§ 1.3. Final Pieces Fall into Place
On This Page
In the spring of 1950, Lawrence Braymer had yet to hear from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the status of his five patent applications, which he submitted between late 1947 and early 1949. But while he waited on pending action by officials, he wasted no time with establishing a company that would build the finest small catadioptric telescope he could create.
On April 3, 1950, Questar Corporation was chartered under Pennsylvania state law. Along with playing the role of its treasurer, Lawrence naturally became its president.[1] But like many of his other past ventures—and like those that were to come in the future—he did not work alone. Instead, he had help. This time, however, the person with whom he partnered was no ordinary individual, and the full nature of his partnership with her was no ordinary business relationship.
Marriage of Marguerite and Lawrence Braymer
Lawrence Braymer married his second wife, Marguerite, on March 25, 1950,[2] her thirty-ninth birthday. Their nuptials took place just nine days before they chartered Questar Corporation. The timing of both events was quite fitting considering that Lawrence and Marguerite were inseparably intertwined with the founding and growth of their company.
Born in Camden, New Jersey, on March 25, 1911, Marguerite Annetta Adams was the daughter of Arthur Thomas Adams and Annetta May Adams (née Sherman). After attending school in New Jersey, Marguerite pursued advanced education at the College of South Jersey in Camden from 1928 to 1929 and at the South Jersey Law School from 1929 to 1930.[3] Both institutions reorganized under the control of Rutgers University in 1950.[4]
Marguerite’s marriage to Lawrence was her second marriage, too. On September 12, 1931, at the age of twenty, she married Raymond Alvin Dodd, who was also born in Camden four years earlier in 1907. In 1932, the couple moved to Bucks County, settling first in New Hope before establishing themselves seven miles to the west in Carversville. In 1937, Marguerite gave birth to their son, Peter R. Dodd. By 1940, the family of three was living five miles further to the west in Plumstead. At the time, Raymond was working as a newspaper reporter.[5]
Marguerite established her early professional career in advertising. For a period, she worked for N.W. Ayer & Son in Philadelphia,[6] the same advertising firm where Lawrence Braymer had been employed as a freelance artist in 1924.[7] Until the mid-1940s, she continued to develop experience in the advertising industry.[8] During the Second World War, Marguerite also wrote and edited instruction manuals for the U.S. armed forces.[9]
In 1943 or 1944, Marguerite became decorating editor at Woman’s Day magazine, which was based in New York City. She stayed in that position until 1953.[10] While there, Marguerite penned a variety of articles for a column entitled “Home Decoration and Workshop.” Her writing pieces included “Homemade Toys for Christmas” (December 1947), “A Room for Baby” (January 1948), “To Build for Boys” (December 1948), “Put-Away Space in a Trailer-Size Apartment” (December 1951), and many others.[11]
After her marriage to Raymond Dodd ended sometime in the 1940s,[12] Marguerite continued her professional writing. Perhaps as a result of having built her reputation over the course of several years, she continued to write under her name from her first marriage, Marguerite Dodd, even after she married Lawrence Braymer in March 1950. Along with her writing at Woman’s Day, she picked up work as a freelancer for a variety of magazines including House Beautiful, Better Homes and Gardens, and Country Gentleman between 1950 and 1954.[13]
Marguerite later authored two books. In 1957, she published America’s Homemaking Book, which she dedicated “to my husband.” Echoing America’s faith in science—and perhaps allowing a bit of Questar’s marketing to seep into her own book—she used her forward to express her “indebtedness to those many laboratories maintained by the government, by universities and by private industry, which are dedicated to the task of making the work of the woman at home easier and more fruitful. Through their constant experimentation to discover idea materials and improved methods, and through the published reports that make these findings available to everyone, homemaking is becoming almost an exact science.” Setting the tone for the rest of the book, the title of her first chapter asked, “Do You Run Your House or Does It Run You?” Subsequent pages offered advice on small appliances, plumbing, home heating and cooling, cleaning, decorating, and house purchases, among other matters. And at the beginning of her chapter entitled “Homemaking is a Going Business,” she counseled her readers that, for good reason, most advertising was directed to women: in 70% of American households, women spent most or all of the family’s income.[14] Her coverage of a wide variety of issues was thorough, and her advice on keeping a house was extensive. She left no stone unturned.
In 1963, she published America’s Cook Book. Heavily illustrated, the book contained 1600 recipes along with advice on cooking and kitchen safety, measurement conversion tables, and the like.[15] It was equally as thorough and far-reaching as her earlier book was.
