Jaegers was a premier supplier of optics (especially refractor objectives) from the 1950's into the 1980's.  A fire burned the place to the ground, and while they have reopened in Valley Stream, NY, they have never really regained a foothold in the market.  Click here to see their storefront today.

Before Celestron introduced their 8" f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain instrument in 1971, they catered more to institutions, such as museums, planetaria, and schools.  Originally just a "division of Valor Electronics," Celestron Pacific opened with the "Celestronic 20," shown here in an ad from 1964.  Note the eyepiece coming out of the declination axis.  Looks like a good idea when the telescope is aimed at the meridian, but image trying to look through it when aimed toward the eastern or western horizon!

By 1968, Celestron had expanded their product line to include these three offerings.  How about that Celestron 22!

Criterion's RV-6 Dynascope, first introduced at the end of the 1950s, was the telescope of the decade in the 1960s.  Although I have no statistics to support this claim, I would estimate that more RV-6s were sold to amateurs than any other "serious" telescope during the period.  And with good reason.  The optics were exceptional, the mounting sturdy, and the set-up convenient enough to be taken outside quickly.  Even today, an RV-6 in pristine condition commands a high price on Astromart and eBay.

Introduced in 1969, the Criterion RV-8 Dynascope was big brother to the immensely popular RV-6.  I still have mine, which I received as a gift for Christmas 1971.  I even still have (and use) the Dyna-Tracker variable-speed clock drive controller.  Both work as well as the day my parents picked them up for me at the company's Hartford factory.

Eastmann Optical

Here's a company that, although it didn't attract a lot of attention at the time, incorporated some of today's most sought-after features into their Augen 170 back in 1965.  The Augen 170 was a convertible 4-inch Newtonian-Cassegrain reflector that rode atop a fork equatorial  mount.  A clock drive that ran on either 12 volts DC or 115 volts AC came built into the mount's base, a concept that subsequently proved very popular in 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes, still several years in the future.

Edmund Scientific

If you were an astro-child of the 1960s like I was, then you likely lusted after the telescopes sold by Edmund Scientific.  Here is a 13-page excerpt from a 1968 catalog that shows those telescopes and accessories.  My heart still skips a beat! (PDF file)

Lafayette Electronics

Optical Craftsmen of Chatsworth, CA, made some great telescopes back in the 1960's.  This one, from 1968, was, by far, their most ambitious instrument.  Imagine a trailer-mounted 16-inch telescope!  Even more impressive was the price -- a staggering $10.950!  Remember, this was in a day that a Chevy Caprice cost around $4,000.  In today's dollars, that price translates to more than $56,000!  But dig those groovy whitewall tires!

Wow, an in-home planetarium and dome!  The Spitz, Jr. planetarium from Harmonic Reed came out in the late 1950s, but no one sold a real dome for it other than Sears.

Was this your first telescope?  If you were a budding astronomer in the early 1960's, it might well have been!  Horrible mount, but good optics and a lot of fond memories for its owners.  A rare find for telescope collectors.

Still the #1 name in refractors, Unitron tried to play to the BMOC (big men on campus) with this 1961 ad.  But wait a minute!  You know that you shouldn't smoke around optics!

• For more insight into the history of Unitron, visit the Unitron History Project web site.

Known primarily for their 35-mm cameras, including the world's first auto-exposure camera, the Electro 35, Yashica also marketed telescopes.  The pages at left are from a telescope brochure that they produced in the 1960s.  Not much is known about them beyond these ads.  

The bottom photo is a modern photo of a 3-inch Yashica refractor owned by John Faulkner, who also supplied these scans.  Thanks, John!