Talk:40-foot telescope

Calling a telescope by its length rather than diameter?
Modern parlance is to refer to telescopes by their diameter. The 40-foot name here is (presumably!) the length of the tube. It would be interesting to have something in the article which discussed why. Has common usage just changed over time? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:33, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes; telescopes at that time were known by the length of their tube rather than the diameter of their mirror, see e.g. . Mike Peel (talk) 09:27, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Merger
I disagree with the merger: the two articles focus on different things, one on a telescope the other on a building/observatory, and I don't think a combined article would work well. I hope that the building article can be expanded in the future. Mike Peel (talk) 10:21, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Johann Alexander Herschel
The NMH website lists "Johann Alexander Herschel" as one of the creators of this telescope. I took this to be John Herschel, but as was pointed out "John Herschel was born in 1792 and can hardly have helped build a telescope finished in 1789." . Does anyone know who Johann Alexander Herschel was? Mike Peel (talk) 21:54, 21 November 2009 (UTC)