Both books were successes. Her publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons reissued America’s Homemaking Book in 1968 and America’s Cook Book in 1973.[16]
Marguerite’s motives for continuing her own writing career into the 1950s and 1960s may have been mixed. During their first years together, she provided administrative and bookkeeping assistance to her husband as he focused on building his company. When Questar was chartered, she became the corporation’s secretary. At the same time, Marguerite maintained her professional writing engagements until income from Questar could support the couple.[17] On the other hand, Marguerite continued with her publishing even well after she and Lawrence had established Questar on solid footings. Perhaps she did so as a product of her hobby remodeling and decorating old stone houses in Bucks County.[18] She may have simply enjoyed the work.
Whatever the case may be, Marguerite actively collaborated with Lawrence Braymer as they built Questar as a business.[19] Both were driven entrepreneurs who directed their energy and professional experience toward founding, building, and promoting their new company. Not only did they offer a first-rate observing instrument, but they also knew how to promote it. Having both worked in the advertising industry, they had the writing skills and experience necessary to create an effective and sustained advertising campaign that helped them grow Questar.
But before they could launch their product, events in the early 1950s would conspire against them.
Complications for Production
Two developments slowed the Braymers as they moved towards beginning production shortly after they founded their company. A patent claim held by Albert Bouwers on a seemingly small but nonetheless significant design element raised difficulties for what form Questar’s optics could take. The outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula also caused further delays.
Albert Bouwers and His Patent
Born in the Netherlands in 1893, Albert Bouwers was a Dutch optician who earned his doctorate from Utrecht University in 1924. Having written his dissertation on a topic in X-ray intensity measurement, he later directed the X-ray department at Philips Laboratory, where he developed a night vision instrument that did not require an infrared flashlight.[20]
In August 1940, Bouwers began experimenting with commercial meniscus lenses that he purchased at an optician’s shop. Slightly predating the design that Maksutov completed in August 1941 and moved to patent in the Soviet Union three months later, Bouwers independently built a wide-field prototype that resembled a Schmidt camera and that featured a corrector lens and an aluminized concave mirror. In February 1941, he submitted a patent application in the Netherlands for his own design. But as a result of Germany’s occupation of that country beginning in May 1940, Bouwers and Maksutov did not learn of each other’s work until the end of World War II, at which point the Dutch optician’s patent could finally be published.[21]
Bouwers further described his work in his 1946 book Achievements in Optics. In his preface, he gave passing acknowledgement if not a dismissive wave of his hand to Maksutov’s May 1944 paper in the Journal of the Optical Society of America. His Russian counterpart, he wrote, “apparently obtained—at a later date than the author of the present volume—many of the results mentioned in the first chapters.” In those sections, Bouwers proceeded to outline technical details concerning various optical systems and their shortcomings. He then described possibilities for microscopes, cameras, and telescopes that used his optical design principles. Careful to cite his own Netherlands patent applications of February 1941 and August 1945, both of which were later issued in the United States, respectively, as patent #2,409,186 (October 1946) and #2,504,383 (April 1950), Bouwers described how a variety of telescopes that used lens-mirror combinations of his design could be free of several optical aberrations all in a tube with a reasonably short length.[22]
In his brief review of Achievements in Optics, Albert Ingalls seemed unable to contain his sense of doubtfulness about the originality of Bouwers’s work. “Now it comes out that in Nazi-dominated Holland,” Ingalls wrote, “the author early in the war invented and with Dutch official connivance secretly patented a variety of telescope systems practically the same as those Maksutov published in 1944.” Apparently “some think the Maksutov telescope should now be called the Bouwers or Bouwers-Maksutov.” While he admitted that advanced amateur telescope makers may find some of Achievements in Optics to be useful, Ingalls also noted that “beginners may flounder a little.”[23]
Bouwers’s Patent Claim
As he noted in Achievements in Optics, Albert Bouwers and his colleagues Johannes Becker and Adriaan Hendrik van Gorum had filed a patent application in the Netherlands in August 1945. In the United States, the trio submitted their application entitled “Reflecting Type Telescope Having a Spherical Mirror” on December 18, 1945. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued them patent #2,504,383 on April 18, 1950.[24]
Just like Maksutov and Braymer, Albert Bouwers was well aware of the main challenge: correcting for optical aberrations caused by a spherically-figured primary mirror. He wrote that Cassegrain and Gregorian instruments perform that correction by way of complex parabolic and hyperbolic mirrors. But he also noted that a matching primary mirror and a negative meniscus corrector lens, both figured spherically, accomplishes the same objective with far less complexity.[25]
Bouwers and his co-applicants detailed several variations. Some designs featured secondary mirrors of different shapes while others substituted lenses for convex secondary mirrors. While most of these designs were innocuous from Braymer’s perspective, one caused a major problem for his efforts to bring his own telescope into production. Bouwers and his colleagues described a secondary “collecting mirror” that was “fitted to the correcting element, thus avoiding placing the collecting mirror on a separate support.” In a particularly desirable form of this invention, “the surface of the collecting mirror is given the same radius of curvature as the corrector surface facing the concave mirror, which surfaces preferably coincide. In this case the collecting mirror is obtained by making the central part of the corrector surface facing the concave mirror reflecting.” In other words, “the convex collecting mirror consists of the central part of the convex corrector surface facing the main mirror, which central part is coated with a reflecting layer of aluminium.”[26]
At least for Lawrence Braymer, perhaps the single most important passage that Bouwers and his co-applicants included in their patent was one that summarized their intellectual property claim. In addition to a telescope made up of a concave primary mirror and refractive corrector lens, they envisioned a secondary or “collecting” mirror that was applied to the center of the corrector lens, one that reflected light from the primary mirror back toward the rear of the instrument “without passing through said refractive correcting element.”[27] The secondary mirror, in other words, was to be applied to the inside surface of the corrector lens.
