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On the establishment of Grubb Parsons…
Accordingly, in April 1925, the scientific journal Nature reported:
A new company, trading as Sir Howard Grubb, Parsons & Co., has purchased from the liquidator the goodwill, drawings, and sundry plant and machinery of the firm*, and workshops of up-to-day design are being erected at Heaton, Newcastle-on-Tyne, especially suitable for the building of large telescope and observatory equipment. The advice and experience of Sir Howard Grubb will be at the disposal of the new company…
The new firm, which became universally known as Grubb Parsons, went on to produce many major telescopes, including no less than five 74 inch (1.9m) reflectors between 1935 and 1956. Sir Howard himself passed away in 1931 at the age of 87. In July 1950, the company was joined by a bright young Cambridge graduate by the name of David Scatcherd Brown, who demonstrated a gift for the design and testing of large telescope mirrors. It was not long before DSB (as he was known throughout the works) progressed to the job of Optical Manager, working in collaboration with a practical optician called David Sinden who managed the glass shops from 1962. The two gentlemen proved a formidable combination:
There could not have been two more different types working together (wrote George Sisson, a former Managing Director of the firm), one with a deep mathematical insight and ability to interpret obscure testing problems, the other with the instinctive feel for working glass, the hardness of pitch, the construction of the polisher and methods of working.
Some five years later, this accomplished team was joined by a decidedly less accomplished young physicist fresh from the University of St Andrews, who worked with them for two years. That person was me – and DSB was my first boss.
With 20/20 vision of hindsight, it is clear than I failed altogether to capitalize on a golden opportunity – despite David Brown’s generous mentoring. But such paradoxes were common place at Grubb Parsons. For all that the company was deeply involved in high-tech products; it seemed to have its feet planted firmly in the nineteenth centaury. While David Brown was pioneering in the use of computers to assist in the optical surfacing of large mirrors, for example, a man named Big Jim MacKay spent his life tending cauldrons of boiling pitch in a room that resembled an annexe of hell. Such incongruities were symptomatic of a firm trying desperately to drag itself into the twentieth centaury.
Eventually, Grubb Parsons failed to make the transition. In 1985, just 150 years after Thomas Grubb had completed his first large reflector; it closed its doors for the last time. But that was not before the firm had produced three of the best telescopes of the 4-meter era: the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope (1974), the 3.8 m UK Infrared Telescope (1978) and the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope on the island of La Palma (1987). It also built the 1.2 m UK Schmidt Telescope. I have had the great privilege of observing with all these fine instruments, and now have the good fortunate to be Astronomer-in-Charge of two of them.
By the time Grubb Parsons closed down, David Sinden had left to form his own highly successful optical company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. But David Brown stayed until the end as Grubb Parsons’ Technical Director, and then moved on to a research fellowship at the nearby University of Durham. It was a fitting appointment, given his enviable reputation in optics. But it was short-lived. In July 1987, this good-natured and unassuming man died at the age of only 59. Australian astronomer Ben Gascoigne paid this tribute to his achievements:
He was a past master in the art of figuring large (optical) elements for telescopes, with hardly an equal in his generation. He must certainly be ranked with Ritchey and other great opticians of the past, and is assured of a high place in the hierarchy of British instrument astronomers.
The present generation of telescope-makers is much poorer for the loss of David Brown’s wisdom. No doubt he would have had sage advice for the planners of the next generation of 30 metre to 100 metre optical telescopes. And the astonishing instruments that undoubtedly lie beyond them would have thrilled him to the core.
* The firm referred to is that of Thomas Grubb, father of Sir Howard. (JN)
From Stargazer, the life and times of the Telescope, by Fred Watson.
Many thanks to Fred for allowing me to reproduce the above from his excellent book.
Grubb Parsons, Newcastle upon Tyne
Telescopes made by Grubb Parsons.
The Isaac Newton Group (ING) of Telescopes. An excellent website by my friend and former employee of the ING, John Mills.
David Brown was a key figure in the history of Grubb Parsons, an obituary detailing some of his acheivements can be found here....
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1989QJRAS..30..279S/0000279.000.html
Here is an old video with rare footage shot inside the works of Grubb Parsons, the telescope being built is the 74 inch reflector for the David Dunlap observatory, Canada. http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=50229
Video dedicated to the work of Sir Charles Parsons, telescope work featured near the end. http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=81597
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