FAMOUS YORKSHIREMAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 May 1941, Page 2

FAMOUS YORKSHIREMAN

MAKER OF OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS. His optical instruments were the finest of their kind in the 18th century. No man in the world other than Jesse Ramsden of Halifax in Yorkshire made such beautiful or such accurate telescopes, microscopes, theodolites, zenith-sectors, and so on. From all parts of England and France and Italy, from the Americas and other lands came orders for his instruments. Yet Jesse Ramsden —who might have made a huge fortune, for he employed sixty men —had no thought of money. He left a little when he died in 1880, and it was shared among his workmen, but he could not leave a fortune because making the instruments was everything to him, not selling them. It is odd to think how this man —■ known to every astronomer in the , world —used to sit at home in his kitchen most evenings in the week, his chair drawn up to the five, his cat on one side, a mug of porter and a plate of bread and butter at the other. Some of his apprentices would be with him, and after whistling awhile he would draw a sketch of an instrument to be made, and the apprentices and some of his men would look at it. “Now, lad,” he would say to the man most concerned, "that's summat like what we want. Now, sec if you can find fault with it.” This man who produced unequalled instruments, this man who was more exact than any other instrument maker of the kind in Europe, had no notion of time. On one occasion he presented himself at Buckingham House in London, arriving to the minute ol the hour at which lie had been summoned; but he was somewhat taken aback when the King (George the Third) remarked pleasantly, after consulting his watch. “Mr Ramsden, you are punctual to the day and hour, but you are exactly one year late." Il mattered little —Jesse Ramsden was a friend of the king. For half a century and more this famous Yorkshireman made wonderful ■ instruments, selling them cheaper than . any other makes, and helping on the cause of science. .