In his patent application that he filed on November 25, 1947, Braymer also called for the placement of the secondary mirror on the interior surface of the corrector lens. Yet before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Braymer his patent #2,670,656 on March 2, 1954,[28] the agency had already granted Bouwers and his colleagues patent #2,504,383 on April 18, 1950,[29] mere weeks after Questar Corporation was chartered on April 3.[30] Whatever claim Braymer could have legally made on placing the secondary mirror on the inside surface was trumped by the patent Bouwers applied for and was issued first. Compounding matters, Wollensak Optical Company of Rochester, New York, eventually acquired rights to Bouwers’s patent in the United States.[31]
While Braymer performed his design work and prepared his patents between 1946 and 1948, he and his patent attorney Joseph Denny knew that Bouwers had filed his own patent application in 1945. In his references for his November 1947 patent application, Braymer cited both Bouwers’s U.S. patent #2,504,383 and his 1946 book Achievements in Optics.[32] He knew that Bouwers’s intellectual property claims were going to complicate matters for him.
Braymer’s Workaround
As a matter of shorthand, opticians refer to the various surfaces of a Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope using a system of abbreviations. With “R” standing for “radius of curvature,” “R1” refers to the outside surface of the corrector lens, “R2” to its inside surface, “R3” to the reflecting surface of the primary mirror, and “R4” to the reflecting surface of the secondary spot itself. Bouwers’s patent secured his claim on placing the secondary spot directly on the R2 (inside) surface of the corrector lens.
After considering the problem, Braymer’s patent attorney Joseph Denny suggested one solution in late 1949: relocate the secondary spot to the R1 (outside) surface of the corrector lens. Braymer’s optical designer and friend Norbert Schell then ray traced the modified design, and he found it to be satisfactory.[33] Although its placement there meant that light reflected from the primary mirror would have to pass through the relatively thick corrector lens twice—once on its way to the secondary mirror and again as it reflected off of it—the design solved the problem at hand.
Years later, Braymer wrote about the arrangement in his 1954 Questar booklet. “Partial correction occurs at the primary and the balance at the secondary, with all the light passing three times through the correcting lens. Questar’s triple-passage correcting lens distinguishes it from previous constructions and permits both a slightly shorter design and a fully-protected secondary mirror.”[34] Without explicitly identifying the legal constraint that compelled him to pursue such an arrangement, Braymer indirectly described how he circumvented Bouwers’s patent. Casting the arrangement in the best light possible, he seemed to imply that light passing “three times through the correcting lens” was a benefit, that three passages meant triple the correction. The “previous constructions” that Questar “distinguishes” itself from were clearly those of Maksutov and Bouwers. Perhaps it was true that placing the secondary spot on the outside surface of the corrector lens delivered a marginal benefit—doing so shortened the barrel no more than a quarter-inch. But the loss of light that occurred as a result of the triple-passage design underscored how it actually represented a compromise measure for getting around a competing patent. It was a concession that would continue to appear in production Questar telescopes until the late 1970s.
Well after production of the Questar telescope began, Braymer faced the threat of legal action for alleged violations of Bouwers’s patent. But Braymer’s design was different enough that it effectively insulated Questar from any such danger. Braymer and his company were safe.[35]
The Korean War
Braymer’s problems didn’t end after he sidestepped Bouwers’s patent. Only a handful of months after he chartered Questar Corporation, Braymer had to wait for the resolution of a conflict that was well beyond his control: the Korean War, which began after Soviet-backed forces from North Korea invaded the south in June 1950.
