Sky & Telescope - August 2020 - 30

p ABANDONED PIER The original pier of the Valkenburg aan de Geul
9-inch refractor is visible near the center of this 2013 photo. The German
army abandoned the Jesuit college toward the end of World War II, and
the buildings are now deserted.
q ONE LAST SCOPE Saegmuller's final big refractor was originally
housed in an observatory at the top of the Bausch & Lomb building
in Rochester, New York. The 10.5-inch instrument appears here at its
second home, the Sommers-Bausch Observatory at the University of
Colorado in Boulder. (At the eyepiece is Dorothy Trotter, the facility's first
manager.) Sadly, the instrument is no longer in use.

mounts designed for speciﬁc locations, these featured adjustments to work over a range of latitudes. One was destined
for the observatory of wealthy businessman Charles Ezra
Hequembourg of Dunkirk, New York. His telescope sat atop a
45-foot-tall pier in a dome near his home. The objective had
a focal length of 117 inches, making it f/13, though I wasn't
able to discover who supplied the lens. The low focal ratio,
however, suggests it might have been the work of Clacey. After
Hequembourg's death in 1907, his widow sold the telescope
in 1914 to Elmer Harrold of Leetonia, Ohio. In 1923, Harrold
donated the telescope to Mount Union College, in Alliance,
Ohio, where it was set up in the Clarke Observatory.
The other 9-inch Saegmuller refractor went to the Jesuit
Saint Ignatius College in Valkenburg aan de Geul, the Netherlands. Hagen once again played a role, this time by arranging for the instrument to be imported for free and overseeing
its installation.
After Saegmuller completed the last of these eight instruments in 1897, he didn't build another large refractor for 15
years. It isn't clear why this is, but it may have been due to a
shortage of skilled workers. In his autobiography, Saegmuller
states that it was difﬁcult to keep good machinists. Once
he'd trained them, they would leave for better-paying government jobs. He may have simply concluded that building
telescopes was not proﬁtable.
In 1904, Saegmuller merged his operations with those
of Bausch & Lomb of New York. At the time, the German
instrument company Carl Zeiss Jena wanted to sell gun sights
to the U.S. Navy but was unable to do so since Saegmuller had
cornered that market. Ultimately, Zeiss joined with Bausch &
Lomb in 1908, and the company's name was changed to the
Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, using the "Triple Alliance"
logo that listed Bausch & Lomb, Zeiss, and Saegmuller. (Zeiss
had to leave the alliance in 1915 when Germany and the
Allies went to war.)
In 1912 Saegmuller built his ﬁnal large refractor. Featuring
a 10.5-inch objective made by Carl Zeiss Jena, in Germany,
the instrument was installed in an observatory at the top of
the Bausch & Lomb building in Rochester, New York. After
retiring from Bausch & Lomb in 1924 at the age of 77, Saegmuller moved to Arlington, Virginia, where he died on his
87th birthday on February 12, 1934.

Where Are They Now?
Of Saegmuller's nine large refractor telescopes, two did
not survive. A ﬁre on Halloween night in 1924 destroyed
the 9-inch instrument built for the Catholic University of
America. The 19-inch refractor at the Manila Observatory
in the Philippines suffered a similar fate but in a much more
dramatic and violent episode.
During World War II, the Japanese occupied Manila, and
on February 9, 1945, after it became clear that they would be
unable to hold the city against advancing American forces,
Japanese soldiers used straw and gasoline to set ﬁre to the
observatory, including the dome of the 19-inch refractor. As
30

AUGUST 2 02 0 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

OBSERVATORY REMAINS: COURTESY MARCO DELNOIJ; DOROTHY
TROT TER AT SCOPE: SOMMERS-BAUSCH OBSERVATORY

Telescope History

Sky & Telescope - August 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - August 2020