HALLEY’S COMET
AND
THE
TELESCOPE
TRADE
Excerpt
from The Comet Rag: Halley’s comet, 1910
Halley’s comet had the whole
telescope, spyglass, marine and field glass business booming at a rate the
trade had not known since the Civil War.
Business of the week before May 18 was the best in years, and the next
week was expected to be even better.
People of all classes became
astronomers. They were buying first
class telescopes that sold from $50 to $250.
The most popular telescopes were the French and the English makes. Both were mounted on tripods and fitted with
precision lenses. The barrel of the
English instrument was of polished brass, the French telescope being covered
with white leather. Through them
Halley’s comet was a sight of immense beauty.
People who could not afford a
telescope bought smaller instruments.
Marine, field, night and opera glasses sold from a few dollars up. The cheaper glasses were selling in great
quantities in pawnshops. One day a shop
on Third Avenue in New York City filled a window with glasses selling for one
dollar up to ten dollars and the next day all were sold. A Broadway dealer said, “We sold more in the
past three months than we sold between the end of the Civil War and the start
of 1910. That’s forty-five years worth
of business in three months!”
The wholesale dealers of the Maiden
Lane district exhausted their supplies.
The story was the same all over the country, all over the world. Every telescope and every set of binoculars,
spyglass, surveyor’s and opera glass hidden away in trunks and drawers must
have been dusted off for use and pointed to the sky to salute the celestial
marauder who came, it seemed to many, with motive. Some saw him as a pirate – especially the spyglass types –
others, as the wrath of God come to smite us with death and destruction.
Retailers put up prices 20 per cent
and people paid, gladly paid. Everyone
– and everyone everywhere on earth – wanted to see Halley’s comet. Importers tried to buy back instruments from
local retail stores and from other parts of the country, but nobody had any
left.
Downtown the hardware stores were
selling telescopes manufactured expressly for the comet trade for a
dollar. The barrel was made of
pasteboard in sections and according the label on the side:
HALLEY’S COMET NOVELTY TELESCOPE
Will Present a Beautiful
Picture of the COMET
Peddlers, who sold whatever happened
to be the fad, said the last week before the comet comes closest to the earth
would see many Halley’s comet novelties on the market. They hawked kerchiefs and shawls with the
image of the comet painted on, costume brooches and hat pins in the comet’s
shape, postcards depicting destruction of the world, pamphlets on the comet’s
history, charts showing the exact location in the sky each night.
Then it all stopped. Nobody bought telescopes anymore. The novelties along with the pasteboard
telescopes found their way to the trash and everything worth keeping was stored
away --until 1914, when the trade was called upon to manufacture field glasses
for the armies and navies of the world.
From 1914 to 1917, the years of World War I, the optics trade once again
profited, this time from the folly of mankind, while the last time, 1910, it
had profited from mankind’s interest.