Alvan Clark & Sons made the 36-inch (910 mm) objective lens for the Lick Observatory refractor, shown here in an 1889 drawing. The telescope was designed and built by the Warner & Swasey Company
Alvan Clark & Sons was an American maker of optics that became famous for crafting lenses for some of the largest refracting telescopes of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1846 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, by Alvan Clark (1804–1887, a descendant of Cape Cod whalers who started as a portrait painter), and his sons George Bassett Clark (1827–1891) and Alvan Graham Clark (1832–1897).[1] Five times, the firm built the largest refracting telescopes in the world. The Clark firm gained "worldwide fame and distribution", wrote one author on astronomy in 1899.[1]
Portrait of Clark and sons, circa 1870s (photo by T.R. Burnham)
The company also built a number of smaller instruments, which are still highly prized among collectors and amateur astronomers.
The company's assets were acquired by the Sprague-Hathaway Manufacturing Company in 1933, but continued to operate under the Clark name. In 1936, Sprague-Hathaway moved the Clark shop to a new location in West Somerville, Massachusetts, where manufacturing continued in association with the Perkin-Elmer Corporation, another maker of precision instruments. Most of Clark's equipment was disposed of as scrap during World War II, and Sprague-Hathaway itself was liquidated in 1958.
Deborah Jean Warner and Robert B. Ariail, Alvan Clark & Sons, artists in optics (2nd English ed.) Richmond, VA. : Willmann-Bell, in association with National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1995 (1996 printing), 298 p. ISBN0-943396-46-8
Timothy Ferris, Seeing in the Dark Simon & Schuster 2002; 117p. ISBN0-684-86579-3