Post by Admin on Jun 4, 2014 6:11:13 GMT -5
As many Cave telescope owners know, Tom Cave produced some estimated 50,000 mirrors. 15,000 of those mirrors went into his own telescopes. The nice thing is that each mirror was engraved with the name "Cave Optical Company" on the edge of the mirror. Early mirrors (1959) had the engraving on the back. The engraving also included the focal length, the date, and a serial number starting with the letter "M".
Cave also produced some very famous mirrors for Questar telescope. In talking with a Questar marketing employee at NEAF this year, he told me the first 200 mirrors on the very first questars were manufactured by Cave. Those mirrors were not marked with the cave name but it did have a number. The correctors were also produced Cave but were defective. Questar had to mix and match mirrors and correctors to achieve the level of quality they wanted and also contracted with another company to make more correctors to get through the Cave mirrors. The latter company still makes the questar mirrors today. The first questar telescopes sold started not with serial #1, but serial number 60. The Cave mirror numbers, due to the problem with the correctors, probably did not match the serial numbers of the scope.
Jon Miles has compiled all the known registered Cave mirror serial numbers with current owners, dates, focal lengths, and sizes.
look to this link for the mirror registry:
www.cave-astrola.com/caveregistry/index.html
Cave also produced some very famous mirrors for Questar telescope. In talking with a Questar marketing employee at NEAF this year, he told me the first 200 mirrors on the very first questars were manufactured by Cave. Those mirrors were not marked with the cave name but it did have a number. The correctors were also produced Cave but were defective. Questar had to mix and match mirrors and correctors to achieve the level of quality they wanted and also contracted with another company to make more correctors to get through the Cave mirrors. The latter company still makes the questar mirrors today. The first questar telescopes sold started not with serial #1, but serial number 60. The Cave mirror numbers, due to the problem with the correctors, probably did not match the serial numbers of the scope.
Jon Miles has compiled all the known registered Cave mirror serial numbers with current owners, dates, focal lengths, and sizes.
look to this link for the mirror registry:
www.cave-astrola.com/caveregistry/index.html