East India Company Three Draw Telescope by Thomas Jones of Charing Cross, London

For sale, an early nineteenth century East India Company three draw telescope by Thomas Jones, 62 Charing Cross, London.

This leather bound achromatic telescope has a 4.5cm diameter objective couplet with a four lens eyepiece contained within the first draw.

The telescope comes complete with original end cap and is engraved (letters running away from the eyepiece) to, Thomas Jones, 62 Charing Cross, London” and is further stamped with the balemark of the East India Company, namely a heart shaped stamp with the company’s initials sectored within and the number four on the crest. Below the heart are the numerals 346.

The maker Thomas Jones (1775 – 1852) was a superior maker of scientific instruments. Apprenticed to eminent maker of the period, Jesse Ramsden from 1789-1796 at a cost of 50 guineas, Jones continued to work for Ramsden until his death in 1800. Most sources have the firm’s working dates as starting in 1806 and references to work undertaken for Edward Troughton during this period would suggest that he worked as a jobbing instrument maker for the six years prior to opening his first premises in Mount Street. The history of the firm of Troughton & Simms also relates that Jones whilst working for Ramsden, provided the young William Simms with a supporting letter to The Royal Society for Simm’s “improved protractor” so we can be sure that a good working relationship existed. His first year of trading brought Jones’s first success in a commission from Mr HC Englefield to manufacture his new portable or “mountain barometer”. Englefield wrote that he had,

“Employed Mr Thomas Jones, of number 120 Mount St, Berkeley Square, pupil of the late Mr Ramsden, and who will furnish them at the price of two guineas and a half with the attached and detached thermometer”.

The barometer (although very rarely found on the market today) proved extremely popular, so much so that Jones wrote a pamphlet eleven years later in 1817 entitled, “A companion to the Mountain Barometer” wherein he states that “since its introduction in 1806 he had sold between 300 and 400 of these instruments”. It is also interesting to note that Jones signs himself off as, “Astronomical and philosophical instrument maker to his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence” in this publication so he must have held the Royal Appointment for at least twenty years until William IV eventually died.

(Note: I have an Edward Troughton (pre-Troughton & Simms) Mountain Barometer of this type currently for sale if the reader is interested to see an example. It is of course possible that Jones may have made this for Troughton under contract, given his relationship to him).

In 1811, a further move was undertaken to Oxenden Street in Piccadilly by which time Jones had already patented his own dividing engine for the manufacture of scientific scales and had written his first publication in 1814 entitled, “Description & Use of the Sectograph”. Shortly afterwards he finally moved to his famous Charing Cross address in 1816. Jones was known as “Jones of Charing Cross” to distinguish him from his equally famous competitors, W&S Jones of Holborn.

In 1819, the successor to Ramsden’s business Matthew Berge died and Jones is documented as sending a letter to the Board of Longitude requesting that the circular and straight line dividing engines originally manufactured by Ramsden and owned by the Board, be entrusted to him. Jones had applied in the same manner after Ramsden’s death but Berge had been granted stewardship of the instruments at this point and was probably the catalyst for Jones’s patenting his own dividing engine. On this second attempt however, he was successful in gaining control of the straight line engine although the circular was then considered to have become somewhat inaccurate by that time so it was left for further consideration (It was later given to Wort