Francis Watkins and the Dollond Telescope Patent Controversy

Working from original documents consulted for the first time, Brian Gee has uncovered the life and times of an eighteenth-century mathematical and optical instrument maker, Francis Watkins, who played an important role in one of the most significant legal cases to touch this profession, the patenting of the achromatic lens in telescopes. The book explains Watkins’ origins and his partnership with the Dollond firm, who are shown to have been hard-headed and ruthless, before accounting for Watkins’ successors and their ultimate decline.