The 24 January 2012 edition of the Wall Street Journal included an obituary for Norman Edmund, the founder of Edmund Scientific, who died at age 95. I ordered some components from Edmund while in high school and my dad and I stopped at the company's Barrington, NJ store during a trip to visit Drexel University in 1962. The store provided a lot to look at--telescopes, microscopes, scientific kits, lenses, books, star charts, and barrels full of optical components. I never got heavily involved with building telescopes or photography as a hobby--electronics and chemistry took most free time-- but always had an Edmund catalog close at hand. A project might involve something Edmund had in stock. For optics enthusiasts, Edmund provided a broad spectrum of components, finished products, and kits for schools and young experimenters. I would bet as kids, many scientists and engineers got a kit or a telescope from Edmund for a birthday or Christmas.

^{Courtesy of Edmund Optics.}

Norman Edmund started to buy surplus optics from the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, PA during World War II and launched his company in 1942 from an office in Collingswood, NJ. The first mail-order catalog appeared a year later and according to the company, now known as Edmund Optics, it included 1000 items! During the Korean War, the U.S. government repurchased some of the surplus equipment it had sold Edmund.

According to Michael Rivero, who analyzed photographs for NASA, "The inclusion of a TV camera for the moon walk [on the Apollo 11mission] was a last-second decision. The camera was thrown together out of spare parts (including a Barlow lens for an astronomical telescope from Edmund Scientific)." Information from Edmund notes that lens cost 95 cents! (Ref. 1)

The company introduced a helium-neon laser in 1970, and in 1976 the company started to sell the Astroscan, a wide-field reflector telescope that became popular with students and schools. In 1984, the company created Edmund Industrial Optics and started to concentrate more on industrial users, although Edmund Scientific continued to sell kits, telescopes, microscopes, and optical components. In 2001, Science Kit & Boreal Labs (www.sciencekit.com) purchased the Edmund Scientific portion of the company and continues to sell a galaxy's worth of interesting kits and products. You can buy telescopes, microscopes, a water-monitoring kit, and even a kit to make your own hot sauce.

Today, Edmund Optics continues the family name and sells commercial- and research-grade components, lenses, digital cameras, lasers, light sources, spectrometers, and similar products. The company has its own research and optics laboratories and manufactures many of the products it sells. Many members of the Edmund family work at the company. (www.edmundoptics.com) --Jon Titus

Ref. 1. www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/is-this-why-the-quality-of-the-original-moon-landing-video-was-so-bad.html. (The article deals with rebroadcast video, not TV-camera optics.)