Rochester Times Union, Saturday Evening, May 25, 1946
The 17-foot, one-ton Bausch & Lomb Optical Company telescope, atop the company's building here for more than 30 years, today was presented to Harvard University.
It will be dismantled, shipped and reassembled again in the High Altitude Observatory at Climax, Colo., and is expected to be ready for use early in the fall. The Colorado observatory is more than 11,000 feet above sea level and is considered the highest in the world. It is operated jointly by Harvard and Colorado universities.
The telescope was built in 1912 and has been used by thousands of visitors at the company observatory, located atop the six-story Bausch & Lomb building on St. Paul Street. The telescope was built by George Saegmueller [sic], former Bausch & Lomb associate and designer of the Navy's first bore sight gunfire control telescope. It has a 10-inch lens and star dials to provide ease in reading right ascension and decimation, and eliminate computation of hour angles.
In announcing the gift, M. Herbert Eisenhart, company president, said that the instrument, the largest in the city, its auxiliary telescopes, photographic equipment and clocks, are an outright gift. He expressed the hope it would prove of "greater scientific value in its new, more advantageous location."
The telescope, fitted with special filters, will be used primarily for studies of the solar disc, including sun spots. An attached motion picture camera will record the rapid changes occurring in the solar atmosphere. The High Altitude Observatory is partially snowbound 10 months of the year.
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Tuesday, August 25, 1953
In the new Sommers-Bausch Observatory to be dedicated this week at Boulder, Colo., is a 17-foot telescope built in 1912 by George Saegmueller [sic], former Bausch & Lomb associate and designer.
The telescope already has been installed in Colorado's famous High Altitude Observatory. It will be used to study sun spots from atop the new observing station to be dedicated at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society set for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Donated to Harvard University in 1946, the giant telescope had adorned the
top of Bausch & Lomb's St. Paul Street building since it was first made. The
instrument's installation in Colorado was supervised by Dr. John W. Evans of the
High Altitude Observatory and Dr. Donald H. Menzel of Harvard.