Construction In 1862,
Scottish engineer and amateur astronomer
Robert Stirling Newall found out about two large crystals made of
crown and
flint glass that were produced by
Chance of Birmingham. He bought them for 500
pounds each and entrusted
Thomas Cooke for the construction of the world's largest telescope using these crystals. Newall knew about Cooke thanks to his friend and fellow amateur astronomer
Hugh Lee Pattinson, who had bought a refractor from Cooke in 1851. Before starting the construction, Cooke had told Newall that the telescope would be completed in less than 12 months but it was actually completed 6 years later in 1869, two years after Cooke's death.
In Newall's private observatory The telescope was installed in Newall's private observatory at Ferndene, his residence in
Gateshead. It wouldn't remain the largest in the world for long, because just 2 years later
Alvan Clark built the US Naval 26 inch telescope for the
United States Naval Observatory. Strangely both this telescope and Newall's were located in really unsuitable locations for a big telescope. The Newall Telescope was facing severe
light pollution problems and the weather in Gateshead rarely consisted of clear skies. This resulted in Newall not making any significant observations with his telescope, with the only noteworthy one being some very detailed drawings of comet
C/1874 H1 (Coggia) in 1874. The Newall Telescope would be the largest telescope of the National Observatory of Athens and it was decided that it should be located in a less light polluted area than its central premises in
Thiseio. The selected location was the
Penteli Observatory, situated on a hill in
Penteli from where
Stavros Plakidis had been making observations since 1936. The construction of a dedicated building started in 1957 In 1980 it stopped being used for scientific observations due to extreme light pollution in the area == Design ==