Barlow Pepin / T Tauri Productions

The Dutch Refractor was the first telescope. Presented above in schematic, this earliest spyglass was a simple arrangement of two lenses mounted in a foot-long tube of vellum or metal. Developed in Middelburg in the Netherlands between 1604 and Summer 1608, and first openly presented at the Herbstmesse fair in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the revolutionary invention spread into France, England, and Italy by Fall.

The Emergence of the Telescope, Janssen, Lipperhey, and the Unknown Man delves into the longstanding historical puzzle of the telescope's first appearance. Bound copies of the Revised Edition 2004 (ISBN 0-9758527-0-1) may be ordered from T Tauri Productions by e-mail though the Contact Us link.. Price is USD $19.95 (postpaid in Continental US -- foreign Air Mail add USD $4.00)*

· Research, Writing, and Editing

· History of Optics and Astronomy

· Evaluation & Maintenance of Optical Equipment

· Prototype & Product Testing

Vitae in Brief

A long time writer, editor, telescope maker and keen observer, M. Barlow Pepin was editor/producer of the

Astronomical League Reflector in 1988-90, and has published several articles in the popular magazines Astronomy,

Astronomy Now , and in the peer-reviewed

Journal of the B.A.A. (British Astronomical Association).

Pepin was North American agent for the

Carl-Zeiss Astronomical Division (Amateur Equipment) from 1992-95,

Associate Editor of

Sky & Telescope magazine in 1995-96, and Managing Editor and Producer for

Amateur Telescope Making Journal from 1998-2001 - now compiled by Willmann-Bell in 2 volumes.

Pepin writes feature articles for the German astronomy magazine

Sterne und Weltraum.

Topics range from book reviews to the annual Texas Star Party (July 2002) and Otto Struve and the McDonald Observatory (July 2004).

Pepin's hands-on manual for amateurs Care of Astronomical Telescopes and Accessories will be published in September 2004 (Springer-Verlag).

The background color on these pages is an RGB rendition of the controversial averaged color emitted by the 100,000 galaxies of the 2dF Galactic Redshift Survey out to more than 2.5 billion light years. Astronomers named the color Cosmic Latté