Dollond, John

British optician and pioneer of telescope making.

John Dollond founded a workshop in which he was engaged in the manufacture of optical and astronomical instruments. From 1752, he worked with his son Peter Dollond on improving dioptric telescopes to reduce their chromatic aberration (the disruptive colour fringes). Inspired by the investigations of the Swedish physicist and mathematician Samuel Klingestierna (1698-1765) on the refraction of light, Dollond discovered the unequal refraction of coloured light rays in glass prisms of different refractive power. He concluded from this that achromatic lenses could show colour-pure images. Although Chester Moor Hall (1703-1771) had already come to this conclusion and invented the achromatic lens, Dollond was the first optician to commercially exploit the invention of the achromatic telescope. In 1758 he was therefore awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society and in the same year he received a patent for 14 years for the manufacture of achromatic lenses.

Johann Conrad Fischer visited the shop of Peter Dollond, John Dollond’s son, in London in 1814.

Cite as: Dollond, John. In: Travel Reports of a Pioneer: Digital Edition of the Travel Journals of Johann Conrad Fischer 1794–1851. Published by Franziska Eggimann. Edited by Franziska Eggimann, Nicolau Lutz, Valerija Rukavina und Christopher Zoller-Blundell. Schlatt 2023, Version 1.2, https://johannconradfischer.com/en/names/gfa-actors-298, viewed on 7 July 2025.