Just like it had been after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States was caught off-guard as hostilities began in Korea. And with the apparent spread of communism in the late 1940s, the imperative for action became all the more acute. Three months after the beginning of the Korean War, the U.S. Congress responded by authorizing the Defense Production Act. After the near total mobilization of the entire American economy during World War II, the law formalized the federal government’s ability to prioritize military production for future military action. In an effort to prevent slowdowns in wartime mobilization, Congress gave the federal government standing powers over economic planning and control, legal powers it did not have prior to the law’s passage.[36]
During the Korean War, which ironically began less than three months after Questar Corporation was chartered, the U.S. government prioritized the consumption of raw materials like aluminum, which was a key material used in the Questar telescope, for wartime use. The conflict lasted until the armistice of July 1953, about ten months before the company began its production and marketing efforts in earnest. With the end of hostilities, materials that had been largely reserved for military use became readily available again for civilian consumption by companies like Questar.[37] Another barrier that delayed the launch of the new telescope disappeared.
Emergence of an Aesthetic Masterpiece
After an intense period of design work and patent filing during the late 1940s, Braymer seemed to take advantage of the hiatus that the Korean War forced upon him to make further refinements to the design of the Questar telescope, a process that continued through the rest of 1953 and early 1954.
Original Intention for a Five-inch Telescope
During the earliest days of their planning, Lawrence Braymer and Norbert Schell initially envisioned a five-inch telescope. But as the design process unfolded, Braymer ultimately settled on a 3.5-inch instrument. In the company’s advertisement that appeared in the October 1963 issue of Sky and Telescope, he remembered that critical early period. “Back in 1946, when we began to miniaturize the classical telescope, using the newly announced Maksutov optics, we started with a 5-inch aperture. We discovered that such an instrument, when mounted and encased, would weigh between 20 and 30 pounds. This was not exactly portable, in our view, so we kept on exploring other possibilities.” In an effort to strike a balance between creating a telescope small enough to carry around easily yet large enough to do meaningful observing, “we built many versions. We settled on 3.5 inches of aperture as permitting an optimum size where the greatest number of favorable factors came together. We emerged after 8 years with one model so excellent that it has served without essential change now for a decade. We do not plan to change it in the foreseeable future.”[38] And indeed, Questar has not substantially changed its signature telescope since the company started producing it in 1954.
The Questar Prototype
Toward the end of the eight-year period during which Braymer created numerous versions of a telescope, a prototype emerged that looked quite different from the final model that went into production in 1954. It shared a number of features that first appeared in a patent for which he applied in the late 1940s.
Filed on March 15, 1949, and issued on November 2, 1954, Braymer’s patent entitled “Telescope Mounting” described an instrument with a tube and fork-arm mount that resembled the design that appeared in his earlier patents. What distinguished it was a storage case that doubled as a base for the instrument. “My invention relates to telescopes, and particularly to a portable telescope having a hollow base providing a housing for fragile parts of the instrument, such as the tube containing the optical system and mounting elements for the tube. The base is provided with a tiltable closure, which forms a shield for the housed fragile parts and also provides a stable footing or foundation for the tube and mounting elements so as to permit their use in making azimuth altitude observations or for use as an equatorial telescope without danger of tilting.”[39]
At the very least, this patent shows that Braymer considered multiple ways to accommodate a maximum degree of portability and convenience. He designed a versatile telescope that could be used in either alt-azimuth “terrestrial” mode, as Braymer characterized it in his patent, or in equatorial celestial mode. And he conceived of a unique and clever way to store it.
After filing his patent in March 1949, Lawrence Braymer created a flurry of design documents for a variety of components. Notable examples include several for an extruded metal case (July to September 1950 and April 1952), one for an eyepiece adapter tube (June 1951), three for a control box with a 0.925-inch-wide axial port and a finder mirror (June 1951, May 1952, and August 1952), and two for a mount with a single side arm (July 1951 and March 1952).[40]
By June 1953, a completed prototype for the Questar telescope had emerged. Like many of Braymer’s other designs from the late 1940s, this instrument had a one-armed mount. Its base could rest either on a tabletop surface, or it could be attached to its long aluminum hard case. By detaching that base from the mount arm and telescope tube assembly, the instrument could be stowed in its case, and the base doubled as its lid. Two legs could be attached to the case for operating the telescope in equatorial mode.[41] In spite of its unusual appearance, all of the major design elements of the production Questar were present: a fully-mounted telescope; a control box with an integrated finder system, axial port, Barlow lens, and focus knob; a star chart dew shield and moon map, solar filter, two eyepieces, and a case. They simply existed in a different form.
