 Grubb's Great Melbourne Telescope, then the largest steerable telescope in the world, being installed in 1868 | |
| Grubb Parsons | |
| Formerly | Grubb Telescope Company |
| Industry | Optical engineering |
| Founded | 1833 in Dublin, Ireland |
| Founder | Thomas Grubb |
| Defunct | 1985 |
| Headquarters | Dublin (1833-1918) St Albans (1918-25) Newcastle (1925-85) |
Key people | Howard Grubb Charles Parsons |
| Products | Telescopes Periscopes Lenses |
Number of employees | 150[1] (1955) |
| Parent | C.A. Parsons & Company[1] (1925-85) |
Grubb Parsons (legally 'Sir Howard Grubb, Parsons and Co. Ltd.') was a historic manufacturer of telescopes, active in the 19th and 20th centuries. They built numerous large research telescopes, including several that were (at the time of construction) the largest in the world of their type.
It was founded in 1833 by Thomas Grubb as the Grubb Telescope Company, located in Dublin. Control of the company passed to his son Howard Grubb in the 1860s. They produced dozens of telescopes, including some of the largest of the 19th century, such as the 48-inch (1.2 m) Great Melbourne Telescope (a reflecting telescope) in 1868, a 27-inch (0.69 m) refractor for the Vienna Observatory in 1878, and the Greenwich 28 inch refractor in 1893. Leading up to and during the First World War (1914-18) the company produced periscopes for submarines and moved to St Albans in 1918.
In 1925 the company was purchased by Charles Algernon Parsons, renamed Grubb Parsons, and moved to Newcastle upon Tyne. In the 20th century they produced large research telescopes including the Isaac Newton Telescope (1965), Anglo-Australian Telescope (1965) and UK Infrared Telescope (1979). Their final project was the William Herschel Telescope in 1985, after which the company shut down.