Ingalls, Albert Graham

Born Elmira, New York, USA, 16 January 1888

Died Cranford, New Jersey, USA, 13 August 1958

Together with Russell Porter , Albert (“Unk”) Ingalls launched amateur telescope making in the United States in the 1920s. In doing so, they fathered the modern era of amateur astronomy by demonstrating how ordinary people could produce first-class telescopes through their own labor. The next revolution took place in the 1950s and 1960s when high-quality, affordable commercial telescopes became widely available. The latest phase began in the 1990s when the amalgamation of CCDs, the internet, and powerful home computers took amateur astronomy to previously unimagined heights.

Ingalls was arguably the most influential promoter of telescope making because of his editorial affiliation with Scientific American. In fact, he was an evangelist, stating that with the aid of Porter and others, he would “attempt to popularize amateur telescope making as a widespread hobby.” For about 30 years, beginning in...