhouse stop mounted in the hood, just in front of the front element. It came with an f13 stop. Would this particular disposition serve to date the lens, or does someone now have the Grubb production records, as I noticed others were able to date their lenses exactly?

[pgk]

Another one for the lists, and I finally found a lens worthy of mounting on my 8x10 studio camera:

No 3032, engraved Grubb, Dublin, a C2 Petzval (16.25in f5, for 8x10), with a slide-in Waterhouse stop mounted in the hood, just in front of the front element. It came with an f13 stop. Would this particular disposition serve to date the lens, or does someone now have the Grubb production records, as I noticed others were able to date their lenses exactly?

I can contact the person who owns a Grubb factory ledger and see if I can find out exactly when it was completed at the factory. I would estimate ~1870 within a year or so though from the data I hold (2409 on 9th Oct 1865 and 3343 on 2nd April 1872). I have no records of another C2 Petzval having survived although a Scottish University has a C3 in its collection. Could you post a photo or two so that I can add it in to my researches please? To date I hold details of about 160 survivals from a production (father and son) of around 5000 lenses (I know more are held in museum repositories but getting details is like pulling teeth). Thomas Grubb claimed that his Petzval lenses were better than those from other makers though exactly why is not stated. They do produce nice images though!

[Jody_S]

Yes, I will post photos, I'm still unpacking from the show but I will set up the flashes perhaps later today. There were 4 other purchases that might interest forum members. I had a really good 2 weeks, 2 lenses that were very high on my list to buy plus the Grubb that was basically a 'unicorn', people have heard of one but never seen one.

[Jody_S]

I had a really good 2 weeks:



Back row, left to right:

Grubb C2, Bausch & Lomb 12" f4 Petzval with soft focus adjustment on rear group, unknown maker 60cm f4.5 telephoto design aerial lens (may cover 4x5 but probably not)

Front row:

Cooke knuckler Ser VI 13" f5.6, Darlot 10" f4 Petzval, Busch (?) projection Petzval 17" f6.5 approx., with an aperture professionally installed at some point

Photos of the Grubb C2:

[Willeica]

I had a really good 2 weeks:



Back row, left to right:

Grubb C2, Bausch & Lomb 12" f4 Petzval with soft focus adjustment on rear group, unknown maker 60cm f4.5 telephoto design aerial lens (may cover 4x5 but probably not)

Front row:

Cooke knuckler Ser VI 13" f5.6, Darlot 10" f4 Petzval, Busch (?) projection Petzval 17" f6.5 approx., with an aperture professionally installed at some point

Photos of the Grubb C2:

Lovely rare find, Jody. There is no photo of the C2 Petzval in the D'Agostini-Rose book but there are photos of a Solomon advertisement of 1870 and a Grubb Catalogue of 1875 which mention the lens. It came with rack and pinion, which seems to be missing from your sample, and 7 stops. I would agree with Paul (pgk) that this lens is probably from the early 1870s. The logbook, kept by Thomas and Howard Grubb, only covers a defined period of work done on camera lenses at the Rathmines works here in Dublin. It is kept in England where it was found after it had travelled to St Albans and then to Newcastle as the firm moved around to eventually become Grubb Parsons in 1925. All of the work recorded in the book relates to camera lenses made in Dublin in the 19th Century.

The most fascinating aspect here is the stop arrangement at the front which is different to my A Petzvals as they have a stop between the front and back elements. Has anyone any thoughts about why this arrangement was adopted for the Petzval C?

This is a real 'unicorn' like my Aluminium Aplanatic with diaphragm made by Howard Grubb in the 1890s. Thanks for showing the C2 to us.

William

[pgk]

Photos of the Grubb C2:

Thanks Jody. Here is the info on your lens from Grubb adverts:

Designation: C2
Front Diameter: 3 1/4”
Back Diameter: 4”
Back Focus: 13"
Field using large apertures: 10" x 8"
Focus: Rack & Pinion [???]
4 Diaphrms supplied
Price: £16 [a lot of money in 1870]

However ..... in an advert the C1 lens is described as being of 'rigid' type - no rack and pinion. But the position of the diaphragm on yours is very odd. That said its slide in fitting does look like those fitted withing other Grubb Petzvals (I have 4) so it is very likely as it left the factory. The ledger suggests that lenses were made in very small batches of just a few lenses at a time so a customer who wanted a differently mounted diaphragm could probably have requested on. Also the Grubbs seem to have been perpetual tinkerers so may just have tried a different system of diaphragm to see whow it fared. Quite a fascinating find

[Jody_S]

The most fascinating aspect here is the stop arrangement at the front which is different to my A Petzvals as they have a stop between the front and back elements. Has anyone any thoughts about why this arrangement was adopted for the Petzval C?

This is a real 'unicorn' like my Aluminium Aplanatic with diaphragm made by Howard Grubb in the 1890s. Thanks for showing the C2 to us.

William

I asked about dating the lens via the Waterhouse stop mounting position, as I believe the lens was made just as Waterhouse stops were invented, and no one had thought to place them at the optical center of the lens yet. Most of the lenses they made were single-group landscape lenses of the pillbox type, where the front of the lens is the optical center, so they tried placing stops there for Petzvals and Aplanatics also. Except it will cause the lens to vignette instead of increasing depth of field/sharpness.

The reason for the differently-sized front and rear elements (the catalog is correct in all points) I believe is that Grubb correctly judged that the front of the lens determined luminosity, but the rear group of a Petzval introduced aberrations outside of the center. So he made his with a massively-oversized rear group in an effort to make the entire usable field of the lens sharp. Then, since people were asking for 'fast-acting' lenses, he made the C2 and C3 lenses with larger front elements, because the cost to produce was nearly the same but the lenses could be sold at a premium.

[pgk]

I asked about dating the lens via the Waterhouse stop mounting position, as I believe the lens was made just as Waterhouse stops were invented, and no one had thought to place them at the optical center of the lens yet.

My earlier Grubb Petzvals have Waterhouse stops centrally placed so I don't think that this is the reason. I would imagine that the waterhouse stop on your lens was put in its position because someone wanted it there, either whoever made it or a customer. It will be interesting to see how it performs. I've experimented with mine and they do appear to produce nice images, especially stopped down where they are surprisingly good. I still need to sort out an appropriate camera to use them properly though.

[Jody_S]

My earlier Grubb Petzvals have Waterhouse stops centrally placed so I don't think that this is the reason. I would imagine that the waterhouse stop on your lens was put in its position because someone wanted it there, either whoever made it or a customer.

Do we know that the serial numbers are sequential? I understand Grubb made lenses in order to keep his workers employed when there were no large telescope orders, so he may have made batches of barrels, lenses, etc as workers were idled, and may not have finished a lens until there was an order for it, at which point it would have been engraved and gotten a serial number, but the bulk of the lens might have been sitting on a shelf in the shop for a few years until an order came for a lens that size (thinking of the expensive C-series lenses)?

I've only ever seen arrangements like the front stop on projection lenses where it was desirable to vignette the output of the lens to darken the room and not distract viewers. But my C2 is not a projection lens, unless someone wanted a truly massive opaque projector for some purpose. Or perhaps it went to a studio portrait photographer who wanted to vignette his negatives with round images instead of doing that at the contact printing phase. I will mount the lens on my studio camera perhaps next week and see what effect the stop gives.