Flip to John Brashear, standing next to the coal shed where he first began work on telescope lens in the early 1870s, Pittsburgh, PA, 1913.
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Credit: Allegheny Observatory, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh
In the early 1910s, Brashear Optical Co. designed and built the 30 inch Thaw telescope for the Allegheny Observatory. Designed for photographic use, the telescope has collected more than 110,000 exposures and helped set the distance scale of the universe.