Final Design for Questar Telescope
By the end of the Korean War, Braymer had completed work on a prototype for the Questar telescope. He was close to finalizing the design for his product.
In 1954, two last pieces fell into place. On August 23, 1954, Braymer registered the Questar trademark with an application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The agency granted that trademark as registration #609,560 on July 26, 1955.[42] Braymer’s logo cleverly incorporated the profile of his telescope’s barrel in the first letter of the company’s name.
On September 20, 1954, a little less than a month after he submitted his trademark application, Braymer applied for a design patent that reflected the appearance of the mature production Questar telescope, a patent that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued on August 23, 1955. Aside from adding three other patent citations, Braymer simply wrote, “I claim: The ornamental design for a telescope, as shown.”[43] It featured all of the major elements of the production Questar telescope: a base with tripod leg plug holes; a fork mount with two side arms; right slow motion control knobs; a control box with levers for a Barlow lens, diagonal prism, and focus operation; a rear axial port; a star map dew shield; and a finder mirror. If anything, Braymer was just as careful putting his artistic creation under patent protection as he was with protecting the optical and mechanical elements of his design work.
Braymer indicated the numbers for various patents that described his design elements on the base plate and, later, on the bottom of the telescope’s barrel. He was clearly proud of those patents, and he did not hesitate to highlight them on his signature creation. They secured him the right to protect not only his technical achievement but also his aesthetic work. Both sides of his creativity were reflected in the patents that Braymer held.
What ultimately emerged after nearly a decade of design work by an artist-turned-telescope entrepreneur was not only a piece of fine optical and mechanical engineering. The Questar was also a visually pleasing work of art.[44] Years later, the company highlighted its instrument as one that was “suitable for rocket-borne instrumentation.” On top of its fine optics and mechanics, the company’s advertising copywriter asked, “It’s beautiful, too, isn’t it? We know people who keep Questar on a table, under a bell cover to protect it from dust, because they enjoy looking at it when they are not looking through it.”[45]
Having spent eight years developing a highly refined and attractive telescope, Braymer’s task became putting that work of art into production.
Notes
1 Dun and Bradstreet, report for Questar Corporation, March 25, 1958, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/Fred%20K.%20Leisch%20Questar%20/, accessed October 14, 2019.
2 Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television and Other Fields (Gale Research Company, 1969), 307, https://archive.org/details/contemporaryauth5-8gale/page/307/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Who’s Who in America, 1992-1993 (New Providence: Marquis Who’s Who, 1992), volume 1, 392, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0837901480_1/page/392/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; “Marguerite Annetta Braymer,” Prabook, n.d., https://prabook.com/web/marguerite_annetta.braymer/491976, accessed November 2, 2020.
3 Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television and Other Fields (Gale Research Company, 1969), 307, https://archive.org/details/contemporaryauth5-8gale/page/307/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Foremost Women in Communications: A Biographical Reference Work on Accomplished Women in Broadcasting, Publishing, Advertising, Public Relations, and Allied Professions (New York: Foremost Americans Publishing Corporation, 1970), 75, https://archive.org/details/foremostwomeninc0000unse/page/75/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019; Who’s Who in America, 1992-1993 (New Providence: Marquis Who’s Who, 1992), volume 1, 392, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0837901480_1/page/392/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Herb Drill, “Marguerite Braymer, 85, Questar Corp. co-founder,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 1, 1996, R4, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21814542/the_philadelphia_inquirer/, accessed October 8, 2019; “Marguerite Annetta Braymer,” Prabook, n.d., https://prabook.com/web/marguerite_annetta.braymer/491976, accessed November 2, 2020; “Lawrence Ernest Braymer (1901 - 1965),” Ancestry.com, n.d., https://www.ancestry.com.au/genealogy/records/lawrence-ernest-braymer-24-6k9clr, accessed June 7, 2020; Ralph Foss, “Lawrence E Braymer” (unpublished manuscript, June 11, 2006, revised June 26, 2006), typescript, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019.
4 Matthew Brown, “Inventory to the Records of the Rutgers University Office of the President (Robert C. Clothier), 1925-1952,” Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, April 2017, http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/ead/uarchives/clothierf.html, accessed November 16, 2020.
