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Life and Works
and-three-quarter-inch reflector for five guineas; those for his seven-foot telescope were twenty-three guineas. Later a seven-foot telescope, complete, was sold for one hundred guineas, and the twenty-five-foot reflector, made for the Madrid observatory, cost them 75,000 francs = $15,000.[1] It was ordered in 1796, but not delivered for several years, the Spanish government being short of money. For a ten and a seven foot telescope, the Prince of Canino paid £2,310.
Von Magellan writes to Bode concerning a visit to Herschel:[2]
"I spent the night of the 6th of January at Herschel's, in Datchet, near Windsor, and had the good luck to hit on a fine evening. He has his twenty-foot Newtonian telescope in the open air and mounted in his garden very simply and conveniently. It is moved by an assistant, who stands below it.... Near the instrument is a clock regulated to sidereal time.... In the room near it sits Herschel's sister, and she has Flamsteed's Atlas open before her. As he gives her the word, she writes down the declination and right ascension and the other circumstances of the observation. In
