User talk:Babsannie

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Yes, that's just boilerplate, sorry. But it's true all the same. And what follows isn't boilerplate.

Cooke (and TTH)
I'm interested in this edit of yours.

If the original article had/has mistakes (which unfortunately is very likely), do please correct it, citing your sources.

If you are reluctant to correct the article for some reason (perhaps lack of time) but want to note needed corrections, please do so in Talk:Cooke Optics. (I expect to move your material there fairly soon, unless you follow one of my suggestions here.)

However, please don't comment within the article itself, even temporarily and with the best of intentions, on what's written within the article.

None of this is intended to dissuade you from correcting, editing or augmenting the article. Quite the reverse! But do try to edit it so that it's not confusing, even temporarily.

If you're citing company documents, do please make sure that you're doing so in a way that respects copyright, where applicable. And try to be fairly precise about it. If you have worries about this or anything else, feel free to ask me on my talk page (User talk:Hoary). -- Hoary 00:28, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


 * PS Also please don't sign your work in articles. (Do please sign your comments in talk pages.) That's partly because articles are essentially collaborative, partly because although I tend to believe that you are an employee of Cooke, anybody can purport to be anyone.


 * I'll now leave the article alone for a couple of hours. Do please look at some other articles during this period and I think you'll get the idea of how they are constructed. (Or anyway look at some good articles. There are of course plenty of horrible ones. A good one I've been helping with recently is Adolfo Farsari. See its history page and its talk page.) -- Hoary 00:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Hoary - I'm probably doing this wrong. Forgive me. I hope I'm responding to your note above in the correct area here. If understand correctly from what you've outlined above, I should have corrected the errors in the original text that was placed by others about our company in the TALK section of COOKE OPTICS page. Is that correct? And then you place it in the active page later?

The source of the information is various documents from the Cooke Optics Limited archives. There is no catalog information. It's merely company history. You can verify who I am by going to the Cooke Optics website www.cookeoptics.com. You will find my name there. I am a director of the company.

Here are the changes:

"Cooke Optics Ltd." should be "Cooke Optics Limited." It's the preferred corporate name.

"known earlier as Taylor, Taylor and Hobson (TTH)" It was Taylor, Taylor & Hobson and then most recently Taylor Hobson. When it was Taylor Hobson, the Cooke lens division was purchased from the company.

T.S. Taylor, is Thomas Smithies Taylor and W. Taylor is William Taylor. If the names are used, I feel it's better to state the full name for clarification and accuracy.

The brothers' first company was established in 1886. A copy of the first company brochure is in the Cooke Optics archives.

"a Mr. Hobson" was Herbert W. Hobson. He joined the Taylor brothers in 1887. The company name was changed to Taylor, Taylor & Hobson in 1888, not 1887, two years after the brothers started their business. Source: Cooke Optics Limited archives.

"R. Taylor" did not invent the Cooke Triplet design, it was H. Dennis Taylor of T. Cooke & Sons, astronomical telescope makers in 1893. He was their optical manager. A bit of his personal history is found in the history section of the Cooke Optics website. He -- personally -- offered his design to TT&H to manufacture in a letter dated 15 September 1893 because of TT&H's established reputation for quality optics. In that letter he enclosed the first photo ever taken with a lens from his triplet design. It's of York Minster. Both of these items are in the Cooke Optics archives.

Voightlander did make lenses from the patent but it is misleading to say "devised a triplet lens in the 1890s that was made under licence by Voigtländer and other companies. The first Cooke lens was made and sold by TT&H by written agreement with T. Cooke & Sons, as were the next 5 lenses designed by H. Dennis Taylor of York over the next few years. By agreement, the lenses bore his name, linked the patent to his name and bore the name "Cooke" in deference to the Cooke brothers, owners of T. Cooke & Sons of York. (They were the "& Sons" part of the name.)

Bell & Howell took control of the company in 1931. It was a 75% controlling interest. Source: business documents in the Cooke Optics Limited archives.

It was then sold to the Rank Organization in 1946, not "to the Rank in 1946."

"They now design and manufacture 35mm lenses for the film industry." True, but Cooke also makes Super16/16mm lenses as well as other speciality optics.

"Cooke Optics also makes two lenses specifically designed for the RED ONE 2540p digital cinema camera." This is not true. Cooke has not made a lens specifically for the yet-to-be released RED camera.

Please advise if this is the type of information you are looking for. Babsannie 23:39, 17 January 2007 (UTC)Babsannie