Watching "Sputnik: Declassified" on NOVA tonight reminded me of something. Project "Moonwatch" was a civilian program that placed thousands of small, refracting transit telescopes in the hands of citizens, who would then observe and time Sputniks as they crossed the sky. With these transit times and other data, the military could refine the satellites' orbits. There were several designs but all were similar. A small refractor with a mirror at the objective end, on a viewing stand. A brief clip on the NOVA program depicted some of these Moonwatch scopes and I noted that they were the old Edmund 8x50mm finder that many of us used in the "good old days". Hansen Planetarium used to sell them in the gift shop, decades ago. I still have two or three around here someplace, and I think Patrick may have one laying around as well. Extremely rugged, with a thick-walled aluminum main tube, focusable glass crossline reticle, and focusing Kellner eyepiece in a machined brass housing. The objective housing is machined brass as well. They were obviously built to military specs of the day. And the imagery is outstanding. Sharp, clear field-of-view. It makes sense that Edmund ended-up with a warehouse full of these ( Edmund started-out as a surplus company) when the Moonwatch program ended. They then marketed them as finderscopes, even selling them on their own line of Newtonian reflectors. It seems it took about ten to fifteen years to sell them all. So, some of you have a little piece of history in your workshops, basements, or perhaps still mounted on a telescope. A hold-over from the dawn of the space-age. A geniune piece of history from about a half century ago. Neat!