What does three draw mean on a telescope?

Three sliding tubes that pull out from the main barrel and push back in for carrying. It's the commonest arrangement in this category, with "three draw" in 43 titles. Higher counts exist. Four-draw examples appear regularly, and the samples run to five, six and a seven-draw pocket telescope.

Are antique telescopes mostly British?

Almost everything is British, and London-signed pieces account for 108 of 378 titles. German, French, Irish, Scottish and Dublin-signed instruments do come through, but they are the exception under this heading.

How big do library telescopes get?

Aperture is quoted only on the larger instruments, and the figures given run two, two and three-quarter, three, three and a half, four and four and a half inches. The four and four-and-a-half inch objectives sit at the very top of the range, and they come mounted on folding brass or mahogany tripods.

Do reflecting telescopes turn up?

Rarely. A handful of eighteenth-century Gregorian telescopes, which use a mirror in place of the object lens, are the only mirror instruments among hundreds of refractors. They sit among the highest sampled titles.

Which periods do these telescopes come from?

The dated field stretches from 1750 to 1940. Much of the dating is broad, with "19th Century" and "Victorian" used more than any decade. Where decades are given they cluster at the 1850s, 1880s, 1890s, 1910s and 1920s. So the bulk is mid-Victorian to the First World War, with a Georgian tail behind it.

What else gets listed as a telescope?

Dealers file related optical and survey instruments here: theodolites, a drainage level, an architect's level, a portable transit instrument, an opera monocular, a micro-telescope and rangefinder binoculars. Telescopes concealed in walking sticks appear more than once, in bone and in plain cane, and they sit well up the range.

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Antique Telescopes

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A brass draw-tube telescope collapses into its own barrel, and that portability is the point: these were made to be carried and used at sea, in the field and from a library window.