12-26-08
Anchor Optics
Remember Edmund Scientific, the perennial advertiser in the back of science magazines? They sold lenses in addition to all kinds of scientific knick-knacks and basement experimenter supplies. Anchor Optics is a division of Edmund's upscale optics company, selling mostly to professionals, but at a discount. They've got loupes and microscopes, but also Fresnel lenses, commercial grade front-side mirrors, laser parts, optical bench gear, prisms, and advance fiber optic stuff -- just about anything optical you can imagine at good prices, Anchor sells Edmund's surplus or "seconds" -- but only second in some cosmetic or inessential way. If you need a lens or an optical flat mirror of a certain size, you'll probably end up here.
-- KK
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Dave
I remember Edmund Scientifics, but not from magazines. It was within 15 minutes of where I grew up--and even closer to where we lived as my kids were growing up. On rainy days especially, it was a pretty cool indoor playground. It's still around, and it has a rather extensive Web presence, complete with a sizeable clearance area...
Bruce
Please, for the love of all things surplus-y tell me you've heard of http://www.surplusshed.com/
It had lenses, mirrors and tons more stuff. Cheap! Okay, mostly affordable.
John Dyer
A really interesting part of the Anchor Optics site is this:
http://www.anchoroptics.com/documents/
There they have a lot of the old booklets that used to be available from Edmund's. There is a lot of really interesting stuff there for the hobbyist to investigate.
Well worth looking around.
John
Kevin Kelly
@ John Dyer: Cool. Love this stuff.
Robert Little
Anchor Optics is a great source. I've used them recently to build a facsimile of one of Galileo's telescopes. Great stuff, good prices.
Robert Little
Actually, since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a few thousand words worth of pictures of the Galilean telescope...
http://picasaweb.google.com/vagabonastronomer/Project400Part2TheGalileanTelescope#
And to John... thanks for the link to those docs.