There are more hard-core ATM's alive today than at any time in history. They are a smaller percentage of all amateur astronomers, however, and tend to be more high-end than they were a generation or two ago. Most are engineers and professionals in other fields. Most work independently. ATMing as the standard entree into the hobby is an anachronism, for the reason Bob noted. Those are the ones he and Erik are remembering. On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Robert Taylor <robtaylor3661@comcast.net>wrote:

I think cheap telescopes with good optics has taken it's toll on telescope making.

Bob

Message: 4 Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 12:53:56 -0800 From: <zaurak@digis.net> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] 13.1 inch Coulter Carcass, free To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Message-ID: <20090107125356.A97D6D63@resin09.mta.everyone.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

dinosaur carcass to boot. Seriously SLAS used to have a good number of people building telescopes. What happened to that? I wonder if Amateur Telescope Making is on the decline.

Erik