I possess a neat antique brass spyglass of some sort, and I've always wondered about its origins. It's a collapsable (telescoping) spyglass like you'd see a 19th century ship's captain using to scout the horizon. It is 48" long when fully extended. Engraved on the section near the eye piece is:



Docteur Arthur Chevalier
158 Palais Royal
Paris

I looked the dude up and found that Chevalier's company mostly made microscopes and other scientific instruments back in the second half of the 19th century. I couldn't find any real references to telescopes of this nature, so I contacted the Oris group, a trio of scientific instrument enthusiasts in Italy who specialize in the research and identification of antiques such as mine. They can be found at http://www.bononiaemicroscope.it/

They’ve been very helpful to me so far, expressing interest in my spyglass turning me on to this Chevalier catalog from the mid 1800s.

http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/trade-literature/scientific-instruments/files/51671/

I've sent the Oris Group some pics of my telescope and hope to hear back from them soon. I'll keep y'all posted on what (if anything) I find out.

Reality Check

My apologies for the caesura in my blog postings. Work and school conspired to wear me out there for a while, and I reverted to bad habits, namely emailing about blog-ish stuff to a core group of friends instead of blogging about those things here.

I hope to be back on track now, for better or for worse.