Quote:
Originally Posted by The Mekon
I may be wrong, but I think it was Eric Whitcombe who was the proprietor of "Amateur Astronomers Supply company" Can someone confirm or correct me on this?
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Yes that is correct. He made his fortune from the Supply Co. when the dollar was worth 300 Yen for many years ,so a very good profit to be had on Unitron gear. He bought up a huge amount of Crows Nest industrial real estate and retired a very wealthy man. I still smart a little when as a young lad I would go in feeling very adult to get the latest catalogue and Eric would insist on me paying for it ( implication being I would never afford to actually buy anything , so I was a liability !
I bought my first mirror grinding kit ( 6" ) for the huge sum of $14 in 1974. I remember paying for it rather sheepishly with a huge bag of coins .
AASC was rebadged Astro Optical Supplies in 1977 when dressed up to sell ,and Monty Ash owned it until it was sold to the current owner in about 1992. The heart of AASC was its locally built Newtonains and Unitron refractors both of which bit the dust when the new owner took over.
If you read the history of Unitron you see that the Japanese made Vixen range of short Flourite refractors killed the bulky Unitron achromat line in a short space of time. I remember marvelling at the views through a Vixen 4" F9 when they first came out. Who would have thought that it would be considered slow my todays standards. I owned a 4" F15 Polarex altaz in 3 boxes. It lasted only months after I purchased a Vixed 80mm Flourite which was far more portable and had perfect colour correction. I still would love to own an 80mm Unitron for nostalgia value if I had somewhere to store it. There was a lot of boyhood romance associated with that long row of Unitron retractors in AASC. It was probably their unatainability that made them so desirable !