5 1940 U.S. census, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Plumstead Township, sheet 5A, Raymond Dodd; digital image, 1940census.archives.gov, https://1940census.archives.gov/search/?search.result_type=image&search.state=PA&search.county=Bucks+County&search.city=Plumstead&search.street=#filename=m-t0627-03446-00582.tif&name=9-65&type=image&state=PA&searchby=location&searchmode=browse&year=1940&index=9&pages=28&bm_all_text=Bookmark, accessed November 2, 2020; Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019; Who’s Who in America, 1992-1993 (New Providence: Marquis Who’s Who, 1992), volume 1, 392, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0837901480_1/page/392/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Herb Drill, “Marguerite Braymer, 85, Questar Corp. co-founder,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 1, 1996, R4, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21814542/the_philadelphia_inquirer/, accessed October 8, 2019; “Marguerite Annetta Braymer,” Prabook, n.d., https://prabook.com/web/marguerite_annetta.braymer/491976, accessed November 2, 2020; “Samuel Lippard Dodd,” Ancestry.com, n.d., https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/samuel-lippard-dodd-24-1qjp550, accessed November 3, 2020.
6 Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019.
7 Stewart Squires, online forum posting, Questar Users Group, August 10, 2010, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/conversations/messages/21191, accessed November 3, 2019.
8 Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television and Other Fields (Gale Research Company, 1969), 307, https://archive.org/details/contemporaryauth5-8gale/page/307/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Ralph Foss, “Lawrence E Braymer” (unpublished manuscript, June 11, 2006, revised June 26, 2006), typescript, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019.
9 Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019.
10 Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television and Other Fields (Gale Research Company, 1969), 307, https://archive.org/details/contemporaryauth5-8gale/page/307/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Foremost Women in Communications: A Biographical Reference Work on Accomplished Women in Broadcasting, Publishing, Advertising, Public Relations, and Allied Professions (New York: Foremost Americans Publishing Corporation, 1970), 75, https://archive.org/details/foremostwomeninc0000unse/page/75/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019; Who’s Who in America, 1992-1993 (New Providence: Marquis Who’s Who, 1992), volume 1, 392, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0837901480_1/page/392/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Herb Drill, “Marguerite Braymer, 85, Questar Corp. co-founder,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 1, 1996, R4, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21814542/the_philadelphia_inquirer/, accessed October 8, 2019; “Marguerite Annetta Braymer,” Prabook, n.d., https://prabook.com/web/marguerite_annetta.braymer/491976, accessed November 2, 2020; Ralph Foss, “Lawrence E Braymer” (unpublished manuscript, June 11, 2006, revised June 26, 2006), typescript, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019.
11 “Woman’s Day Magazine Review,” somethingunderthebed.com, n.d., http://www.somethingunderthebed.com/CURTAIN/REVIEWSmags/WomansDay.html, accessed November 16, 2020; “Woman’s Day - January 1948,” AbeBooks.com, n.d., https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30190080468, accessed November 16, 2020; “Woman’s Day, vol. 15, no. 3 (December 1951),” Amazon.com, n.d., https://www.amazon.com/Womans-Day-vol-December-1951/dp/B06Y55YQSH, accessed November 16, 2020.
12 While the timing of numerous critical events that led to the marriage of Marguerite and Lawrence Braymer is probably lost to time, one may be able to reconstruct a rough chronology based on available evidence. In his profile of Questar that appeared in the New Hope Gazette on March 14, 1985, journalist Charles Shaw writes that Marguerite had met Lawrence Braymer “before he became interested in the miniaturized telescope” (Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019). Given the fact that Lawrence first encountered Maksutov’s 1944 article in the Journal of the Optical Society of America shortly after it was published and that he began design work on his own “miniaturized telescope” in August of that year (Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019; “Questar Products Index & Overview Page,” Company Seven, n.d., http://www.company7.com/questar/index.html, accessed November 3, 2019; Stewart Squires, online forum posting, Questar Users Group, August 10, 2010, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/conversations/messages/21189, accessed November 3, 2019; Stewart Squires, online forum posting, Questar Users Group, August 10, 2010, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/conversations/messages/21192, accessed November 3, 2019), one might safely conclude that Marguerite and Lawrence met for the first time sometime around or perhaps prior to 1944. Moreover, Herb Drill of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in his November 1996 obituary for Marguerite Braymer that she had been married to Raymond Dodd for fifteen years (Herb Drill, “Marguerite Braymer, 85, Questar Corp. co-founder,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 1, 1996, R4, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21814542/the_philadelphia_inquirer/, accessed October 8, 2019). Given this account, Marguerite and Raymond presumably divorced sometime around 1946. That same year, Lawrence left his career as a commercial artist to develop what ultimately became the Questar telescope (Stewart Squires, online forum posting, Questar Users Group, August 10, 2010, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/conversations/messages/21192, accessed November 3, 2019). And in 1948, Lawrence and Nan Braymer themselves divorced (Federal Bureau of Investigation, notes from interview with Dennis Flanagan, September 26, 1951, https://archive.org/stream/JuliusRosenberg/Rosenberg%2C%20Julius%2041#page/n37/mode/1up, accessed June 7, 2020).
