The society's primary exempt purpose is to promote the significant cultural value of historical telescopes (and related objects), and of their makers and users, through educational, preservational, and stewardship-related activities.

Arts & Culture , Museums

The society's 2014 annual convention was hosted by carlton college's 136-year-old goodsell observatory from september 26-28, with a tour of the laboratory observatory at the university of minnesota on september 29. At carlton college, 28 attendees studied the obseratory's historic alvan clark, brashear and repsold instruments, viewed displays of antique telescopes and related materials, and attended 17 scholarly lectures on topics like "rescuing the bruce astrograph", "a transitional fitz-byrne telescope", "date ranges for block-letter signitures on clark telescopes", "use of digital searches to identify 19th century observatories", and "porter garden telescopes. " examples of how the public could benefit include the following, respectively; efforts to return the bruce astrograph to yerkes observatory from its present neglect at a greek institution could assure preservation of this historic instrument in its original setting; the study of an early john byrne telescope sheds light on features that could be used to judge whether an undated byrne instrument is from the era just after his connection with henry fitz ended, or later; this newly-identified date range for alvan clark telescopes bearing a block-letter signature will improve the accuracy of this method of judging the manufacturing date of such instruments; a search technique for digitized archives is described, which has found four unrecorded alvan clark telescopes and identified a previously-unknown 19th century telescope maker; and, a study of three porter garden telescopes has shed light on the design evolution of these rare objects. Some of these papers may reach a wider audience by publication in the society's journal, which is now accessible world-wide on the internet. The society held its annual board of directors meeting and its annual membership meeting at this convention. All expenses relating to the convention were funded by the registration fees of attendees. during 2014 the society published one issue of its journal, which all dues-paying members receive at no extra cost as the primary benefit of membership. The journal's production is an entirely volunteer effort, and the cost of its printing and mailing consumes about 80% of all dues payments. A copy is received by each of the society's roughly 209 members, of whom 179 are in the u. S. And 30 abroad. Of these members, 20 are institutions which serve the public such as libraries, museums and observatories. This issue's main articles included: a case-study on how to identify the make of an instrument that is obviously antique, but unsigned; restoration of an 1880s brashear telescope; and narratives about identification and preservation of historic telescopes at observatories in mexico and south africa. Benefit to the public could arise from such articles by, respectively: giving a detailed example of the type of research needed for identification of an unsigned classic instrument's maker; illustrating step-by-step disassembly and restoration techniques used in conserving a rare brashear reflecting telescope; and, calling attention to the common problem of institutions allowing their early instruments to suffer damage from neglect and/or poor storage. The society has now digitized all 38 issues of its journal, the entire content of which is available world-wide, for free, on the internet through nasa/ads system. This enormously increases accessibility of the journal's valuable content, and therefore its benefit to the public. in addition to its journal the society maintains two other vehicles for communicating with the broader public as well as its members: an online email forum, and an internet website. Each is available at no cost, to non-members and members. In 2014 the email discussion list "ats forum" carried 1,939 messages posted by its 209 members in roughly 13 countries. About 60% of the readers are non-members, who account for 15-25% of the messages posted. Typical questions include: how