Abstract
The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington houses an eighteenth century Gregorian telescope manufactured by Heath and Wing of London which has a convoluted history reputedly involving James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. Neither association can be verified, but we conclude that this instrument does indeed have a Cook Voyage pedigree, and was the telescope that Daniel Solander used to observe the 1769 transit of Venus from Fort Venus, Tahiti.
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Notes
- 1.
Web searches indicate that the firm of F. Robson & Co. Opticians was established in 1867 in the centre of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and that it has continued through to the present day.
- 2.
Ellis’ acquisition of the telescope is in keeping with his interest in objects associated with the Cook voyages. For instance, in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, there is a bronze replica of a Maori patu onewa (hand club) that was bought by F. Ellis in Bristol in 1908 and donated by him to the Royal Society. In 1932 the club was loaned by the Society to the Pitt Rivers Museum and then formally donated to the Museum in 1979. This club is one of forty that Joseph Banks had made in 1772 as gift and exchange items when he was planning to accompany Cook on the Second Voyage to the South Seas (see Pitt Rivers Museum, n.d.).
References
The following abbreviations are used:
Te Papa = MU000002/067/0002; History: Cook’s Relics deposited and presented; 1914–1975; paper, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington
MS = manuscript NC = newspaper clipping TS = typescript copy
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the following for their assistance: Bob Ariail (USA); Dr Alan Baker (former Director of the National Museum of New Zealand, Wellington); Jenni Chrisstoffels (Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ), Dr Gloria Clifton (ex-Royal Museums, Greenwich); the late Peter Hingley (former RAS Librarian, London); the late Derek Howse (Sevenoaks, England); Ross Galbreath (Tuakau, NZ), and Dr Michael Fitzgerald, Jennifer Twist, David Riley and staff of the Hector Library (The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington). Finally, I would like to thank Gloria Clifton and Michael Fitzgerald for reading and commenting on the first draft of this chapter, and the Alexander Turnbull Library, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Parliament of the United Kingdom for kindly supplying Figs. 7.3, 7.5, 7.7 and 7.8.
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Orchiston, W. (2016). The ‘Cook’ Gregorian Telescope in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. In: Exploring the History of New Zealand Astronomy. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 422. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22566-1_7
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