13 Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television and Other Fields (Gale Research Company, 1969), 307, https://archive.org/details/contemporaryauth5-8gale/page/307/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Foremost Women in Communications: A Biographical Reference Work on Accomplished Women in Broadcasting, Publishing, Advertising, Public Relations, and Allied Professions (New York: Foremost Americans Publishing Corporation, 1970), 75, https://archive.org/details/foremostwomeninc0000unse/page/75/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019; Who’s Who in America, 1992-1993 (New Providence: Marquis Who’s Who, 1992), volume 1, 392, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0837901480_1/page/392/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; “Marguerite Annetta Braymer,” Prabook, n.d., https://prabook.com/web/marguerite_annetta.braymer/491976, accessed November 2, 2020.
14 Marguerite Dodd, America’s Homemaking Book (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), https://archive.org/details/americashomemaki00dodd/, accessed November 17, 2020.
15 Marguerite Dodd, America’s Cook Book (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963); “Vintage AMERICA’S COOK BOOK by Marguerite Dodd,” Etsy, n.d., https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/689008527/vintage-americas-cook-book-by-marguerite?show_sold_out_detail=1, accessed November 17, 2020.
16 Marguerite Dodd, America’s Homemaking Book (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), https://archive.org/details/americashomemaki00dodd/, accessed November 17, 2020; Marguerite Dodd, America’s Cook Book (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963); “Vintage AMERICA’S COOK BOOK by Marguerite Dodd,” Etsy, n.d., https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/689008527/vintage-americas-cook-book-by-marguerite?show_sold_out_detail=1, accessed November 17, 2020.
17 Dun and Bradstreet, report for Questar Corporation, March 25, 1958, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/Fred%20K.%20Leisch%20Questar%20/, accessed October 14, 2019; Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television and Other Fields (Gale Research Company, 1969), 307, https://archive.org/details/contemporaryauth5-8gale/page/307/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Foremost Women in Communications: A Biographical Reference Work on Accomplished Women in Broadcasting, Publishing, Advertising, Public Relations, and Allied Professions (New York: Foremost Americans Publishing Corporation, 1970), 75, https://archive.org/details/foremostwomeninc0000unse/page/75/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Who’s Who in America, 1992-1993 (New Providence: Marquis Who’s Who, 1992), volume 1, 392, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0837901480_1/page/392/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; “Questar Products Index & Overview Page,” Company Seven, n.d., http://www.company7.com/questar/index.html, accessed July 3, 2019.
18 Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television and Other Fields (Gale Research Company, 1969), 307, https://archive.org/details/contemporaryauth5-8gale/page/307/mode/1up, accessed June 3, 2022; Ralph Foss, “Lawrence E Braymer” (unpublished manuscript, June 11, 2006, revised June 26, 2006), typescript, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019.
19 Questar Corporation, “A Brief History,” n.d., https://www.questar-corp.com/QuestarPDF/QuestarHistory.pdf, accessed July 3, 2019.
20 “Albert Bouwers,” Wikipedia, n.d., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bouwers, accessed September 26, 2020.
21 Albert Bouwers, 1946, Telescope System, U.S. Patent 2,409,186, filed December 24, 1942, and issued October 15, 1946, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2409186A/en, accessed December 11, 2021; Albert Bouwers, Achievements in Optics (New York: Elsevier, 1946), 53; D. D. Maksutov, “New Catadioptric Meniscus Systems,” Journal of the Optical Society of America 34, no. 5 (1944): 270; Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope (Bucks, England: Charles Griffin & Company, 1955), 360, https://books.google.com/books?id=KAWwzHlDVksC&pg=PA360#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed September 26, 2020; John F. Gills, “From James Gregory to John Gregory: The 300 Year Evolution of the Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope,” weasner.com, 1998, http://www.weasner.com/etx/guests/mak/MAKSTO.HTM, accessed December 29, 2019; Bert Willard, “Mac’s Mak Club,” Stellafane, n.d., https://stellafane.org/history/early/willard/mak.html, accessed December 29, 2019; “Albert Bouwers,” Wikipedia, n.d., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bouwers, accessed November 3, 2019.
22 Albert Bouwers, Achievements in Optics (New York: Elsevier, 1946), 53-59; Albert Bouwers, 1946, Telescope System, U.S. Patent 2,409,186, filed December 24, 1942, and issued October 15, 1946, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2409186A/en, accessed December 11, 2021; Albert Bouwers, Johannes Becker, and Adriaan Hendrik van Gorum, 1950, Reflecting Type Telescope Having a Spherical Mirror, U.S. Patent 2,504,383, filed December 18, 1945, and issued April 18, 1950, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2504383, accessed December 29, 2019.
