The subtitle The Life and Times of the Telescope says it all: this is a biography rather than a history, and a pretty affectionate example of the breed at that. And why not? Fred Watson is the widely known and respected Astronomer-in- Charge at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Coonabarabran in north-west New South Wales where, according to the blurb inside the front-cover dust jacket of this handsome little hardback, "he is responsible for the scientific output of Australia's largest optical telescope".
From the dramatic starting point of a duel involving the 16thcentury Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, Watson sets a brisk and entertaining pace. He speculates a little about some of the more interesting evidence for the origin of the telescope in classical Rome, Assyria and even ancient Britain before pushing on towards the present via the contributions of Kepler and Galileo, Isaac Newton and William Herschel, Edwin Hubble and Bernhardt Schmidt.
For all this impressive cast, however, the star of the show is the telescope itself. These remarkable instruments are depicted for much of the book as a continuously evolving succession of brass or timber tubes - often of quite grotesque proportions - fitted with a similarly improving arrangement and machining of lenses.
And, to avoid any possibility of the reader losing the plot, the pages are littered with helpful cross-sectional diagrams that illustrate successive design improvements and modifications.
Watson approaches the advances of the 20th century - when humans began to use different kinds of telescopes to observe forms of radiation outside the visible spectrum - in the same easy, non-technical style, with many anecdotes to entertain readers along the way.
The author is as natural and entertaining a writer as he is a speaker, and it's a pleasant surprise to fi nd him trying his hand at fiction in an epilogue set in 2108. The first, and only previous British astronomer named Fred to attempt to write fiction, was former Astronomer Royal, Fred Hoyle. We must be just about due for a second.
