George Bass (optician)

George Bass (* approx. 1700 ; † 1770 ) was an English optician and manufacturer of lenses . He was indirectly involved in the development of achromatic objectives that allow pure color imaging.

The English amateur optician Chester Moor Hall had the idea of ​​combining two lenses with different refractive power around 1733 . For the sake of secrecy, he commissioned two different companies ( Edward Scarlett and James Mann ) to manufacture the crown glass and the flint glass lens, which however passed the order for the lens cut to the same optician - George Bass. Bass noticed that both lenses were for the same customer and recognized their achromatic nature. However, Hall did not pursue his invention any further. Bass also found that reading glasses made from crown glass gave better images than other types of glass.

Around 1757 Bass mentioned the matter in conversation with the Anglo-French optician John Dollond . He was able to derive the manufacturing principle and submitted a patent for it, which was granted to him in 1758. Around 1760 he built the first color-pure telescope lenses .

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• Peter Dollond answers Jesse Ramsden - A review of the events of the invention of the achromatic doublet with emphasis on the roles of Hall, Bass, John Dollond and others . Sphaera, accessed May 21, 2014
• Fred Hoyle : Astronomy. A history of man's investigation of the universe , Rathbone Books Ltd., 1962