23 Albert G. Ingalls, review of Achievements in Optics, by Albert Bouwers, Scientific American, March 1948, 140, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24945787, accessed December 10, 2021.
24 Albert Bouwers, Johannes Becker, and Adriaan Hendrik van Gorum, 1950, Reflecting Type Telescope Having a Spherical Mirror, U.S. Patent 2,504,383, filed December 18, 1945, and issued April 18, 1950, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2504383, accessed December 29, 2019.
25 Albert Bouwers, Johannes Becker, and Adriaan Hendrik van Gorum, 1950, Reflecting Type Telescope Having a Spherical Mirror, U.S. Patent 2,504,383, filed December 18, 1945, and issued April 18, 1950, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2504383, accessed December 29, 2019.
26 Albert Bouwers, Johannes Becker, and Adriaan Hendrik van Gorum, 1950, Reflecting Type Telescope Having a Spherical Mirror, U.S. Patent 2,504,383, filed December 18, 1945, and issued April 18, 1950, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2504383, accessed December 29, 2019.
27 Albert Bouwers, Johannes Becker, and Adriaan Hendrik van Gorum, 1950, Reflecting Type Telescope Having a Spherical Mirror, U.S. Patent 2,504,383, filed December 18, 1945, and issued April 18, 1950, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2504383, accessed December 29, 2019; Ben Langlotz, online forum posting, Antique Telescope Society Forum, March 11, 2019, https://ats-forum.groups.io/g/ATS-Forum/message/39263, accessed November 12, 2021; Ben Langlotz, online forum posting, Cloudy Nights, March 12, 2019, https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/653162-an-observing-quirk-with-early-questar-scopes/?p=9209136, accessed November 12, 2021.
28 Lawrence Braymer, 1954, Telescope, U.S. Patent 2,670,656, filed November 25, 1947, and issued March 2, 1954, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2670656, accessed December 29, 2019.
29 Albert Bouwers, Johannes Becker, and Adriaan Hendrik van Gorum, 1950, Reflecting Type Telescope Having a Spherical Mirror, U.S. Patent 2,504,383, filed December 18, 1945, and issued April 18, 1950, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2504383, accessed December 29, 2019.
30 Dun and Bradstreet, report for Questar Corporation, March 25, 1958, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/Fred%20K.%20Leisch%20Questar%20/, accessed October 14, 2019.
31 Stewart Squires, email message to author, October 28, 2019.
32 Lawrence Braymer, 1954, Telescope, U.S. Patent 2,670,656, filed November 25, 1947, and issued March 2, 1954, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2670656, accessed December 29, 2019.
33 Stewart Squires, email message to author, October 28, 2019; “Questar Products Index & Overview Page,” Company Seven, n.d., http://www.company7.com/questar/index.html, accessed November 3, 2019.
34 Questar Corporation, Questar booklet, May 1954, 17.
35 Stewart Squires, email message to author, October 28, 2019.
36 Erin Blakemore, “Why Congress Passed the Defense Production Act in 1950,” History.com, March 23, 2020, https://www.history.com/news/defense-production-act-cold-war-emergency-truman, accessed November 18, 2020.
37 Charles Shaw, “Larry Braymer: ‘In Quest of the Stars,’” New Hope Gazette, March 14, 1985, 3, 32, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Questar/files/FAQ/, accessed October 15, 2019.
38 Questar Corporation, advertisement, Sky and Telescope, October 1963, inside front cover.
39 Lawrence Braymer, 1954, Telescope Mounting, U.S. Patent 2,693,032, filed March 15, 1949, and issued November 2, 1954, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2693032, accessed June 9, 2020.
40 Jim Perkins, “Questar Serial Number Systems” (unpublished manuscript, August 20, 2020), typescript.
41 Questar Corporation, salesman instrument leaflet, June 1953.
42 Lawrence Braymer, 1955, Questar Trademark, U.S. Trademark Registration 609,560, filed August 23, 1954, and issued July 26, 1955, http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=71672101&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch, accessed April 22, 2021.
43 Lawrence Braymer, 1955, Telescope, U.S. Patent D-175,388, filed September 20, 1954, and issued August 23, 1955, https://patents.google.com/patent/USD175388S, accessed June 9, 2020.
44 Stewart Squires, email message to author, October 28, 2019. Squires wrote simply, “Braymer was an artist. The Questar is art.”
45 Questar Corporation, advertisement, Sky and Telescope, June 1967.